Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/14611
COVER SToRY Tiquio Serratos, bartender at Javier’s Cantina & Grill in Newport Beach, CA, is a big fan of Tres Leches. ss! by Fred Minnick but not soggy cake, topped with smoothly whipped cream, sweetens the palate with sugar, cream, vanilla and hints of caramel sensations that cannot be found in any other form. And although historians do not know the cake’s exact origins—Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico and Panama have all claimed creating it—tres leches is Latin America’s apple pie. Perhaps that’s why the new Tres Leches liqueur, a Caribbean rum-based triple cream that hit the market in September 2009, has taken mixologists, chefs and consumers by storm. At It won Best Spirit of Show and Best Cream Liqueur at the 2010 Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) Spirits Competition in Las Vegas, as well as a Double Gold medal at the 2010 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. One distributor said that in his 30 years of supplying the industry he’s never seen a new product grow so quickly. “I would think this is something every mixologist should have behind the bar right now,” says Javier Sosa Jr., owner of Newport Beach, CA–based Javier’s Cantina & Grill, one of the hottest Latin restaurants in Southern California. “There are not many cream-based products I would put my name behind. This is something of the future.” august 2010 / the tasting panel / 51 the touch of a fork, a tres leches cake releases sugary, delicious goodness from its spongy pores fi lled with condensed, evaporated and heavy cream. This moist, PHOTO: FRED MINNICK PHOTO: STACEY TAXIN