Activated charcoal’s purifying properties are well-known. From the mundane (whitening teeth), to the life-saving (an emergency-room antidote for poisons), to the therapeutic (chelating the body of harmful metals), its uses are wide-ranging and, as of late, en vogue — Origins now makes a $23 active charcoal body wash, while Juice Generation is using charcoal in its cold-pressed “detox” juices.
As charcoal heats up, it’s worth revisiting a spirit that was ahead of the trend: Don Julio 70 Crystal Anejo, a charcoal-filtered tequila released in 2013. The spirits industry long ago seized on the practice of charcoal filtration, mainly to rid its products of unwanted color and impurities by trapping them in the pores of activated carbon.
For Enrique de Colsa, master distiller of Don Julio tequila in Jalisco, Mexico, charcoal filtration became a seven-year science experiment that produced the Crystal Anejo, a nod to the brand’s 70th anniversary and homage to its founder, Don Julio Gonzalez. While the exact filtration method for Don Julio 70 is a proprietary process, de Colsa saw it as an opportunity to flex his innovative muscle to produce a tequila that straddles the fence between the citrusy brightness of its blanco and the oily, creamy smoothness of its anejo.
“We went into the lab to identify which compounds hide the power of the blanco,” said de Colsa. “When we detected those compounds, then we started to sample ways to isolate them.”
Eventually, the distillation process took a tequila aged in American white oak barrels for 18 months, giving it the complexity and smoothness of a traditional anejo, and filtered it to bring out the “fresh, citrus agave flavors found in our blanco that become masked by aging,” de Colsa said.
We sampled the Don Julio 70 alongside a blanco and anejo from the brand and found its body to be round and velvety, more so than a typical silver tequila. The Don Julio 70 tasted of citrus and brine, with a sweeter finish of caramel and vanilla that smoothed out the bite of the initial alcohol as the tequila headed toward the middle and back of the mouth.
According to de Colsa, Don Julio 70 is versatile enough to drink neat, on the rocks or in a cocktail. To prove that point on a recent visit to Chicago, he enlisted the help of mixologists Alex Renshaw and Brian Sturgulewski of The Dogma Group to craft a drink for this specialty spirit. The pair came up with La Primavera Negra, which incorporates activated charcoal into the drink itself. The small amount of charcoal used does not affect the texture of the drink but makes a “very bright, somewhat, spring-y cocktail that is jet black when you pour it in the glass,” said Sturgulewski. Try it and see for yourself.
La Primavera Negra
Makes: 1 drink
2 oz. Don Julio 70
1 oz. cucumber switchel, see recipe
1/2 oz. fresh lime juice
100 mg activated charcoal*
Add all ingredients into a shaker with ice. Shake quickly. Strain into a tuliped beer glass with crushed ice. Garnish with a cucumber and straw.
Switchel: 1 part rice vinegar to 1 3/4 parts local farm honey soaked with cucumber slices for one day.
*Not to be confused with grilling charcoal, which should not be ingested. Activated charcoal is available in most health food stores.
Provenance: Alex Renshaw, The Dogma Group
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