One of those books is The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart. I've only read the first chapter about Tequila and Mezcal, but it's just pulling you in as a reader. So far Amy has brought up botany (kind of a no-brainer given the title), which interests me to no end as I've always been a pseudo-botanist myself. I've spent countless hours back in Belgium and France scouring many different areas in search of plants and flowers (I'm particularly interested in terrestrial orchids). She also mixes it with a good dose of history and oftentimes archaeological research and anecdotes (which appeals to the archaeology geek in me - way too many geeks inside me I guess...).
What's also nice is that she intersperses the chapters and paragraphs with recipes. One such recipe we actually tried tonight and it was darn delicious!
- 1.5 oz of reposado tequila or mezcal
- 0.75 oz of Lillet Blanc
- 0.25 oz of Green Chartreuse
- grapefruit peel
While we didn't have reposado, we do have 100% agave tequila (do yourself a favor and pay a little more to skip the mixto tequila, which can use up to 49% of non-agave sugars). We also had the Lillet and the Chartreuse, but skipped the grapefruit peel as that was for garnish. Shake it over ice (which I forgot to do), sip and enjoy!
Even though I forgot the step with ice, the cocktail was pleasantly warming, partially due to the slight smokiness of the tequila, and had a very nice herbal fragrance.