...a short Raicilla story for you:
My business partner Graham G. from Toronto and I had been hanging out at Casa de Alacron for quite a while and we had gotten into a rut. We would go to Juan Cruz's store almost daily and buy a jar of Aladin Crema de Cacahuate and one of the homemade Pan Mangere (SP?) loafs and get a couple of bottles of Eliadoro's Raicilla... in those days you had to bring your own bottles to get them filled from his gas cans that he had carried down the mountain from Chacala; you didn't want to lose your bottles! This would be our dinner, we had gotten too lazy to cook, too lazy to fish, and otherwise too lazy to leave our hammocks for very long. We wouldn't even both go to the store and it was usually me because my Spanish was better.
So after eating our peanut butter and bread we would proceed to drink our bottles of Raicilla, as these were liter bottles, this would take around 3 to 4 hours to finish the bottle and you needed the peanut butter and the bread to help absorb the liquor. As the bottle was finished, it became a ritual that we would rub the bottles vigorously until they were hot and then torch the top of the bottle off with a lighter. If the Raicilla was good that week (it was often better or worse from week to week and I am pretty sure that Eliadoro would "cut" it for both profit and safety's sake.)...you would get a flame like a blow torch jumping out of the top of the bottle and a WHOOMP noise that was just great.
The point of this exercise was of course, to determine whom would get the biggest flame and WHOOMP. In order to even qualify for the competition, your flame had to jump at least 6 inches out of the bottle or you were disqualified. A winning flame would be 10 inches or better...There would be much debate as to whom was able to get the most spectacular flame and WHOOMP and thus, we had to bring in 3rd party judges to declare the winner. As there were generally from 4 to 8 people staying with us at the house, there were no shortages of judges, until the judges would try to become contestants. That did not happen often... you had to be able to finish your bottle in one evening, a feat, that not just anybody could do.
I was generally but not always the winner of this endurance contest and I guess that makes me THE BIGGEST LOSER! to use the parlance of the day. Thankfully my liver still functions and we only did this for a couple of months straight before we decided that we were overindulging in the Raicilla just a bit......Tony Collins
