6/17/16
My wife is a saint. Yeah, I know most people would think that was obvious because she has been married to me for 36 years. And while there is truth to that, they would not have a clue as to the real reason. She is a saint because she knows how to buy me stuff. Stuff I may think about once and then forget. But not Pam. She stuffs these tidbits away and saves them for occasions, like Father’s Day or birthdays. Then she acts. In this case it was a bottle of Extra Anejo Tequila.
I am by no means a serious drinker, but I like to sip the hard stuff once in a while. Wine does not hold much fascination for me, as I can rarely discern the nuances in taste and smell that make a great wine worth drinking. But Scotch, Bourbon and, more recently, Tequila? Well that’s an entirely different story.
My friend Steve started me down the Tequila path a year or so ago. Until then the only way I could drink the stuff was in other stuff. Steve, on the other hand, had spent countless hours sipping Tequila, and he emphatically suggested I do the same. He started my education by explaining that Tequila came in three grades, depending on how long it had been aged. The first grade, Silver Tequila, is distilled and really not aged. It is raw. The next grade, Reposado, is used to classify Tequilas that have been rested or aged for two to eleven months. The third grade, Anejo Tequila, is aged at least one year.
It turns out that Steve was being kind to me because he omitted telling me about the fourth grade, Extra Anejo. Extra Anejo Tequila is aged at least three years, and Extra Anejo Tequilas possess taste profiles that are very smooth and complex.
As you go from grade to grade, the cost of these Tequilas rises dramatically. I am not a fan of Silver Tequila, unless it is in a Margarita, and from a sipping perspective that does not count. I do like some Reposado Tequilas, such as the Casa Noble Single Barrel. And for quite some time, I was very content to sip Anejo Tequilas, such as Don Julio 1942.
Then my friend Jeff stuck a very sharp pin in my Anejo balloon when he twisted my arm to try his bottle of Asom Broso Extra Anejo, a true super Tequila. Oh my, it was good. Of course, it’s ridiculously expensive, well past any price point I could rationalize.
A month or so after Jeff obliterated my Anejo balloon, the LA Times ran an article about Extra Anejos. Pam and I discussed the ones mentioned in the article and noted that they were not priced too ridiculously. So we tried to buy one, but it was out of stock. After which I just forgot about it, most likely because I was too busy dealing with the purchase and burial of the 1977 Targa. Pam didn’t because a bottle of Tapatio Excelencia Extra Anejo showed up just in time to kick off my Father’s Day weekend, and it was really good.
So like I said earlier, my wife is a saint.
Yes, Pam is a Saint!…
Undoubtedly!