Here’s a winning Bloody Maria recipe

Bloody Maria

50ml Sesion Blanco Tequila
2 dashes Worcestshire sauce
3 dashes hot sauce
salt and pepper to taste
5ml fresh lemon juice
120ml passata

Combine all ingredients with ice in a shaker, and roll back and forth. Strain over ice in a highball glass, garnish at will.

Story by Sam Bygrave
Photography by Christopher Pearce
In association with Sesion Tequila

The Bloody Mary is a staple of the hungover masses, it’s safe to say. And so it should be, what with its tomato juice providing at least some of your daily recommended in take of goodness, the hot sauce giving your digestive a kick into overdrive (goodbye, residual alcohol) and the worcestshire sauce a dash of breakfast food flavour no matter what time of the day.

But I’ve long held the notion that tequila, far from making one sleepy, actually wakes you up. I am wrong about this, but I
don’t care. Give me the damn tequila, because it’s not a lie if I believe it. And tequila is the perfect addition to the Bloody Maria, because vodka can get a little overwhelmed by all that juice and old-timey worcestshire breakfast goodness.

Using a good quality blanco tequila with a peppery white agave flavour to it complements the other ingredients in the drink and stands up to the power of the hot sauce. The tequila also gives the drink some heft, a solid base note that lets you know that you’re not drinking a kid’s drink.

The Bloody Maria’s vodka sporting sister, the Bloody Mary, has a pretty confusing history to it. There’s a number of alternative versions of its origin story out there: one has it that it was created at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, by a bartender named Fernand Pete Petiot. But it appears he may have just popularised (and perfected) the drink, during his time at the St Regis Hotel in New York in from the late 1930s.

According to a lengthy piece by Jack McGarry, of The Dead Rabbit, which you can find on diffordsguide, Petiot perfected an earlier drink credited to one George Jessel. Then there’s the whole Red Snapper thing — otherwise known as a Bloody Mary with gin, McGarry has cast doubt on that too (he believes the Bloody Mary and the Red Snapper were once one and the same).

But the point to all this when you’re under the weather? I don’t know. The story, it doesn’t matter so much. What matters is that the Bloody Maria, Mary, whatever you want to call it — it damn well works.

Tasting notes
Sesion Blanco Tequila
A creamy vegetal nose of green peppers and grass with a faint hint of green pineapple. A robust mineral start on the palate finishing with a long light spiced finish with hits of white pepper.
Mextrade

Banter Box
Sesión tequila is sourced from the prestigious Tierra de Agaves, located on the outskirts of Tequila in Jalisco, Mexico and home to agave fields that are as old as the spirit itself.

The distillery is owned and operated by the Beckmann family, the Beckmann family, close descendents of the first producer of tequila, Jose Cuervo.

The Beckmann’s are the oldest dynasty of tequila producers, with over eight generations of agave farming and distilling experience and a commitment to producing the highest quality products.