My mom once inquired if I could teach her how to tell, just by looking, if a bar could make a good margarita. Like many of us in the wake of a new year, she was looking, not necessarily to deprive herself of the little indulgences she enjoyed, but for a way to rid herself of the guilt that came with thinking she’d done something unhealthy. In other words, she wanted to drink smarter, not harder. I told her, the place to begin is with your mixers.
The easiest way to commence creating healthier and more delicious libations is to start with fresh citrus. It’s the first thing I look for when I walk into a bar to help determine if I’m going to have a cocktail versus a beer. Fresh lemons and limes, plus a housemade simple syrup of one part sugar to one part water, are three key ingredients to starting your own craft bar program, be it professionally or at home. The joys and fruits of mixology, much like cooking, have as much to do with the quality of the ingredients that go into each beverage, as they do with the skill of the bartender creating them. A premium Lagavulin scotch can stand on its own, but combined with an artificial, syrupy soda pop and even Ron Swanson would send it back. The best sushi chef can only do so much with mediocre rice, but given some Yamada Nishiki, I’ve seen a 2-year-old watermelon and cured monkfish liver transformed into one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.
The American culinary farm-to-table movement was birthed in 1971 by acclaimed chef Alice Waters out of her restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California, inspired by the seasonal and sustainable community food structures she discovered while living in France. Just as Prohibition had decimated 19th and early 20th century American cocktail arts, so had post-World War II processed foods begun sacrificing the vitamins and nutrients of fresh foods for the reheatable, prepackaged convenience.
Yet as farm-to-table cuisine seemed to catch on like wildfire, American craft cocktail culture was slow to follow, its full renaissance not being recognized until only this past decade here in Hawaii, ignited by a handful of our industry’s finest. We still have a long way to go, but you can start at home.
Before you start scrunching your nose at how complicated this all sounds, think about this. Most people have tasted, and possibly even made lemonade at one point in their life, likely as a child.
A well-proportioned lemonade is basically a perfect sweet-and-sour mix — just add vodka — or whiskey and you’ve got a whiskey sour; or gin and mint for a classic Southside; or make it a limeade and add tequila with a splash of bitter orange liqueur, and you’ve got yourself a margarita that would make my mom proud.
While a proper cocktail is more than just the sum of its parts, there is something to be said for top-shelf ingredients, and this, of course, translates to your spirits.
While a beautiful mezcal can be made with any number of different agave varieties, tequila, like in my mom’s margarita, by law, must be made with a minimum of 51% blue weber agave, and the best tequila is made from 100% blue weber agave, so look for that.
Price is not always the best indicator of quality either, as much of it can be attributed to good marketing, so look instead for organic, biodynamic and sustainable practices, utilizing traditional, ancestral methods that work with the earth instead of against it. This goes for wine and beer as well as liquor.
It’s a safe bet that if a company takes care of its employees, farmworkers and community, it’s likely to care about its customers and the products and messages it generates for them as well.
By being an informed consumer, you can not only take better care of your own body, but of your community and the planet as well.
Now that’s putting your money where your mouth is.
Oaxacan Holiday
1 ounce fresh lime juice
1 ounce Govinda’s pineapple juice
0.5 ounces Hamakua Coast premium lilikoi syrup
1 barspood Pernod anise
3 dashes Bitter Truth Creole bitters
Shake all ingredients over ice and strain into Collins glass. Float Bitter Truth Creole bitters on top.
Garnish with two pineapple spears and edible flower
Alicia Yamachika is a bartender and craft mixologist, who currently is the key account manager at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits on Oahu. Follow her on Instagram (@alicia_yamachika). Her column will appear every second Wednesday in Crave.
