Never heard of Kalimotxo? Neither had I. Then I tried it, and trust me when I tell you, this cocktail recipe is pretty much a cheat code for zero-fuss sophistication.
Once upon a time, before we knew our whiskey from our whisky, my friends and I found ourselves at a ‘cool’ house party in the ‘nice’ part of town. Far from the sweet-drinks-in-cans vibe of our usual Saturday night shindigs, this one had proper adults at it. Ones with ‘cool’ jobs, thoughts about jazz, and the foresight and means to hire a bartender for the occasion. We stuck out like sore thumbs, but still, we were welcomed into their weird bohemian party (on the proviso that we left our goon sack at the door).
Our host was gracious in her attempt to integrate us. “Let’s get Luca to fix you a drink, shall we? Three kah-lee-motch-oh?” We must have looked dumbfounded. “It’s red wine with Coca-Cola,” she promptly elaborated. Sounds weird, but whatever, we thought. We took our drinks and wandered down to the pool. A chin-stroking convo and a Kalimotxo later, we were sold. I’m still not sure how the combination of red wine and Coke manages to taste so sophisticated (maybe it was the Miles Davis?), but it just does. Two simple ingredients and a bit of ice. Genius!
But where did this beguiling beverage come from? And how did it find its way to a suburban Aussie backyard? Sometimes referred to as ‘Cuba Libre Del Pobre’ (poor man’s Cuba Libre), red wine with Coke is nothing new. No one’s really sure who did it first, but the story of how it came to be called Kalimotxo takes place in the little village of Puerto Viejo in Spain’s Basque Country.
The year was 1972, and the village’s annual festival was in full swing. But there was just one problem. The local servers had discovered the red wine they were serving was no good. It had gone sour. One of the organisers, an allegedly ugly bloke (an unfair but important observation for later) named Kalimero, decided to salvage the wine by mixing it with Coca-Cola. The idea was that the sweetness of the Coke would mask the faulty wine, and it worked!
The drink was an instant hit, and little Kalimero had saved the day. To honour his ingenuity, festival goers named the drink after him by combining his nickname, ‘Kali’, with the Basque word for ugly, ‘motxo’. And that’s how Kalimotxo was born. Travellers to the Basque region have been falling in love with the drink ever since, bringing it home to share at ‘cool’ house parties in the ‘nice’ part of town.
