Red wine, Coca-Cola and ice; Few mixes can boast such a basic formula that works so well. The kalimotxo He did not invent gunpowder but his creation and dazzling success were the product of one of those happy coincidences that sometimes arise to leave their mark on history. Because, with the permission of the clear or the sangria, the kalimotxo is the most popular of popular drinksand also the most universal.
The human being is curious and picaresque by nature, so trying to find a supposed first inventor of the mixture of wine with cola is a mission doomed to failure. We do know that before the kalimotxo became popular, or calimocho as collected by the RAE, this combination was already prepared and consumed in several countries, although in Spain it was a minority and urban drinka, because Coca-Cola would take time to reach all the regions.
Things changed with the opening of the first spanish factory of the soft drink, in 1953, years in which little by little the country began to open up a little more to an increasingly changing world in which the consumer society and the influence of American pop culture were timidly leaving their mark. The fact is that the iconic soft drink jumped to the masses and also its possibilities of combining it with other concoctions, red wine being one of its favorite dance partners.
Free Rioja, worker’s cubata, poor man’s cubalibre, mochete or tincola are some of the names given to the popular mix of soft drink with red wine, depending on the quality of the wine used and the tasting circle. The kalimotxo would unseat everyone.
The ingenuity of a young gang to save the village festivals
Various theories circulate about the authorship of this concoction, but those who claim to be its true architects do so by recalling its almost casual role in the festivals that saw it born, a politically and socially complicated era in which popular events were a balm of playful escapism for the neighbors.
We traveled until the summer of 1972, moving to Getxo, specifically to the Old Port of Algorta, the most populated nucleus of the municipality. The Antzarrak gang, made up of friends between the ages of 16 and 19, agreed to participate in the organization of the parties, which were in danger due to the lack of time of the members of the previous commission. With more enthusiasm and desire than knowledge or experience, the young people took on the task facing many difficulties, with the lack of budget as a major obstacle.
The sale of wine during the activities of the festivities should have been the main source of income that would allow them to assume the debts and finance the rest of the festivities, but luck initially played a trick on them. On the first day of the festivities, the shipment of 2,000 liters of harvested Rioja wine bought directly from a vintner and they began to distribute it, with little success. The wine was chopped.
Whether due to the heat of August and the lack of refrigeration, or because it was already in poor condition, the crew had to sharpen their ingenuity to avoid the economic disaster that was coming. The solution seemed clear: the wine had to be released and the only way was mask your bad taste. After several tests of various concoctions, Coca-Cola turned out to be the winning combination.
The taste issue had been resolved, but another dilemma had arisen, since the soft drink brand was still not very well received by most residents. And so they decided to hide the nature of their drink serving it in new bottles and renaming it with a new name.
A casual name conquering the dictionary
What does it mean kalimotxo? Foreign ignorance can make us think that its etymology bears some relation to terms associated with drinking in Basque, but the reality is much simpler. I just had to give it a name with hook that would attract people’s attention, and that would distance the drink from any relationship with the Rioja libre or the American soft drink
the crew itself tells us the story in ‘The invention of the kalimotxo and anecdotes of the festivities’:
(…) a boy from Erandio appeared, whom some of us knew, and someone called him by his nickname, Kalimero. Mechanically and quite bored by the effort already made, they began to conjugate his name. One indicated that the person in question was quite ugly and another said that ugly was said in Euskara motxo. (…) [la mayoría] feverishly conjugated the nickname and, after many attempts, a meaningless word emerged, Kalimotxo that, repeatedly, liked.
In this way, the kalimotxo was born, mixing chopped Riojas with bottles of Coca-Cola in a borrowed tub, repackaged in clean bottles and cooled in boxes with ice. The improvised invention was a complete success and its popularity would spread rapidly in the following years through the festivities of nearby towns, also in the Sanfermines of Pamplona, where it is common to drink it in a boot and its authorship was even claimed.
While the Royal Academy included the Spanish term calimocho in the dictionary of the language, Coca-Cola registered the intellectual property of it, although it has not come to give it much use. The simple cocktail was already spread across half the country in the 80sas a humble and popular drink, festive but also in a certain homey way.
It has been the initiation cocktail for many young people and a favorite drink for university students, emblem of parties and star of summer terraces and also in bars all year round, breaking away from summer seasonality that ties more to the sangria or the Tinto de Verano. Foreign tourism ended up making it a world-famous drink, captivating even the palates of the New York press.
They have wanted to give it more sybaritic prestige in recent years, as if the kalimotxo needed to be reinvented to dignify itself in some way. The canonical formula is simple: glass catxi, campano or mini or pot type, ice, decent red wine and Coca-Cola (as much as Pepsi wanted to jump on the bandwagon a few years ago). What to do with bad wine was the result of necessitybut its own creators disprove the myth that it has to be chopped.
Some people add lemon or blackberry, and they are perhaps the only two concessions accepted for this drink that does not need reformulations or additions. A good kalimotxo is served in a glass, with the same amount of wine as soft drink, and is recognized by the upper layer of foam in which the ice floats. No more no less.
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Photos | Sara H – Kalimotxo Cocktail Bar – Risager – The Marmot – Mánel – Luiscgl
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