Shopping For Tequila In Cancun Airport

Blue Agave (Agave tequilana)

Your Bloguero is a frequent flyer between New York and Cancun’s Airport. It’s an airport designed so that when you are catching a departing flight, you have to walk through the Duty Free Store. You might even have to walk through three of them, as your Bloguero did this week. Is that why they tell you to arrive at the airport three hours before an International Flight? Maybe.

Your Bloguero likes to bring tequila home. Specifically, premium, 100% blue agave tequila blanco, which looks clear. He likes to put it in the freezer, get it extremely cold, and drink it straight up. No salt. No lime. No ice. No nothing. A shot in a really nice Mexican tequila shot glass. The quality and taste of the tequila are extremely important. One does not do this with the cheapass Cuervo Tequila you might find in Gingolandia’s many mall liquor stores. Really. Do not try this with that stuff. Do not.

In the Cancun duty free, they are equipped to let you taste tequila before you buy a bottle. Remember this. This could be very valuable to you: they will let you taste before you buy. They will pour you samples.

Usually, your Bloguero looks for and sometimes buys a bottle of Don Julio Blanco. It costs about $US26. Your Bloguero likes this tequila. He endorses your drinking it. It easily meets all of his many, finicky specifications. Your Bloguero has also purchased other tequilas at Cancun’s Duty Free. But first he has to taste them. This is the key.

Here’s some free advise about shopping for Tequila in Cancun Airport: Go to the duty free and intend to buy at least one bottle of great tequila blanco to take home. Tell the salesperson you want to buy a bottle of Don Julio Blanco, but you wonder whether they have anything that might be even better. The same price, or maybe a little more. Of course they do. What do they recommend? Look: they have tons of tequila, they have bottles that cost up to $200 per bottle, brands you have never heard of (unless you’re exploring the vast, premium tequila market on a regular basis, or its your job), brands you cannot readily get outside of Mexico, brands that are too small to export. They are justifiably very proud of what they have. And what they have is really good.

The salesperson will respond by offering you some tastes of various tequilas in little plastic cups. They will open bottles and pour you samples. Note: the samples are going to be at room temperature. This is salient in deciding what is going to be really smooth when it’s incredibly cold. Some of these are incredibly smooth at room temperature, and have a wonderful nose. Put another way, when you get this tequila really cold, it’s going to be even smoother. It’s going to be like syrup when it’s cold. You can sip these or chug these samples. They do not care. They probably wish they were allowed to sample. And they will keep this tequila flowing in the little cups until you decide something, or become incapable of making a decision.

Long story short: after 6 or 7 tastes (who’s keeping count) and rejecting a very smooth, expensive Cuervo Reserve just because of its name (read: your Bloguero is a complete tequila snob), your Bloguero bought two bottles, neither of which is made by Don Julio. Less than $US80 total. These are now in your Bloguero’s freezer.

No, your Bloguero is not telling you what he bought. That’s a secret for now. And that’s another post. After your Bloguero drinks the new tequilas and decides whether they are as good as he anticipated they would be, you will learn what he bought. And how he found it.

Meanwhile, your Bloguero highly, highly, highly recommends, if you’re flying out of Cancun Airport, that you have 6, 7, maybe even 8 samples of top of the line tequila, buy a nice bottle or two or three to bring home, and have an extremely tranquilo vuelo to wherever you’re headed. This is the great pleasure of Cancun’s Airport. Do not miss it.

The title is an homage to Jeff Greenwald’s 1996 classic “Shopping For Buddhas”.