A bus ride outside of Guadalajara, Mexico, leads to Patrón Tequila’s Hacienda distillery. This is where Baton Rouge bartender Ashlee Dunkin learned the art of making tequila during her recent 36-hour trip in Mexico.
The Mestizo Restaurant bar manager was invited by Patrón to attend its cocktail development program. Of the 20 bartenders who made the trip, she was the only attendee from Baton Rouge.
During the trip, Dunkin learned how each of Patrón’s products is made and experimented with new cocktail recipes. She’s debuting what she learned in Mestizo’s fall cocktail menu, available starting this Friday.
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“The biggest part of the program is to go to Mexico and understand how Patrón is made and why it tastes the way it tastes,” Dunkin says.
The main goal for Patrón is consistency, she says. The tequila tastes the same as it did 50 years ago and will taste the same in the years to come.
Alongside learning about the products, Dunkin got to mix the tequila with different Mexican ingredients to create new cocktails. She created two cocktails for Patrón, which she says the company now owns the rights to and will put inside its cocktail library. The Ontôna Rita is a vibrant burgundy- and purple-hued drink with candied cranberries and peppercorn. The Buenas Noches is a light orange cocktail with toasted almond syrup and a glass dipped in cinnamon salt.
She created another six for a total of eight Patrón-inspired cocktails with Mexican flavors for Mestizo’s fall drink menu. The menu includes the Roca Patrón Flight, Perfect Patrón Blood Orange Rosé Margarita and the Roca Sonora, a vibrant yellow cocktail with papaya-infused agave nectar, ancho chile pepper and basil. The fall menu will run alongside the restaurant’s existing drink menu.
When mixing drinks, Dunkin says she thinks about the science of what will make the flavors work. While in Mexico, she had access to a lot of ingredients not usually available to her here, such as the papaya in the Roca Sonora. She draws inspiration from Mestizo’s food menu, too, a concept she calls “the kitchen meets the bar.” The idea for the toasted almond syrup in the Buenas Noches came after Dunkin saw one of the cooks toasting almonds for a mole sauce. She also incorporates the kitchen’s peppers into her cocktails.
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Her kitchen-meets-bar motto at Mestizo followed her to the Patrón Hacienda. The tequila company uses the piña, a product left over from the agave plant used to make tequila, as a compost for local farmers to grow fruits and vegetables. Dunkin tried some of the company’s own produce during a lunch at the Hacienda.
“It was crazy when you think about how the world goes around. The agave comes from the ground, and they cook it down. And then what’s left of it, they put it back and just let it make soil again. And then they give that soil out, and now you’re making fruits and vegetables,” she says.
Mestizo is at 2323 Acadian Thruway. More information on its menu and hours can be found on its website.