Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [49]
About the commonest causes of death in Mexico are murder and heart disease. The old bandit tradition may have something to do with the murder figures, and the high altitude of most of the country certainly encourages heart attacks. Although no figures are available, I can’t help thinking that tequila makes a contribution in both departments.
Tequila is the national drink of Mexico, partly because the local beer and wine are indifferent or lousy, but more because it suits the national temperament. Evidently it suits others too, having done well in the USA and Canada over the last twenty years and more recently here. It’s a white spirit made from a tropical plant that sometimes gets called a cactus, though the consensus seems to be that it isn’t a cactus, just very like one. There we are, then. The manufacture is most carefully carried out by means of a pot still of the general type used for brandy and malt whisky. Export tequilas usually contain no colouring matter and are correspondingly light in flavour, occupying a similar part of the UK market to vodka and white rum at the pricier end.
The flavour of even a light tequila doesn’t please all tastes. To me it’s not so much disagreeable as strange, like the smoke of some exotic wood. Unlike other spirits, it’s never advisedly drunk on its own. Even your humble peon will insist on his lime and salt. The stuff is quite often drunk like this in civilized places too, so I had better describe the procedure. Pour some table salt onto the back of your left hand round about the base of the thumb. Grip a slice of lime in your right hand. Have a tot of neat tequila standing by. As fast as possible, lick the salt, suck the lime, shut your eyes and drink up. (Some people do lime then salt.)
The Margarita cocktail is a kind of dude’s version of this. Moisten the rim of a glass with a cut lime and twirl it in a saucer of salt. Shake or vigorously stir with ice, three parts tequila, two parts fresh lime juice and one part Cointreau and pour the result into your prepared glass. There’s no point in denying that this is one of the most delicious drinks in the world, but por Dios, Señor, watch it! After three of the same I once had the most violent quarrel I have ever had with a female, and in Mexico City too—but luckily we were both unarmed at the time.
To repair the ravages, try a Tequila con Sangrita (“tequila with little blood”). My own recipe tells you to mix thoroughly and pour into a small glass 3 or 4 oz unchilled tomato juice, 2 teaspoons fresh lime juice and a dash of tabasco. Pour a similar quantity of unchilled tequila into a similar glass and sip at the two alternately. The two halves of this Bloody Maria, which I have never seen drunk outside Mexico except in my own house, don’t meet until they arrive to start a joint operation on your stomach.
Every now and then there drifts across the Atlantic a rumour that the scientists in the USA are on the point of producing a hangover-free drink. Some day soon there’ll be a bourbon whiskey or a gin which will satisfy all the connoisseurs, pack the same alcoholic punch as ever and yet leave us unharmed the next morning. Really? The idea strikes me as impossible in more than one way. Also undesirable—the abolition of the hangover would have far-reaching and perhaps dangerous effects on our civilization; a great restraining influence would be gone. Nevertheless, it’s obviously important to go on battling against hangovers on a day-to-day basis as before. Here I have to say that most of the traditional ideas about the subject, the ones we were brought up with, are wrong.
Take the first part of the story, the