Wintertime Blues

Your globetrotting liquor reporter decided that he had endured quite enough of the deep freeze that chilled our fair province in early March, so a last-minute getaway to Costa Rica was quickly booked while visions of beaches and bikinis danced in my head.

Winging southward, I soon arrived in a tropical paradise, and spared no time in stuffing the family jewels into a tiny speedo to announce to all on the beach that I was indeed a tourist, and quite possibly attempting to smuggle grapes.

Unfortunately for your unrepentant beer snob of a liquor reporter, 90% of the Costa Rican beer industry is controlled by a single monopolistic megabrewery. Sure, they put out a few different brand names to give the illusion of consumer choice, but they pretty much all taste like Corona.

This is pretty much par for the course in all of Latin America, with the warmer climate less suited for growing barley than our northern climes. This means that the starchy base for beer is usually corn or rice, making for a less expensive and less flavourful brew.

Desperately trying to avoid the bland flavours of the fizzy yellow water that passed as the local beer, your intrepid liquor reporter started seeking out more exciting alternatives.

A brief exploration at the local booze market quickly led me to Guaro, also known as the national liquor of Costa Rica.

A clear spirit made from sugar cane, Guaro is in the same family as Rum. However, Guaro is a neutral spirit made from pure sugar cane without added flavourings, while Rum is made from sugar cane byproducts like molasses, and is aged in oak for added flavour.

So, while Guaro and Rum do share some heritage, the taste of Guaro is closer to that of a sweet Vodka.

The history of Guaro is a long and sordid one, in some ways similar to the corn-based hillbilly moonshine made in the Appalachians.

Guaro started out as the drink of the poor folk, often made at home with pickings from the sugar cane harvest.

As you might imagine, the early days of Guaro earned the same reputation for rotgut as the days of bathtub gin from the American Prohibition. The amateur home distillers often lacked sensitive thermometers, so were unable to boil off and separate the toxic methanol from the fun-loving ethanol during the distillation process, so methanol poisonings from clandestine Guaro production was common.

The Costa Rican government cracked down on illicit production way back in 1851 by creating the Fabrica Nacional de Licores (that’s the National Liquor Factory for you Anglos).

The government now maintains a monopoloy on all Guaro production in the country, which has resulted in a safe a widely available booze supply for all. Guaro is available in every supermarket, corner store, and even gas station across the country.

While the hardcore party crowd will drink Guaro similar to the way fratboys do Tequila shooters, most imbibers prefer their Guaro served as a hiball or cocktail.

Looking for a complement to the Guaro, and knowing that Costa Rica had a healthy coffee industry, I soon discovered the Café Rica coffee liqueur. Café Rica is similar (although a fair bit stronger) to its more famous Mexican cousin Kahlúa.

Channeling the spirit of the Big Lebowski, I quickly whipped myself up a local version of a White Russian, substituting Guaro for vodka, and Café Rica for Kahlúa. It was so good that I quickly made another, and continued until I ran out of milk for mixing.

Not willing to be deterred, I realized that Guaro could be used in cocktails pretty much interchangeably with Rum or Vodka, so I started making myself a local version of a Mojito, by adding Guaro to soda water and a few crushed mint leaves. This proved popular with the bikini babes down at the pool, so I wooed them with my best resort Spanish in hopes of a few besos.

The following morning, while nursing a hangover of Montezuma-esque proportions, I discovered that the Café Rica coffee liqueur worked perfectly as the hair of the dog, by adding a shot to an iced coffee over breakfast.

All in all, my escape to the tropics was perfectly timed to escape the worst cold snap of our harsh Alberta winter, and all the fine boozing and local surfer girls have convinced me to return next year for more!