I recently spent a week in Oaxaca with Cecilia Ríos Murrieta, the owner of La Niña del Mezcal, and a bunch of awesome bartenders and cocktail aficionados from Los Angeles. I estimate that during the trip, our intake of mezcal was a pint per person per day, and yet there were no hangovers.
Unfortunately, in Oaxaca, they really don't drink cocktails. Mezcal is always drunk neat, and there are mezcalerías everywhere where you can try any of several dozen bottles, all from small producers, nearly all single-agave, and all very, very good–but even a mezcal Old Fashioned, one of the glories of the genre, is not to be found.
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It shouldn't be a shock, then, that upon returning, I've been seeking out mezcal drinks, and Broadway by Amar Santana has a good one in the Santa Prisca Swizzle. It's made with Puritita Verdá mezcal, a beginner's mezcal from Pierde Almas that's softer, less brash, and more easily mixed than wild-agave mezcales. It's mixed with Barolo chinato (fancy Italian wine doctored up with quinine and rhubarb), ginger, and lime.
As with every drink at Broadway, it's exquisitely balanced. The light smokiness from the mezcal, the bitterness of the digestif, the spicy heat of the ginger, and the sourness of the lime all work well together, none overwhelming the others. As we move from this joke of a winter into the heat of summer, it'll be a refreshing drink.
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