Calimocho: Ambrosia of Misguided Spanish Youths
During this past week, The Spirit World published articles about Sangria and Wine-based Cocktails. Those got me thinking about another, very special, wine cocktail that enjoys immense popularity here in Spain - the Calimocho (pronounced, cah-lee-MOE-cho).
The Calimocho is made by mixing equal parts red wine and, are you ready for this, Coca-cola.
That’s right, Mr. Robert Hess, red wine and Coca-cola.? I’m so, so sorry!
Actually, it doesn’t need to be Coca-cola. Any cola will do and as for the wine well, that’s an equally loose interpretation. Most Calimocho connoisseurs opt for wine decanted from a Tetrabrik box; rather than a French oak barrel.
How would one describe the typical Calimocho connoisseur? In a word, young.
Indeed, a Calimocho is the type of cocktail that is passed-down from father to son, provided, of course, that the son is under fifteen years old and the father is sporting prison tattoos.
But back to mixology. A Calimocho is prepared in one of two ways. One way is to slosh the two ingredients into an enormous, one-liter plastic drinking glass. The importance of using plastic becomes apparent around 2am, when said glass serves its secondary-purpose as a shock-absorber between the connoisseur’s alcohol-induced freefall and the hard, cold pavement below.
The other way to mix a Calimocho is to pour one liter of a two liter bottle of Coke into the gutter, and then top it off with wine.
So, why is the Calimocho so popular? It largely has to do with a Spanish phenomenon called, the botellon.
Botellones are informal, open-air parties at which several to hundreds of teenagers compete to see who can achieve the most skull-crushing hangover for the least amount of money. Botellones used to be a widespread occurrence throughout Spain usually taking place in public parks of major cities. But alas, Spanish authorities began clamping down on these parties because amongst other reasons the kids failed to remember what their parents had taught them: Always pick-up after yourself.
Botellones still happen, of course. But they’ve moved to more discrete venues like the cornfields up the street from my house. Perhaps I can drive these kids from the cornfield by erecting a scarecrow in the form of an angry Robert Parker.
Or better yet, an angrier Robert Hess.
Calmocho sounds similar to something I drank a lot of when I was in Germany during an exchange program in high school. The kids called it “Peshing” (or peshig, I can’t recall exactly), and if I remember correctly, it was a 1:1 mix of red wine and orange juice, sometimes with a splash of white soda if we were feeling fancy. It pretty much served the same purpose as Calmocho, though.