Vancouver Cocktail Week – A Tequila Komos & Paired Chocolate Tasting Experience

We enjoyed a unique Tequila + Chocolate pairing seminar as part of Vancouver Cocktail Week, featuring ultra-luxury Tequila Komos and Seahorse Chocolates. The tasting was held in Yaletown, at Brix and Mortar’s upper event space, popular for weddings and celebrations. Most people have heard of wine & chocolate and whiskey & chocolate, but nobody has really done tequila & chocolate before! Tequila and chocolate share the same birthplace: Mexico. The Mayans and Aztecs cultivated agave and cacao as traditionally used agricultural products that were also used in a variety of different ways, including medicine, clothes, and even construction. This “food of the gods” was even used in religious ceremonies, including human sacrifice.

The evening started with a tropical welcome cocktail, prepared by Brix and Mortar’s Cocktail Director Corbin Martin, featuring Komos Añejo Cristalino tequila, elderflower liqueur, lemon juice, and spritz, which we enjoyed in the restaurant’s beautiful courtyard.

Imparting her knowledge for the night was Ria Solar, Global Director of Advocacy for Tequila Komos. Komos Tequila is made from 100% Blue Weber agave, hand-harvested from the Tequila Valley in Jalisco, Mexico. Komos is committed to giving back to the Jalisco region by making tequila in a sustainable way and supporting the local community through the nonprofit Komos Foundation.

Komos Tequila partnered with Seahorse chocolatier, based out of Bend, Oregon, to develop single-origin, fair trade, roasted-to-order chocolates to specifically pair with the tequila. For the tasting, cocoa sourced from Vietnam, Dominic Republic, and Peru were fermented, roasted, and aerated to make the perfect dark chocolate to pair with the tequila. The chocolates have the same sugar content, go through the same roasting & conching process, and are all 70% dark chocolate. But each tastes different because the terroir of the area that the cocoa is grown in comes through. These chocolates were very intense, complex, and rich so I had to hold back my chocolate-fiend instinct to stuff the whole square into my mouth, but rather, slowly nibble on a quarter-triangle piece.

First up was Añejo Cristalino, aged for one year, then filtered through charcoal to remove any colour and unwanted flavours before being aged for 12 months in French oak white wine barrels. Tequila is usually aged in bourbon barrels, but Komos uses wine bottles, to impart the terroir of the wine into the tequila. As a result, the crystal-clear Añejo Cristalino drinks like a rich, buttery Chardonnay. Paired with Seahorse’s Vietnam chocolate, the smooth Añejo Cristalino tequila rounds out the bitter-at-first-bite chocolate and brings out notes of tropical fruit, all spice, and sweetness from the dark chocolate.

Next was Reposado Rosa, aged for two months in French oak red wine bottles, with a small amount of grape skin to get that natural pink rosé colour in the tequila. Paired with Seahorse’s Dominican Republic chocolate, this elegant Reposado Rosa tequila is plush on the palate and brings out notes of cherry and lemon from the chocolate.

For our last tequila, we were supposed to taste the Añejo Riserva, but it is not yet available in Canada, so we instead got an upgrade to the luxury Extra Añejo – the first ever perfect score 100-point tequila. Bottled in my favourite shade of tiffany blue, this tequila is aged for 3 to 5 years in both white wine bottles and American whiskey bottles to achieve a super smoky, sophisticated, almost Mezcal-like expression. This tequila isn’t heavy, but it is meant to be sipped like a fine cognac. The Extra Añejo tequila had notes of butter tart, baking spices, dried orange peels, and toasted pecan and paired perfectly with the fudgy, candied orange notes in Seahorse’s Peru chocolate, which is made with cocoa sourced from a coop of roughly 400 Ucayali River farmers in Peru.

After the tasting, we enjoyed light bites, including tiger prawn tempura with cilantro crema, sliced cucumber topped with 7-spice beef tataki & dollops of avocado-ginger aioli, and buffalo cauliflower skewers, washed down with a tajin-&-pink-Himalayan-salt-rimmed margarita cocktail of Reposado Rosa tequila, lime juice, agave syrup, and a little jalapeño for spice.