Bobby Heugel Courtesy Starchefs.com

Last weekend Southern cocktail guru, Bobby Heugel (Anvil Bar & Refuge, Hay Merchant and Underbelly restaurant in Houston) gave a swift, yet detailed account of Southern cocktail history—Texas included—at the Foodways Texas 2nd Annual Symposium in Austin. Among the many fascinating points Heugel touched on were the influences of ice—or lack thereof—on Southern cocktails; the links to Prohibition, racism and religion in the South; Tequila’s introduction to Texas as a border town spirits during prohibition; and the origins of the Tequila Sunrise, which was not quite the syrupy, sweet version we know today made with tequila, orange juice and artificial cherry-flavored Grenadine. (According to Heugel, the original Tequila Sunrise was made with Tequila, lime or lemon, cassis, and a dash of authentic grenadine, which was a syrup made from pomegranate, sugar and water.)

And while Tequila’s history in Texas is perhaps worth a deeper look in a different blog post, one of Heugel’s most emphatic points was a general call to restaurants, bars and consumers to serve/drink cocktails made with Southern/Texan ingredients.

Of course, it’s easy to go to a farmer’s market and pick of a few seasonal fruits or vegetables to use in cocktails, but what of local spirits? To date there are around two dozen Texas spirits on the market from vodka, to gin, to whisky. What did Heugel have to say about them?

Be patient.

“Gin has been made in England since the 1700s. The people making bourbon in Kentucky have had it in barrels at least three times as long as anything made in Texas. If you’re trying something from a distiller that’s only been open for a year, you shouldn’t have high hopes.” says Heugel.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy Texas spirits. In fact, Heugel encourages Texans to get behind the Texas distillers so they can continue to grow the industry into something great.

“You need to contextualize what you’re buying [in Texas],” says Heugel. “You can’t hold a Texas bourbon to the same standards as an old Kentucky bourbon. But we have to support those types of spirits at the same time. We have to get excited about what people are doing.”

If you scan the list of spirits at Heugel’s establishments, you won’t see many—if any—Texas spirits. That’s not because he doesn’t believe in the future of the industry, but because he has set a certain bar for quality with the spirits he currently serves at bars such as Anvil. One producer he has been impressed with is a Waco-based distillery called Balcones Distilling.

In a recent interview Heugel mentioned how impressed he was with their progress as a Texas distiller. “I really like the whisky they make with 100% blue corn from New Mexico,” says Heugel, referring to the Balcones Baby Blue Whisky. “Balcones is a good example of a distillery that is growing in quality by leaps and bounds. We use it at Anvil on occasion. It’s different than what a lot of people are used to, but I feel confident in being able to serve a drink with their whiskey to my customers.”

Balcones has had a loyal following of craft cocktail makers almost since it began released its first spirit, Rumble on the market in 2009. In fact, you’ll likely see a handful of their products on the shelves of high end bars in cities around the state—particularly in Austin and Central Texas. The distillery has 6 different whiskies on the market, most of which can be found at retails stores throughout Texas. This year, Balcones was given international recognition as American Craft Distiller of the Year from U.K.-based Whisky Magazine’s Icons of Whisky Awards and was given a nod as a runner up for international Whisky Distiller of the Year against Irish Distiller Limited, Diageo Scotland and Four Roses Distillery USA. Not too shabby for a little distillery located under a bridge along IH-35.

Balcones distiller/owner Chip Tate is thrilled to receive such recognition, with such a young distillery. “We’re not quite there yet in my opinion, so to have such support has been great,” says Tate who is on the board of the American Distilling Institute. “We still need to continue to innovate and grow, but it’s great and we’re much further than I thought we’d be at this point.”

And while Heugel is a fan of Balcones, he sees a lot of room for growth in Texas spirits and looks forward to what the next ten years will bring, particularly for spirits such as gin, whisky, and even rum.

But whatever you do, don’t get him started on Texas tequila. As a board member of the national Tequila Interchange Project (an organization that seeks to promote sustainability and traditional production methodology amid growing concerns surrounding modern production trends in Mexico), Heugel is passionate about keeping the identity of the authentic Mexican spirit where it belongs.

“We need to get over the idea of local tequila. Products marketing as local tequila need to stop doing that,” says Heugel. “It’s misleading to the consumer to market something as a Texas product when it’s made in Mexico. That doesn’t help the overall industry as a whole.”

To say Heugel has a few opinions on the matter is a subject for another time, but one thing is definitely true, with discerning watch dog mixologists like Heugel around, we can look for great things from Texas spirits in future years.

- Jessica Dupuy