This Tequila gets a standing ovation

Evaluating spirits is, quite honestly, an arduous affair, and it's the one part of what I laughingly call "my job" that I avoid as often as possible.

Samples of booze often arrive on my doorstep at home, usually followed by phone calls or e-mails from marketers asking me what I thought of their client's new vodka.

"It's filtered through pulverized black pearls from Tahiti, you know," they'll say - or something similar.

"Didn't taste it yet. I'll get back to you when I get around to it. It's going to take some time, though," I warn them.

A few weeks ago I found myself yearning for a little Tequila, so I trotted into my kitchen to make myself a drink I pimped from the Negroni, using tequila instead of gin and marrying it with almost equal amounts of Campari and sweet vermouth.

I call it Groucho. Don't ask.

I opened the kitchen cupboard and spied two miniatures of Tequila that rang no bell, apart from remembering that they'd been sent by a marketing company about two weeks earlier. I emptied one of the bottles into my ice-filled glass and proceeded to build myself a Groucho.

Before I tell you how darned good this Tequila was, I should tell you that, although I was unaware of this at the time of drinking, Tomas Estes, a good friend of mine and one of only two Mexican government recognized "Tequila ambassadors" - the other being San Francisco's Julio Bermejo, of course - is a partner in the company that makes it.

I took one sip of my drink that day, stood bolt upright from my chair, and went straight to the kitchen to grab the second miniature.

I needed to take a closer look at what I was drinking. The power, the intensity, and the complexity of this Tequila just about knocked my socks off, and the spirit shot right through the Campari and the vermouth to make itself known to me in the most intimate of ways.

If memory serves, this has happened to me only once before, and the spirit in question that time was Charbay vodka - a fabulous bottling.

When I taste Tequila I'm looking for earthy vegetal notes, a strong pepperiness, hints of herbs such as cilantro and, perhaps, tarragon or sage, and I'm looking for complexity, too. All this came through in spades for me in the case of the Ocho bottling. It was almost as though I were tasting it through a magnifying glass - it seemed larger than life.

And although the producers go to the trouble of noting the year in which the Tequila was produced on the label, making it the only vintage Tequila I'm aware of, that sort of detail means little or nothing to me. It's the quality of the spirit that I look for. I found it.

Gary Regan is the author of "The Joy of Mixology" and other books. E-mail him at wine@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page K - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle