Ghost Spicy Tequila Review

Travel Distilled reviews Ghost Blanco, a spicy tequila given a kick by being infused with ghost peppers.

Ghost spicy tequila began life, as many good things do, thanks to a bartender experimenting. In this case it was a bartender at a tequila bar in Boston, Chris Moran, who was infusing a tequila with spicy ghost peppers. When he perfected the technique, he started making spicy margaritas and they were a big hit with his customers. He went on to create other spicy cocktails, and by that time he knew he was onto something and wanted to make Ghost available commercially.

From Boston Bar to Big Business

Enter David Gordon, who became Chris’s business partner, and they took on the task of getting Ghost tequila known beyond one bar in Boston. They raised $3 million in investment money, sold 5,000 cases in their second year, and have been growing ever since.

Chris Moran’s idea was that Ghost would make it easy for both bartenders and home consumers to make spicy margaritas, and other cocktails. As the margarita is the most-ordered cocktail in the USA, that’s a pretty good place to start. If you can make a margarita – and the basic recipe is only three ingredients – you only need to switch from regular tequila to Ghost and you’ve got a spicy margarita.

The company also reckons it’s good enough to drink on its own, and say that people who claim they don’t like tequila have been won over by Ghost.

Ghost Spicy Tequila Review

So what’s it like? On the nose it’s surprisingly sweet, and not spicy or peppery at all. I immediately said ‘pear drops’, a candy popular in England when I was growing up, but which my American wife had never heard of. It has a distinctive aroma, immediately identifiable if you’ve ever smelled it, which is caused by isoamyl acetate, an aromatic chemical compound which also gives pear drops their sweet taste, though it’s actually more like bananas than pears.

If there was little spice on the nose, Ghost more than made up for it with the taste. Wow! It’s nice and peppery, but also retains that banana-like sweetness. The sweetness follows through on the finish. We both decided we could definitely sip this straight. Nosing it again after tasting, there seemed a slight tomato smell about it… making us think of a tequila version of a Bloody Mary.

Paloma Cocktail

Instead, though, I made a Paloma. This is a simple tequila cocktail I was unaware of till a few years ago when I made a trip to Jalisco and was offered one on the first night in our hotel in Guadalajara, made with Patron tequila. It was love at first taste, on a warm and sultry Mexican evening.

If you don’t know, a Paloma is a cocktail with tequila, lime juice, and a grapefruit-flavored soda. In Mexico they have several fizzy grapefruit sodas, like Fresca, Squirt, or Jarritos, but here in Arizona we’d found a healthy and tasty sparkling grapefruit juice called Pamplemousse (the lovely French name for a grapefruit), from La Croix. We’d already had Palomas with a normal tequila blanco, and they were good – well, it’s hard to make a bad Paloma. Using Ghost, though, definitely upped the game, and the taste. It had a delicious spicy-chili pepper taste to it, while losing none of the refreshing grapefruit flavour.

Spicy Margarita

Next night we used Ghost to spice up a Margarita. We did it the lazy way and used a ready-made Margarita mix we’d bought. We don’t normally use mixes but a friend had recommended this one so we thought we’d try it. With a straight tequila we found it a little disappointing, and no substitute for a freshly-made Margarita. Using Ghost instead was another matter. That extra spice created a cocktail that was worth drinking. So much so, we had another one.

Ghost spicy tequila is definitely worth trying, and having a bottle on hand will enable you to offer your guests – and yourselves – a quick and easy spicy tequila cocktail. Professional bartenders should also investigate.