If it wasn’t for the title of this post, I trust that you’d most likely look at the word “patxaran” and wonder if it wasn’t the name of a pharmaceutical drug or a race of aliens on Star Trek. Sounding the letters out one by one, you suddenly find your tongue confused, unable to maneuver its way to the front of your teeth, then quickly, to the back of your throat in one seamless movement. But rest assured that the phonetics of this word are actually quite simple once you get the hang of the notorious Euskara (native language of Navarra) “tx” sound, pronounced like our “ch”. Hence, Patxaran is phonetically spelled like Pacharán, which is also how it is brilliantly written in Spanish - love the logic of this language!

It wasn’t until our trip to Rioja, and our following visit to Alimentaria, when I truly understood what Patxaran was. Mind you, throughout Rioja, so few people were able to share the history of liquor, shrugging their shoulders in silent ignorance, “It’s a family made drink that people occasionally consumed in their house,” we were told, but we wanted to know more.

What I learned was that Patxaran in Euskara means sloe berry or baso aran (wild plum), a name you might accurately associate with sloe gin. A small dark berry with red juice, a sloe berry comes from a blackthorn bush and is a relative of the plum, while Patxaran is a sloe-flavoured liqueur most commonly drunk in Navarra, the Basque Country and La Rioja.

Historically, Patxaran was used in the middle ages as a remedy for digestive orders. Containing Vitamin C, as well as being a tonic and an astringent, it was thought to strengthen the stomach; …

As much as I love wine, I also adore a solid mixed drink. There are days that call for a Bombay Sapphire and tonic with just a spurt of lime, while others call for a dry vodka martini with three olives, not two or four, but exactly three. Therefore, as we begin to wrap up our month long devotion to Spanish cava, all varying styles and types, it behooves me to mention some intriguing, and not so intriguing, cava mixed drink recipes we recently stumbled up in Las Buenas Companias: El Libro de los Cocktails de Cava by Jose Maria Gotarda. Given to us by the European Marketing Manager for Raventos i Blanc, Rosa Aguardo, this book was originally designed as a promotional tool for their wines. Although I was unclear how successful it was in marketing their cavas, I was crystal clear on the fact that Rosa preferred her cava pure, without any additional bells or whistles added. We, on the other hand, love to experiment with our cava, and of the 25 recipes compiled in the book, I’ve whittled the list down to the top five recipes I found interesting for one reason or another. So what you’ll find below is not only the recipe itself, but the hows and whys behind the creation of the drink.

Terciopelo Negro, Black Velvet

1/2 Guinness
1/2 Cava Brut

Ever been to an Irish bar and asked for a Black and Tan or Black Velvet? My first experience with a Black Velvet (Guinness and Woodpecker) left me speechless at 21 wondering the physics as to how they layered liquid on liquid. Thinking the Irish were mixed drink magicians, only later discovering that their passion for alcohol was more of an Olympic sport, I was humbly …