el peregringo

I’m not quite sure how he managed to get all this stuff back into the US without paying significant duties, but Bill Bumgarner has returned from his Guadalajara trip with a very nice collection of tequilas. He even managed to bring back a couple of small wooden barrels used for aging and plans to age his own tequila!

Of the tequilas he bought, I am familiar with only a couple of them, but the Herradura Antigüo Reposado is one that I drank quite a bit when we spent the summer in Guadalajara.

Speaking of Herradura, a ran across a bottle of Herradura Añejo in a liquor store here the other day that they wanted €59.00 for! (almost $80). I resisted and bought a Don Julio reposado instead…

My friend Bill Bumgarner, aka, Dr. Bill for his Doctorate in Tequila, is off to Guadalajara to keep his knowledge fresh… So far he’s only got day 1 online, but I look forward to reading the rest of his report. My family spent the summer in Guadalajara and I spent a great deal of it enjoying the fruit of the blue agave…

Boy I sure wish I were there with him… The weather has finally turned colder in Spain, and it’s become the same old gray I remember from all the winter holidays I’ve spent here…

So on Friday a group of 36 students and several faculty went to Tequila to visit the blue agave fields and the Cuervo distillery, officially known as the Fábrica La Rojeña.

I have had an off and on relationship with tequila over the years. My sophomore year in college, a friend brought back a bottle of Mezcal (another distillate of a different species of agave) from spring break. We sat in my room and drank the whole bottle, straight from the bottle, passing it around in a circle. I ate the gusano at the end (parenthetically, I ate several gusanos in tortillas last night at dinner…). The next thing I remember I woke up the next morning fully clothed, face down, my feet on my pillow and both fists clenched beside me. There was a woman I’d never seen asleep next to me, also fully clothed, face up, but with her head on the pillow next to my feet. I got out of bed to hit the john, and when I came back to my room, she was gone. I have no idea who she was. I didn’t drink a distillate of agave for nearly 20 years after that.

(Continued)