Cocktail of the Week: The French Intervention

Yes, it’s my second consecutive tequila drink. Once I didn’t even like tequila. I’m expanding my comfort zone, trying new things. Stop inhibiting me!

This cocktail comes courtesy of Amy Stewart’s best-selling The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create The World’s Great Drinks. Her book is a fascinating exploration of the biology behind booze that features multiple recipes, including one for a cocktail that Stewart has called “a better tribute to the agave plant than a margarita is.” Both its name and its ingredients stem from a historical incident. I will now change one of those ingredients and wreck that symmetry completely.

The French Intervention refers to Napoleon III’s 1862 invasion of Mexico. Under President Benito Juárez, Mexico opted to stop paying its foreign creditors. Three of them – Spain, England and France – joined forces to make the debtor nation come across. But when the first two countries learned that France, hoping to forge a Catholic hegemony in the New World, had designs on taking all of Mexico, they stopped answering their phones and were all, like, What? Was that this weekend? We were at Jordan’s the whole time.

France eventually installed a Habsburg, Maximilian I, as emperor, because who better to rule Mexico than an Austrian? They’re two countries separated only by an ocean, a few other bodies of water, several mountain ranges, language, temperament, cuisine and culture. Maximilian’s reign lasted three years and ended with him losing Mexico and his head.

This global misadventure inspired numerous cocktails, including the Maximilian Affair and several drinks marching under the French Intervention banner. To honor its namesake, most variations have a base spirit from Mexico (tequila or mezcal) and a modifier from France such as elderflower liqueur. Stewart’s version incorporates Lillet Blanc.

Mine doesn’t. I have of late been substituting Cocchi Americano for Lillet in cocktails, and made no exception here even though it throws the narrative out of whack. Stewart at least prescribes a dash of green chartreuse, which is also French. And Cocchi Americano’s Italian origin also suits the tale, given that Pope Pius IX blessed Maximilian before he left for his ill-fated bid at monarchy. (One of Juárez’s first acts as President was to nationalize church property.) Later, when France was on the verge of abandoning Mexico, Maximilian’s wife Empress Carlota returned to Europe to plead their case and, paranoid, demanded to stay overnight in the Vatican, becoming the first woman to do so. Meaning that if anything, my take on this cocktail is more attuned to the subtleties of 19th century geopolitics.

The French Intervention buttresses Stewart’s belief that agave-based spirits play well in cocktails. The trace of chartreuse accentuates the tequila to salutary effect, with Cocchi Americano’s extra snap of cinchona a welcome addition. I wouldn’t rank it ahead of the margarita, but it’s still a drink both magnifico and formidable.

The French Intervention

Variation on a recipe by Amy Stewart

1 ½ oz. tequila (or mezcal)
¾ oz. Cocchi Americano (originally Lillet Blanc)
dash of green chartreuse

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a grapefruit twist.

Cocktail of the Week: The Paloma

Forget what you’ve heard – possibly even from me – about the margarita. The real national drink of Mexico is a simpler concoction that showcases tequila to greater effect than its better known relative, and if anything may be more refreshing.

Paloma means dove in Spanish. It’s also a native infestation that attacks the leaves of maguey (agave) plants, source of mezcal and tequila, so calling a cocktail by that name may be ironic or a bid to ward off bad luck. Like the margarita, La Paloma incorporates tequila, lime juice and salt. The primary difference with the last ingredient is that instead of going on the rim of the glass, the salt is typically tossed right into the drink. That step, unfussy in the extreme, is essential to the Paloma’s street-level appeal; there’s no worry about even distribution as the salt gets right to work on the ice and unleashes the tequila’s flavor. The absence of triple sec also allows the spirit to shine more brightly.

Still more important is the final element: grapefruit soda. It’s a magnificent time-saving step, adding sourness and sass in one fell swoop. The traditional choice in Mexico is Squirt, with some favoring Ting from Jamaica or, madre de dios, Fresca. My personal preference is Jarritos, for two reasons:

1. It’s authentically Mexican.
2. It’s available in the store in my building.

As La Paloma has caught on north of the border, bartenders are classing them up with fresh grapefruit juice for tartness and club soda for fizz. These Palomas, along with those made with mezcal, tequila’s smokier cousin, can be sublime. But I have no quarrel with the down-to-earth original. I’ve always been a man of the people.

Alcademics offers a round-up of twenty Paloma variations including an earlier Cocktail of the Week, the 212.

The Paloma

2 oz. tequila
½ oz. lime juice
pinch of salt
several oz. grapefruit soda

Combine the first three ingredients in a Collins glass. Add ice, then soda. Stir. Garnish with a lime wedge.

