The best way to Make a Mezcal & Pineapple Drink

The Single Village Repair is a paradox. A set of paradoxes, actually. It’s useless easy however deeply advanced. It’s a crowd pleaser with cult cachet. It’s each difficult and secure, each wild and refined, the liquid equal of a classical pianist who runs a struggle membership on the weekends, or a man with face tattoos who clothes higher than you do. 

The origins of this excellent little riddle stretch again to 2008, and to a gentleman named Thad Vogler in San Francisco. Vogler himself is an anomaly, an uncommonly giant (6’8”), uncommonly principled bar- and spirits-company proprietor, and within the liquid world is named an early and fervent evangelist for genuine, single-origin spirits. 

Vogler’s been tending bar since roughly endlessly, getting his begin within the late ‘80s, when vodka reigned supreme, and all of the manufacturers have been owned by conglomerates. “I used to be at all times seeing this kind of disconnect between these, you realize, very NorCal, ingredient-driven, farm-to-table kitchens,” he mirrored in a current interview, “after which what was on the again bar, which was… all these industrial-produced marketed spirits that haven’t any actual relationship to the meals. It at all times felt form of like the identical bar all over the place you go.”

Vogler had a distinct imaginative and prescient. An early style of rhum agricole—which is to say, a grassy, vegetal, explosively flavorful model of rum produced with recent sugar cane juice as an alternative of the same old molasses—opened his eyes to what spirits couldtaste like. He grew to become consumed with this sense of authenticity, with spirits as agriculture. “Folks within the Bay Space would by no means eat the way in which they drink in the event that they knew about all of the truckloads of caramel coloring and industrial sweeteners and international crops being utilized by large liquor corporations,” he informed the Bay Space tradition web site 7×7 in 2014, “they’re destroying regionalism.”

You’ve probably heard this type of discuss earlier than, particularly in 2024. Folks discuss “single origin” and “truthful commerce” and “craft distilling” on a regular basis now, which is actually progress of a sort. Nonetheless, Vogler stands aside not merely for the way early he was to this perception, however with the purity of his rules, and his willingness to reside by them. His bar, Bar Agricole (presently relocating, and set to re-open in SF in Could), completely pours what they name “gradual spirits,” or single-origin, thoughtfully made liquids, to the occasional consternation of his company (i.e. they will’t pour you a Jack and Coke, for instance, as a result of they don’t have Jack Daniels, or, for that matter, Coke). He began a bottle store, which sells the identical. He wrote a e-book, By the Smoke and the Odor, about his pilgrimages world wide in quest of genuine and sustainable spirits. Vogler’s ethos is decidedly inconvenient for a bar proprietor with a backside line, however his dedication stretches all the way in which all the way down to the roots.

So, when correct mezcal started to get imported to American cabinets, it was proper in Vogler’s wheelhouse: Ancestral mezcal is basically the poster little one for hand-made spirits. He’ll declare he didn’t actually “invent” the Single Village Repair, simply put collectively what was already there, right-place-right-time and all that. His good friend Jennifer Colliau had been engaged on a pineapple syrup to make correct Pisco Punches, and in 2008 he gave the identical remedy to mezcal—a single village mezcal with pineapple gum syrup, balanced with recent lime juice. A “Repair” is an old-timey identify for a easy bitter with a fruit part, so the Single Village Repair was born.

As somebody with a deep connection to the tradition and histories of Mexico, god solely is aware of what Vogler thinks of the American drinker’s tackle Cinco de Mayo, however the reality stays that the Single Village Repair is a dynamite cocktail for the vacation, or for every other time you need to rejoice Mexican tradition by ingesting a few of it. Smoke and tropical fruit are already greatest buddies (make an appointment with an al pastor taco for extra examples of this) and so the pineapple syrup harnesses the colourful smoke and character of the mezcal, embracing and even amplifying its charms, and the lime cuts via any the sweetness and makes the entire thing refreshing. 

That’s what’s so cool in regards to the Single Village Repair. It’s an exquisite cocktail, nevertheless it doesn’t neutralize the eccentricities of the mezcal the way in which a drink just like the Bare and Well-known does. As a substitute it showcases them, like every good evangelist, placing the mezcal on a stage in the absolute best mild, so extra individuals can admire it.

Single Village Repair

Add components to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake good and onerous for eight to 10 seconds. Wonderful pressure right into a coupe or cocktail glass, and garnish with a lime wheel, a bit of dried pineapple on a choose, or nothing in any respect.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS