Corrida Tequila Silver

Bust out the salt and limes, because today we’re drinking tequila!

Drinking is fun!

My American friend is visiting his family who don’t live in Mexico, so he went to get Mexican food and drink tequila. Upon telling me this I suddenly remembered: Lidl sells tequila! At first I wanted to buy it so I could make Margaritas but I’m too cheap to buy Cointreau so that isn’t going to happen. But fear not! There are still plenty of fun and exciting things to do with this wonderful drink.

Corrida Tequila Silver is once again found in Lidl’s heavenly booze aisle. Weighing in at a hefty £14.99 (on sale!) Corrida just about scrapes past Booze Review’s £15 cutoff point. This tequila is 38% and according to the label it has been made with Agave from the Jalisco desert in Mexican for generations. Wikipedia says the youngest girl to ever give birth was 5 years old, so I can definitely believe that this tequila has been made for 5 years.

Corrida features a fairly simple looking Mexican-style label, possibly made using Clip Art in Microsoft Publisher. I am not familiar with tequila so I can’t compare it to others, but Corrida smells like a blend of overproof white rum, nail polish remover and isopropyl wipes, yet it somehow manages to smell a lot more appealing than other cheap acetone-scented spirits.

One of these drinks counts as part of your 5 a day.

First up is the ever so popular tequila shot with salt and lime. To be honest, this seems like a lot more hassle that it’s worth, having to slice a lime and then fuck around with salt. I can see the appeal of this drink when out at a bar and somebody else has to deal with all the fancy preparation but it isn’t something I care about enough to do at home. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, it goes like this:

1. Pour salt on your hand and then lick it off.
2. Drink tequila.
3. Bite a lime.

Licking the salt was about as interesting as licking salt can be. The shot of tequila is where it gets more fun. The shot goes down quite easily, but the aftertaste is just… chemicaly. This tequila tastes like it was manufactured in a lab somewhere (although the bottle does say it was made in a desert in Mexico). I would have said it was horrible, but luckily the lime was there to save the drink. The salt didn’t seem to do much (unless that’s what made the tequila go down so easily), but the lime was pretty effective at neutralising the petroleum finish of Corrida Tequila.

You’re probably hoping this review is over now, but there’s still plenty more to come. Next up we have the beautiful Tequila Sunrise. The only reason this drink is happening is because I have an abandoned bottle of grenadine syrup sitting in the cupboard. I originally bought this bottle with the idea that I could make wonderfully exotic cocktails, but I soon realised I’m never going to buy any of the other ingredients required for these drinks, and grenadine isn’t exactly something you want to mix with Sainsbury’s basics vodka and coke.

Lime, orange and grenadine. Technically I don’t need to eat fruit for the next week.

I was looking forward to the tequila sunrise. Orange, grenadine and lime made it seem like it would be a very fruity drink which would be easy to get drunk from, but luckily I was able to fuck it up heavily along the way. I followed this recipe, but as I have never measured booze in my life, nor did I have all the ingredients, I had to follow my drunken intuition. The Booze Review method is as follows:

• Insert two ice cubes in your glass
• Slowly fill half the glass with Corrida Tequila Silver
• Add orange juice until the glass is 2/3 full
• Carefully add grenadine and hope it doesn’t turn to complete shit
• Squeeze a lime over the drink, drop it in the glass several times and then impale the mangled wedge on the rim of the glass
• Inspect the drink disappointedly and serve

I don’t know what I did wrong, but my tequila sunrise did not look like a sunrise at all. Maybe I needed more ice or less tequila, but it quickly became clear that this was going to be tequila and orange, with an unnecessary layer of grenadine syrup resting at the bottom of the glass. I tried stirring the drink, but this simply made it more orange and kept the layer of grenadine at the bottom.

Dispite complete disaster appearancewise, the drink was surprisingly tasty. Corrida pierces through the orange juice a lot more that I was expecting, but it is still an enjoyable drink. The worst part of the tequila sunrise was figuring out how to finish the drink without consuming pure grenadine at the end but luckily the lime once again saved the drink. As I was taking a drink, the lime fell into the glass and caused a splash. I childishly found this amusing and laughed, causing the drink to splash around even more. This seemed to agitate the grenadine at the bottom, causing it to blend with the drink more so I allowed the lime to remain in the drink and do its work. Looking back, I’m not sure why I even bothered impaling the lime on the glass where it served no purpose but maybe this is the secret to making a successful Tequila Sunrise.

Tequila and tonic tastes as good as you would expect.

And now we reach our final drink: Tequila and tonic. This never really seemed like it would be a good idea, but I had some tonic water left over after drinking the Castelgy Gin, so there was really no reason not to. At first I thought this drink would be terrible, but I was right. The tonic I had was flat, leaving me with a bland tasting chemical bath with a slice of fruit floating in it. Tequila and tonic isn’t necessarily a bad tasting drink, it is just a really miserable thing to consume. This might be a better drink with a higher quality tequila and non-shitty tonic water, but it doesn’t even seem like something that would taste good in the first place. A good use for this drink would be if somebody was at your house and you offered them a gin and tonic but really gave them this, but other than a practical joke I can’t think of any reason why somebody would make this.

Overall, Corrida Tequila Silver is not a great drink. I understand that every drink I have made with it has been a complete disaster, but even by itself it is not a tasty drink. I can see this maybe being used for “fun” party shots but it isn’t something you would just sit down and enjoy.

Booze Review rating: 3/10 deliciouses
★★★★★★★★★★