Cocktail of the Week: The Margarita

What can I possibly say about everybody’s favorite college/cruise/cabana cocktail? I bring it up mainly out of a sense of completion, to play out the thread that began two weeks ago. The Margarita is simply the most successful variation on the storied Sidecar: base spirit, tarted up (in the gustatory sense) with citrus, sweetened with orange liqueur, featuring a bonus kick on the rim of the glass. It’s an obvious conclusion to draw, like knowing that humankind is materialized color operating on the forty-ninth vibration.

The Margarita is, in the words of David Wondrich, “the last indispensable cocktail,” the final entrant in the pantheon of essential mixed drinks. It didn’t start gaining broad acceptance until the 1970s, owing largely to tequila’s initially poor reputation; as mentioned earlier, David Embury devotes most of his scant words on the spirit in 1948’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks to its then-common unappealing aroma.

The smell partly accounted for the salt-and-lime (or lemon) ritual that regularly accompanied tequila. Kingsley Amis called the Margarita, which incorporated both elements into the drink, “a kind of dude’s version” of the process. He also said that “there’s no point in denying that this is one of the most delicious drinks in the world.” Its genesis remains somewhat hazy, but combinations of tequila, orange notes and citrus were found throughout Mexico in the 1930s. Charles H. Baker, Jr., who declared the whole salt and lime business “a definite menace to the gullet and possible fire risk through lighted matches,” even offered up such a cocktail of his own devising in his Gentleman’s Companion (1939), blending tequila, lime juice, orange flower water and grenadine and naming the concoction in honor of “the idol of Mexico,” matador Armillita Chico.

Scattered, half-baked thoughts on assorted elements of the Margarita –

Tequila. Typically a 100% agave blanca tequila is recommended, but I never stand on ceremony. I’ve had some tasty variations made with mezcal, the agave-based spirit with a rougher, smokier flavor.

Orange liqueur. Read: Cointreau. Not triple sec. Never triple sec. Be good to yourself.

Frozen? And what sorority are you a member of, young lady? (No, seriously, frozen Margaritas are fine. At a sewing circle.)

Salted rim. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of salt with the Margarita, and not only because of my poor technique. A well-made rendition won’t require salt. Often I’ll only treat half the rim of the glass. But lately I’ve varied my policy, and that’s because of …

Agave syrup. It’s readily available now and a natural addition to this cocktail. It gives the drink an earthier, more proletarian texture, and sets up an intriguing battle between the salty and the sweet. Add a barspoon to your next round and judge for yourself.

The Margarita

2 oz. tequila
¾ oz. Cointreau
¾ oz. lime juice
¼ oz. agave syrup

Shake. Strain. Pour into a glass with a salted rim. No garnish.

Cocktail of the Week: The 212

As far as I can tell, tequila has ruined more college experiences than the freshman fifteen and mono combined. Whether out of overindulgence or orneriness, no other spirit has made so many imbibers gunshy.

It’s had its share of bad press. In the index of Kingsley Amis’ Everyday Drinking, one of the subheads under tequila is “as proximate cause of violence.” In the Bible, aka The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, David A. Embury recounts his first experience with “a bottle brought up from Mexico ... during prohibition days.” He complains about its smell (“a combination of overripe eggs and limburger cheese”) and the necessary ritual of licking salt from one’s hand and squeezing lemon (or lime) onto the tongue simply to choke the stuff down. Embury declared that “the only liquor I have ever tasted that I regard as worse than tequila is slivovitz,” a plum brandy that he deemed “sharp, harsh and unpleasant to swallow.” Which you think would be a point against, you know, a liquid.

Tequila has come quite the distance since then, certainly in terms of rank odor. A wide variety is now available, and for the most part they’re still consumed straight. In terms of mixed drinks, the default choice will always and deservedly be the margarita, also one of the great labor-saving innovations of the age: it builds that whole tiresome salt-and-lime rigmarole into your glass.

I wanted to try a different tequila cocktail. My first experiment was a Rosita, which combines tequila with equal parts sweet and dry vermouth and Campari, plus a dash of bitters. While I liked it, I couldn’t help thinking that tequila’s shall-we-say robust flavor really requires citrus to balance it. I just didn’t want that citrus to be lime. Again.

The answer turned out to be grapefruit, specifically ruby red grapefruit, which sidles up on the tequila instead of staring it down. Add some Aperol to provide a countervailing note of sweetness and you’ve got something. Put it in a tall glass over ice and you’ve got a veritable fiesta. You can thank the founders of New York’s Contemporary Cocktails for this spring/summer cooler.

The 212

Aisha Sharpe/Willy Shine, Contemporary Cocktails, 2008

2 oz. tequila
1 oz. Aperol
2 oz. ruby red grapefruit juice

Shake. Strain into a chilled Collins glass over ice. Garnish with an orange twist.