Apocatequil

This is an archival post taken from my old xanga blog. Comments have been disabled.

Here is the more popular of my contributions to last night's TDN.

Full disclosure: I have not tried this recipe yet. I tossed it out last night after I had stopped drinking, and everyone loved it, but I've never actually even tasted cachaça and am still waiting on my cherry bitters to arrive.

Others thought pairing pisco and cachaça was unusual, but it seemed natural to me as the two are sort of linked in my head. I became aware of their existence at about the same time (and actually confused them for a while), and both are unaged South American variants of more commonly known spirits. Pisco is a Peruvian brandy and Cachaça is sort of a Brazilian rhum agricole (like rum, but made with sugar cane syrup rather than molasses).

Be sure to use a Peruvian pisco, not Chilean. I'm using Don César these days. As for cachaça, Leblon sent us some free samples of theirs (still waiting for mine) and people seem to like it, but at this point I've got nothing to compare to.

Substitute orange bitters if you can't find cherry bitters where you are and don't want to order some.

For now I'm calling the drink Apocatequil (pronounced uh-PAH-kuh-tuh-KEEL - the Incan god of lightning) but am trying to think of something else, since that sounds like it should have tequila in it.