It seems like we’ve had alcoholic drinks for ever, but that’s
patently false. What does ring true for me is saying that for as
long as we’ve had alcoholic drinks, we’ve had drunks.
There’s reports of animals eating partially rotten or fermented food
to get an alcoholic stupor of sorts, much like we do—intentionally or
not—on a daily basis. The brain on ethanol experiences a plethora of
feelings, low inhibitions and several heightened sensations (rage, lust,
euphoria, etc.) so it’s easy to see why it’s so popular.
But we don’t just drink any old thing,1 no
sir. No other animal cooks and prepares food quite like we do, and I
hesitate to say if our culinary advancement is a product of necessity,
of seeking new sensual pleasures or a bizarre combination of the two.2 There’s obviously a hedonistic
aspect to us wanting our food and drink to be tasty and not merely
fulfilling. Alcohol is obviously a part of this.
So we create cocktails: we mix one drink with another because their
combined flavor in the right proportion is perhaps better together than
separate. The whole is tastier than the sum of its parts. So we add
more: solid food, non-alcoholic drinks, dairy, aromatic smokes and
fumes, and, in some extreme cases, even sounds.3 Our
quest for more elaborate and tastier drinks shows no sign of stopping,
either by creating new «raw» ingredients or by mixing what exists in new
forms.
We create new «ingredients» or mix them in new ways. Pretty much like
every other creative pursuit.
And so there come different schools of thought—or rather, schools of
practice—depending on the end goal. One such axis is all about
complexity: they look forward to new mixed drinks, exact ratios, a good
balance of flavors, even recreation of other foodstuffs in drink form.4 At the other end, there’s those who
look for something simple, easily achievable, even if that means
sacrificing complexity and the potential for novelty.
Another axis lies on the debate of prescription versus
description. A Long Island Iced Tea is certainly not complex (all
ingredients in equal parts by volume) but it’s a very specific thing. At
the other end, there’s cocktails with barely any specifics tied down to
it, other than a loose list of ingredients.
With this in mind I hope you’ll understand my approach to writing
about what a Paloma is. These meandering words are a
long-winded way of saying that I don’t wish to write about what
a Paloma is and how to prepare it. It would be like writing
about the pavement on my street: it’s not important at all.
My experience and memories of Palomas has got to do with the fact
that they were present then and there, but they were by no means a
crucial part to my life. All those interesting conversations and my
first hangover would have probably been the same if I had had something
else. Palomas are supremely common: the only reason why I’ve had Palomas
for three weekends in a row has nothing to do with any actual craving
and more to do with the fact that there have been many parties these
past weekends. It’s like saying I listened to music in the last three
parties that I attended.
Those who don’t drink Palomas? They usually don’t drink
anything at all. Very, very few people that I know actively
reject them for taste reasons (or because they’re driving). It may not
be everyone’s favorite, but almost no one dislikes it. If it’s the only
drink at the party, most everyone will have it with the aforementioned
exceptions. In fact, not having it could be considered an
insult in some social occasions.
Why Palomas? Let me list a few facts that help explain why it’s a
popular choice for underage drinkers: For starters, the ingredients are
common and cheap. Drinking a distilled spirit means one needs a
relatively small volume to achieve a similar high than with, say, wine
or beer. There’s smaller bottles as well, so it’s easier to smuggle. By
using a cold mixer, the whole cocktail can be reasonably cool even if
there’s no ice.5 It’s reasonably easy to pass off as
a soft drink, the bubbles aid the intoxication process, the flavor is
interesting and «mature» enough to serve as a small rite of passage.6
In other words, pretty much the same as a Rum and Coke. The answer to
«Why Palomas» is mostly «because it’s there».
My experience with Palomas—as you might have guessed by now—started
way before it was advisable to do so. Someone smuggled a juice bottle
with tequila during our field trip when we were about 13 or 14. The guy
at the shop had no reason to refuse selling soda and plastic cups to a
bunch of kids, and so we found a spot in the shade and away from the
teacher’s gaze.
I didn’t like it at first, but being offered a sip was a sign that I
was considered to be «in». By the time we organized our own «graduation»
party7 some in our group had become better
at obtaining liquor, either through barely legal brothers and cousins,
or through knowing unscrupulous store owners willing to sell to
neighborhood kids who know where to knock. We drank, we sang, we danced,
we were merry.
But—and I need to make this clear—the Palomas themselves weren’t
crucial. They could have been beer, or rum-and-cokes, or most any other
alcoholic drink. We weren’t there to drink Palomas, but to drink
something. They were not the important bit, we drank Palomas
because, well, one drinks Palomas at parties.
So yeah, I can say Palomas are a cocktail made with Tequila
(2 fl. oz.) and grapefruit soda, served over ice in a salt-rimmed glass,
lime juice optional. But that takes the soul out of it. That’s not how I
know Palomas, that’s not how I drink them, that’s not how I see people
around them drink them. That’s an intellectual level very removed from
the reality I know: no one bothers at all with quantities and ratios. No
«graduation party» for 15 year olds is going to have teens rimming
glasses with salt and cutting limes—if anything, the limes would be used
to drink the tequila straight.
Saying that Palomas is «the Mexican cocktail second to none» might
suggest a wrong idea. It is a cocktail in a dry, technical
sense, but I do not see it in the same category as a Manhattan, a
Negroni, a Screwdriver. It’s something that’s there, like the pavement
in my street. It’s something that people do at parties, like dancing.
Why, it’s even hard to find in pretty much any restaurant or bar that
sells cocktails: you’ll have much better luck if you ask for tequila and
grapefruit soda directly instead of trying to find it at the drinks
menu.
By all means, go ahead and make yourself one, if you so desire. Add
tonic water, or club soda, or what have you. I won’t gatekeep Palomas to
anyone, feel free to follow the fancy recipes on trendy food magazines,
or the variations by this or that mixologist Youtuber.
Me? I serve tequila up to the first or second mark on the plastic
Solo cup if I can be bothered to measure, add ice, add soda and continue
chatting people up at baptisms, graduation parties and camping
trips.
«We» as in, humanity as a whole, of
course.
Well, obviously it’s some combination
of those, but it’s impossible to me to separate one fact from the other,
or to even make an educated guess as to which came first. Establishing
causality in something as ingrained to us as the history of food is
something that I’d rather leave to the specialists. What I will say is
that I don’t know of any evident biological or physiological need for
our food to be tasty; and it’s likely that our acquired taste
is a function of what we have access to—i.e., the food that we can cook.
Cooked food is advantageous for several reasons (digests easier, can be
eaten faster, is generally cleaner, etc.) and our taste surely comes
from that; but our desire to make food tastier is more on the
hedonistic side.
OK, granted: I don’t know of any
cocktail that lists any sound or auditory component as one of its
ingredients, but I’m sure there must be some sort of high-end bar
somewhere that does.
Not too long ago I saw a drink recipe
claiming to taste like chocolate-chip cookie dough. My soul won’t know
peace until I verify this claim.
Even describing it as a «cocktail»
feels alien to me. My (admittedly irrational) gut feeling is that it’s
not a cocktail only because cocktails are supposed to be fancier and
well thought-out. That’s a demonstrably false statement, but it
feels true.
Not formally, mind you. The actual
rite of passage would be being invited to a party and ceding to peer
pressure rather than the actual taste.
The usual education scheme here is:
six years of Primaria, three years of Secundaria and
three of Preparatoria or Bachillerato. This was the
end of Secundaria, so it was about equivalent to 9th in the
USA.