The Spirits #98: The Vampiro

~ Cholula Dreams ~ Oscar Hernandez ~ You Know How to Make Me Feel So Good ~ The Bobbit ~ Hell of a Week ~

~ THE VAMPIRO ~

50ml tequila
25ml orange juice
25ml tomato juice
15ml lime juice
15ml grenadine
5-6 dashes of hot sauce
Salt

Prepare a salt rim on your glass: empty out some high-quality salt (Maldon, Cornish Sea Salt, etc) into a saucer, wet the rim of an old fashioned glass with some citrus and dip it into the salt so it sticks. Place this glass in the freezer to chill while you make the cocktail. Place all the ingredients in a shaker with plenty of ice, shake, and then strain into the salt-rimmed glass, which you will fill with fresh ice. Garnish with lime, orange, chilli, whatever is at hand.

Some Vampiro Notes:

1) I usually skip the whole salt rim thing, but I really do recommend it with this one. You could add a little pepper, or dried hibiscus, or something like that to really oomph it up.

2) No need to buy a whole thing of tomato juice; I simply strained the juice from an ordinry tin of tomatoes that I had used to make pasta sauce, inspired by Sue Quinn’s timely essay on not wasting tomato juice.

3) My recipe for grenadine is here. If you’re going to the trouble of making some, you might also enjoy it in the Brandy Daisy; El Presidente: the Halekulani; the Shirley Temple - or just sub it in for sugar syrup in your favourite sour.

4) We all have our go-to hot sauces and that’s as it should be. Mine is Cholula.

5) You can also serve this one in a plastic bag and it wouldn’t be inauthentic. See below.

HI! Hell of a week here. But we made it and it’s OK to drink now.

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🖊️I am Richard Godwin.
🧋My instructions for sugar syrup, ice, grenadine, orgeat, etc are here.
🧑‍🏫 My 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS are here.
⚗️ My bottle recommendations are here.
📃 The full A-Z recipe archive is here. 
➡️ Please find a round up of organisations helping Ukrainians here.

If you like The Spirits, do please forward this to your friends.

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I’VE not been to Mexico, though it is high on the list of countries I would like to spend some decent time in. I would tour the mezcal distilleries of Oaxaca and the surrealist gardens of Las Pozas on the back of a mule, eat quail in rose petal sauce and take an axolotl as a pet. And I would drink Vampiros, a sexy cocktail if there ever was one. I mean sex-spifically, it tastes like a Bloody Mary and a Margarita hooked up, collapsed in a seamy heap but then woke up in the morning, horny. I mean.

The drink, which I confess had passed me by,until quite recently, was invented approximately 40 years ago by Oscar Hernandez, a cucumber salesman from San Luis Soyatlán on Lake Chapala in the state of Jalisco. "I used to prepare these drinks for myself to keep cool in the heat, but customers would arrive and ask what they were," he told the author of this excellent piece of cocktail reportage from Vice. "It looks like you're sucking up blood when you drink one, so I decided to call them vampiros."

The Hernandez recipe, honed over many years, combines lime, orange, salt, and two specifically Mexican ingredients: sangrita, a tart, citrussy, non-alcoholic spiced tomato drink, usually homemade; and Squirt, the cult grapefruit soda that you may recognise from its starring role in the Paloma. Sorry, three Mexian ingredients, nearly forgot the tequila there! Though it’s worth noting that this is optional. You can make an alcohol-free Vampiro and it’s pretty damn good.

Anyway, word spread. It helped that San Luis Soyatlán is a stop-off on a popular holiday route - and that children can drink Vampiros, too, if you leave out the tequila. And also that the drink looks so distinctive, acting as its own advertisement. Other vendors made their own versions. Bartenders attempted to refine it. And now, I understand, it’s everywhere.

My own version is not authentic - rather it is a westernised version that you should hopefully be able to make at home. Although, actually, come to think of it, Mexico is 1000s of mile to the westof where I’m writing right now; what I mean it’s an Anglo-American version. I took my recipe from Ryan Chetiyawardana and Lynnette Marrero’s Masterclass only I slightly upped the lime-grenadine element while converting from ounces to mililitres.

The grenadine, you’ll note, is not part of the Mexican original but I think it’s what makes the drink. Despite never having visited Mexico, I did become rather obsessed with Mexican cookery while living in L.A., where the supermarkets are usually either shockingly bad or shockingly expensive and if you want to eat well, economically, your best bit is to find a decent Mexican grocer, and get to know your nopales from your tamales. The Vampiro has a singular balance of spice, salt, tart fruit and savoury complexity that reminds me why it is one of my favourite cuisines. In fact, we have guests over this weekend. I shall be making the Mole Coloradito from Margarita Carrillo Arronte’s Mexico the Cookbook tonight, I think. Washed down with a few watermelon agua frescas - and Vampiros, por supuesto.

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PLAYLIST

I know this has been a while coming - but hopefully this dewy fresh, light-as-air Springtime playlist will make up for it. This one is a MOOD rather than anything too literal - but it’s very much the mood I am aspiring to be in at the moment and features some cherished recent discoveries. Listen out for: the key-change for the chorus of Teleman’s Cherish; Akalé Wubé’s flute, which made Aubrey and I laugh with sheer joy just now; Harold Melvin’s honeyed string section; the direction I wish the National would go in; and Enya, who is cool now.

THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. The idea is, you download it and return to it each week in your Spotify. If there was an old song you’d like to hear again, you’ll find it RIGHT HERE in the ongoing archive of past playlists.

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Please enjoy these CABINET posts!

🌿Green Chartreuse
🍒 Maraschino
🍑 Apricot Brandy
🍫 Crème de Cacao
🌷Cynar
🏝️ Falernum
🌵 Mezcal
🐂 Sherry
🧡 Aperol
🍌 Crème de Banane

Coming soon: Bénédictine, Fernet-Branca (incorporating Branca Menta), and Ancho Reyes

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WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

I profiled the New York author Jenny Jackson who sold her debut novel, Pinapple Street, for a reported seven-figure sum (she didn’t deny it) (You Magazine)

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan, an incredible novel that was recommended to me by Tom at my local bookshop and which I’ve been recommending in turn to everyone I know who likes books. It’s as much oral history as novel, relating the life of Sonya, a horse trainer from Iowa, and her lifelong obsession with horses and horse-racing. It’s so visceral and immediate. “You live at the track, you life is full. You don’t have time to go shopping at the mall. You lose touch with the outside. Things change. You don’t hear about world news unless something major happens, because you’re in your own world and you have enough news.” I recommended it to a friend on the basis of that particular sentiment and he said: “You’re incredibly blessed if you have just one short period in your life like that.” And I’ve been thinking about that almost ever since.

Also, Berg by Ann Quin, the great lost novel of the English avant-garde. It’s about a man who goes to Brighton to murder his father but embroiled in an Oedipal nighmare involving ventriloquist dummies, budgerigars and his father’s mistress. It’s so good. There’s a terrific essay on Ann Quin here by my erstwhile British Library companion, Julia Jordan. (TLS)

Stephen Bush is great on London’s late-night ice-cream boom. (FT)

I believe I have sent a few readers Deborah Robertson’s way, but this little piece on the pleasures of l’apéro in SW France is delectable. (Licked Spoon)

What I think will happen if I go to a bar and order a whiskey neat. (New Yorker)

The Bobbit Worm Chronicles (Whyy)

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SHOPPING LIST

Scotch, bourbon, root beer