Adios Guadalajara, Buenos dias, Tequila y Tepic!

 Friday, April 5, 2024

We’re up and Laura asks if she can do yoga with me!  I've never had a roomie do that before!  It's very cool!  We're all packed early enough to go up to the roof for sunrise - except both doors are locked!  Instead we go to the park and grab some morning-light photos. We’re back right on time for breakfast and that pre-ordering thing works perfectly.  By 8:30 we are at the bus and the nice hotel employee has brought out all our bags that we left with him.  I don’t see mine; but I have faith!!

Each of these little white structures is a shoe-shine station.

Wheeeee!

Early morning clean-up

And wash up!

Each day's activities, like on a cruise ship

Either rabbit ears or speakers, depending on who you listen to at the table!

We are going to a tequila plantation and distillery called Cava d’Oro. A knowledgeable and entertaining young man takes us through the entire process beginning with the growing and harvesting of the blue agave, the best plant to use.  It takes five or six years for the plant to reach maturity and it has to be harvested before it begins putting out its incredibly tall flower stalk.  They also make babies which pop up along side the mother plant, from rhizomes, and these can then be transplanted.  We learn that California consumes more tequila in a year than all of Mexico.  “So thank you”, says our guide!  We learn that there are only five states in all of Mexico which can call their agave liquor “Tequila”, much like Champagne or Bordeaux.  And there isn’t much tequila consumed in Mexico because it goes to the US!

Once the plant is harvested the leaves are hacked off manually, leaving the central part of the plant, this is cut in half.  Everyone who wants to gets a chance to hack off the leaves!  In the artisanal process the central core is then cooked in an oven by steam. We get to taste the finished product from the outer part as well as the inner.  That latter is sweet and can be eaten completely, unlike the fibrous outer part that you can only scrap off with your teeth! The resulting matter is crushed by a huge wheel to extract the juice.  Of course, this isn’t commercially practical and is much more expensive!

This plant has gone to far and can't be used

That's a baby.

The flowers grow incredibly tall!

Each of the guys gives it a try!

They've been in business twenty-five years and are expanding!

Throughj the magic doorway!

Crunch!

Rip off a piece and chew.

That's the part that counts.

Oven for steaming the artisanal way.

You've got to get the edges back into the middle.

Steve is really into it!

I was the only one who noticed that he needed someone to hold it
steady, so I got the first piece!

Yum!

The surface of the fermentation tank

Everyone climbs up to get a look.

Copper still - just like moonshine!

Waft the aroma towards you and make sure it smells right.

Up, over and down

The tequila is aged in oak barrels.  Some were used for wine previously,
and some for bourbon.

We see the fermentation process and then go on to the distilling and aging rooms.  Now comes the good part!  We have a real professional tasting with six different kinds of tequila and food pairings!  We learn the proper way to smell the tequila before we even taste it, and observe the legs, just like with wine. The Blanco, or silver, is the lowest grade and is only aged a few months. We progress through Resposado, which is aged three months up to one day before a year; Añejo, which is aged from one year to one day before three years; Extra Añjo, three to five years, and Mezcal.  We also sample Añjo Cristalino, which is filtered through charcoal.  It is crystal clear and so smooth!

The instructions are to smell and taste a bit of the tequila in your glass, the take a bite of the directed food, holding it in your mouth and then drinking the tequila with it. It really makes a huge difference!  We pair with orange slices, pear slices, 70% dark chocolate, and corn bread, which is not much like our cornbread but is delicious.

And now, of course, it’s time to shop!!  Woohoo!!

Everyone has a place setting.

Tina or Luz wants to get into the action.

First we wash our hands with silver tequila to appreciate the aroma and also how soft our 
hands feel in a few minutes!  It looks like communion to me!

Observing the legs

There were several smelling exercises, some where scents you should
never smell in good tequila, others were to help identify the various components.

No comment!

We stumble back to the bus and ride to the town of Tequila where an open air restaurant, facing the square, awaits us.  Not many people order an alcoholic beverage with lunch! Go figure!  Then there is a little time for exploring and shopping before we board our chariot and head to our hotel in Tepic!  When our driver unloads the luggage my faith is rewarded! We’ve crossed a time zone and instead of six o’clock it’s five!  It takes a while before it’s Ginger’s term to register us, so we go exploring and visit the lovely pool, then return to check out our room.  It’s quite large with two queen (king?) sized beds and lots of floor space.  But the wifi won’t connect, so I’m writing in Text Edit (Thank you, Betsy!) and I’ll see what’s going on when we go down to dinner.

These are the classic souvenir from Tequila, the city.

Many fruits are available

So I remember the name of the restaurant!

Mine is the carne en su jugo.

Such interesting bathrooms.  For our ten pesos we got toilet paper.

But it's got this great mirror!

Right across the street

Never seen a bass carried like this!

Just happened to notice the Voladores!

Barrel bus!

This is the name of the men who chop off the leaves.

Our home for tonight

These beaded creations are glorious!

Well it's a bloody something!

Actually Laura went downstairs and returned with a young man who had almost as much trouble as we did - but he was eventually successful and I'm a happy camper.  Now if the photos will just sync, all will be well!

It's the appointed dinner hour and we find our compadres discussing the seating arrangement.  Everyone gets settled and the discussion turn to Bloody Caesars, the Canadian drink that Ginger and I learned to love on the Mediterranean relocation cruise.  Naturally we have to order some!  As the evening progresses we learn that this is perhaps not the world's most wonderful restaurant.  Steve offers to split the recommended shrimp entree with me, so I order a caesar salad and the entree and he orders a couple of other things.  The waiter never bothered to tell me that my (our) entree comes with a salad that covers half the plate!!  I've gone almost a week without a vegetable and now I'm drowning in salad!!  He also didn't mention that the bacon which wraps the shrimp and marlin will be barely cooked!!  And Lisa never gets her avocado, which is all she ordered.  And Helen never gets her soup and fajitas.  Good thing we're a close-knit group and she can eat everyone else's left overs!  And the Bloody Caesars are really Bloody Marys without the celery of anything else.  At least everyone is laughing about it!  After a couple of hours we give up on the last orders and Ginger tells the girl at the cash register how bad she feels that the girl has to work in such a terrible restaurant!!

I'm ready to try to take a shower.  I'm a little scared because Laura tried to take a bath and wound up with water everywhere! While I'm in the bathroom Laura goes downstairs and gets us blankets - and even puts them on both beds!  And now the toilet is threatening to overflow!  Laura goes down again to get help!  What a night!  The good news (we think) is that breakfast is a buffet so we won't have to wait for service!!  And I think my phone has finally synced today's photos.  We'll find out and you'll know if there are any pictures here!!