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Steven Carl selected a double-barrel tequila from the Herradura distillery in Mexico for the Agave Sunset lounge at Hyatt Grand Champions Resort in Indian Wells. Carl took an opportunity to try his hand at chopping agave during a series of visits to Mexico.
JON ABEYTA
Restaurants, businesses, and even individuals sometimes pay to emblazon their names on a wine label, but typically that wine is available to others (with their own labels). Hyatt Grand Champions Resort’s Steven Carl went further with the signature-label concept.
The director of food and beverage personally selected a barrel of tequila from the 140-year-old Herradura distillery in Jalisco, Mexico, to have bottled for the Indian Wells resort’s new Agave Sunset lounge.
Carl tasted through 30 barrels of reposado tequila, looking for the smoothest one he could find.
“This tequila has a very cognac-like nose to it; a lot of candied orange peel, vanillin, cinnamon, and a little bit of clove on the palate; and it’s got a really rich, weighty mouth feel,” he says. He also notes that when he serves it with dessert, “everybody is noticing it’s almost like a Grand Marnier in the nose.”
The lounge carries more than 90 different tequilas, but Agave Sunset (in pewter-plaqued, individually numbered bottles) is now the premium choice. You can drink it straight, of course, or in the lounge’s signature cocktails, such as the Sunset Margarita with fresh lime juice, agave syrup, Cointreau float, and grenadine sink.
Because the resort obtained it through Herradura’s “buy-the-barrel” program (launched in June 2010), this particular tequila is available nowhere else in the world. The resort even got the barrel. When these 240 bottles are gone, Carl will probably head South of the Border again.
Hyatt Grand Champions Resort & Spa
44600 Indian Wells Lane
Indian Wells, CA 92210
760-341-1000
www.grandchampions.hyatt.com
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