How to Make the Chi Chi Rodriguez, a Spicy and Refreshing Tequila Cocktail

In order to understand the Chi Chi Rodriguez and what it’s like to drink one, it’s helpful  to distinguish which Chi Chi Rodriguez it’s named for, because there are two: The one you’re probably familiar with is the swashbuckling Puerto Rican golfer who made a name for himself in the 1960s and ‘70s by doing a little dance where he pretended his putter was a sword. While the other Chi Chi is a fictional drag queen (played by John Leguizamo) from the 1995 film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. And if it weren’t obvious just to look at it, this spicy, peppery, florid little drink is named for the latter.

The Chi Chi Rodriguez was invented by Cassandra Feather, at the Lion’s Share in San Diego. The impetus for the drink was the torrid love affair between vanilla and passion fruit—passion fruit is a front palate scene-stealer with electric acidity, which is completed by the low and lingering resonant sweetness of vanilla (a combination vividly mapped by the ). Then Feather started tinkering, using instead of vodka and adding lime, and if she had stopped there, this would be a delicious but forgettable cocktail. But she did two more things to enhance it—first, she dosed it with a couple dashes of habanero tincture, and also, improbably, she spliced in a half ounce of a poblano chile spirit called Ancho Reyes Verde.

Poblano! Some part of your brain might reason that vanilla and the green vegetal pepper of poblano chiles might go together, though I’d say it’s far from obvious, and even less so that passion fruit might fit in there too… but this is the magic of . High quality tequila frequently has a green pepper note as an integral part of the flavor profile anyway, and the Chi Chi Rodriguez recruits that affinity brilliantly, an object lesson in the power of tequila to absorb vegetal flavors without breaking stride.

The resulting cocktail is viscerally refreshing, juicy, and bright, but also deeply flavored and complex. It’s the kind of drink that people tend to love, sitting in that happy part of the venn diagram that joins “interesting” and “delicious”—it’s there for you at a cocktail bar if you want to think about every sip, but it’s also there for you at Monday happy hour if you just want to to take down a couple spicy  because it’s Cinco de Mayo. I’ve made this literally hundreds of times for hundreds of different guests and it always lands, and once even put it on a consulting menu, where it remained the best seller for a year. It’s a great drink. It is, as mentioned, spicy, peppery, and florid—Feather additionally festooned the rim of the glass with a homemade raspberry tajin, giving it even more color and flair, which is how the name Chi Chi Rodriguez floated into her head. 

Amusingly, she didn’t even know about the existence of a real life Chi Chi Rodriguez until she put the cocktail on the menu, and guests started asking her why her cocktail was named after an 80 year old Puerto Rican golfer, a mistake she enjoys correcting. The cocktail is flamboyant, colorful, and spicy. “It’s gaudy and fun,” she says, “Like Chi Chi.” The other one.

Chi Chi Rodriguez

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake hard for six to eight seconds. Strain into a rocks glass or up into a cocktail class that’s rimmed with tajin (also optional).

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

Blanco Tequila: As with standard Margaritas, I would advise the budget side of respectable tequila here. You need it to be 100 percent agave and you’d like it to be additive free, but the deep peppery and earthy complexity of top quality sipping is lost amid this much flavor. My perennial recommendations on this front are Cimarron, Real de Valle, Olmeca Altos, or Lunazul. There are lots of brands that would be great here, but these are the ones I have the most experience with.

Vanilla: The cheapest way here is to make a vanilla syrup, which is easy enough: Take a cup of sugar and a cup of water and one vanilla bean split down the middle and simmer it all together in a pot for about five minutes (stirring at first until the sugar is dissolved). Vanilla syrup is delicious in coffee and in strawberry lemonades and it’s worth having around if you like tinkering with flavors.

Another option is to use vanilla extract, in which case, it’s a cup each of sugar and water and about a half tablespoon (or up to a full tablespoon) of vanilla extract. No need to simmer in that case, just stir it long enough that the sugar dissolves.

And a final option here is to use a vanilla liqueur, like Giffard Vanille or Licor 43. This is expensive and will mess with the sweetness (it is less sweet than syrup, and also comes with alcohol proof, so you’ll still need to use with more of it or add some syrup to adjust) but it technically does work. Basically, you just want vanilla in there any way you can get it.

Passion Fruit: Passion fruit as a flavor is mildly annoying to procure (your local supermarket likely doesn’t have it) but the resulting rarity is one of the things that’s compelling and exciting about passion fruit cocktails, and I insist that it’s worth the effort.

There’s lots of quality producers: Perfect Puree, Boiron, and Funkin, in the order in which I prefer them. Order easily online, or in specialty grocery stores. Just note they vary a touch in acidity, so the resulting cocktail may need tweaks (the above recipe was made with Perfect Puree in mind).

Ancho Reyes Verde: Widely available and delicious. Note that there’s a few different Ancho Reyes products—here you want the Verde, the poblano liqueur, not the standard ancho chile one. It’s lightly sweetened and lightly spicy, but also 80 proof and is more versatile than it might seem.

Habanero Bitters: This drink loves a little extra spice. Doesn’t need it but loves it. The easiest and most expensive way is to buy Scrappy’s Firewater Tincture, but there’s a half dozen ways to get heat into a drink, like muddling a pepper in the tin, or infusing the spirit. Also—there’s nothing magic about habaneros, versus jalapeños or serranos or anything else (green peppers will accent the green pepper note in the Ancho Reyes). Recruit the quantity of heat you’d like, keeping in mind that the Ancho Reyes will come with a touch of spice already, so if you’re cautious, maybe try it first without supplemental heat before you start adding.

Credit: robbreport.com