Bar Talk: Licorería Limantour
Limantour/Courtesy photo
It was kind of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it type pop-up. But I hope you didn’t miss it because it was a good one.
Mexico City-based cocktail bar Licorería Limantour, currently No. 7 on the World’s 50 Best Bars ranking – a list it’s consistently been featured on since 2015 – came to Aspen on Feb. 7 and Feb. 8 for a pop-up at Ponyboy Aspen in the W Hotel.
The pop-up was a showcase of Limantour’s progression in its cocktail offerings, as the bar program has aged like a fine whiskey under the direction of head bartender José Luis Leon, who was on hand for the Aspen takeover.
The Aspen menu “is like different profiles of cocktails and flavors and styles from the history of the bar,” he said.
The renowned bar program brought four cocktails to share with the Aspen crowd – two featuring tequila and two made with Illegal Mezcal, the spirit acting as the brand sponsor for the pop-up.
“We are trying to bring a little bit of warmth from Mexico City,” he said about what he hopes the traveling version of Limantour brings to destinations like Aspen. “Something very characteristic of (Limantour) is our service. We are really chill people; we like to enjoy ourselves with the customers, we like to talk with them, we like to show them our cocktails, of course, our flavors.”
My favorite drink of the four was the Orégano, also Leon’s favorite, which you can find as a classic on the Limantour menu. It’s a mezcal-based option that also includes Ancho Reyes liqueur, black tea, oregano, and pineapple juice. Served over a large ice cube with a fragrant bunch of mint as the adornment. Looks are deceiving with this cocktail as it’s clear in appearance like a martini making you think it will be a relatively simple drink, but with one sip, it is bursting with complex and fresh flavors of an herb garden that are complimented by the smokiness of the pepper liqueur and mezcal that is super smooth to drink.
“All of them are basic in a way,” Leon said about Limantour’s cocktails, “but it’s like Mexican food; it’s beautiful but I think a big part of that beauty is putting simple things together that work, and our cocktails are the same.”
Of course, one of the tequila-based libations on the Ponyboy menu was the OG cocktail bar’s signature Margarita Al Pastor. A unique and almost savory twist on a margarita that draws inspiration from the flavors in the Mexican tacos al pastor (pork, pineapple, and chilies), made with tequila, Cointreau, lime, and an ingredient cheekily called “taco mix,” which is a house-made blend of pineapple, cilantro, chilies, and more.
The Margarita Al Pastor is just one of Leon’s many innovative creations. And while it almost wouldn’t be a Limantour pop-up without the Margarita Al Pastor, the cocktail is one that he admitted he is the least excited about at this point in his 13-year career with the company.
“I’ve been in the bar since day one, so of course the style that we had at the time and the techniques and the flavors – everything was way different than how it is right now. The bar itself is changing,” he said.
He has been with Limantour since the trailblazing establishment opened in the hip Roma Norte district of Mexico City in 2011 and travels with the bar’s numerous pop-up endeavors around the world (He went to 55 cities in 2023, sharing what Limantour has to offer).
But he’s constantly expanding his viewpoint, both through his travels – “Pretty much in the whole United States, you see a different level of professionalism in terms of their bar programs, design, even hospitality; it’s great,” he said – and through finding new interests that he can translate into his bartending.
His current path of professional development is learning as much as he can about his ingredients, and understanding their history and origins, so he can transform from being a bartender to being a storyteller of sorts.
It was learning about one of the main ingredients of the Margarita Al Pastor that got him interested in origin stories.
During a road trip with an ex-girlfriend, they made an impromptu stop at a pineapple plantation, and he got a first-hand look at the plants and how pineapples were grown.
“This was two years ago, so I had been working at Limantour for 10 years, and we had sold 1,000s of Margarita Al Pastor’s every day, and I (realized I) didn’t know how the pineapple grows,” the lead bartender said. “That made me feel so stupid and like I need to do something about it because in 20 years, I don’t want to still be famous because of a margarita” and be ignorant of where it came from.
It’s clear that Leon firmly believes that investment in education on products and storytelling is essential in the cocktail-making process moving forward. That it enhances the overall experience for the customer and by understanding the history and origin of each ingredient, he can create a narrative around each drink that brings it to life.
This belief combined with his extensive travel schedule is something that he is bringing with him into a new Limantour concept the company hopes to open in April in Mexico that gets back to the brand’s roots as Licorería.
“Liquor stores used to be a place for knowledge, a social hub where people go to interact, and we are trying to do something like that, a 20-seat space that is like a living room,” he said.
In this living room licorería, he envisions himself behind the bar, of course, with select bottles of alcohol from his travels in limited quantities – think one bottle of liquor from Japan, two bottles of a spirit from India, etc. He will make essentially limited-edition cocktails because once the bottle is done, it’s gone.
An intimate space like this, which he hopes to fill with friends and cocktail lovers, also gives him a chance to focus on service, give people something special, and tell the stories he’s been working to collect alongside the spirits.
So what liquor is he bringing back from Colorado for this new bar project?
Whiskey, of course.
