Tequila

Agave sugar and lime peel oil share terpenes; the salt is only there for the rim.

The same plant twice, one fermented and one not. Nothing else lines up so neatly.

Salt suppresses bitterness on contact, which is why the ritual survived the bad bottles.

Curaçao is the sugar in a margarita; peel oil against cooked agave sweetness.

Naringin bitterness meets vegetal agave; the salt in a paloma joins them up.

Both mostly water and faintly green; the salt is what makes the pairing land.

Same green pyrazine as the raw agave. Infusing it is barely a change of ingredient.

Aldehydes read as citrus over a vegetal spirit; the two green notes stack.

Sour green husk fruit and cooked agave are the same corner of Jalisco.

Roasted agave and grilled pineapple share caramel-sulfur notes almost exactly.

Nonadienal cools the spirit heat and pushes the vegetal note forward.

Hard citric acid and a tannic edge; it does what lime does but leaves colour behind.

Stable acid in a batched margarita; lime juice dies within the hour.

Both are agave-country green; the vegetal note in the spirit lines up.

Agave already tastes vegetal. The chilli extends it rather than adding.

Petrol-and-mint herb that only makes sense over an equally strange green spirit.

Brine plus mineral agave; a blanco does what a Muscadet does, with more heat.

A different agrarian sourness answering a Brazilian one; it works closer to a margarita than expected.

Steamed agave sugars are Maillard sugars. Miso finds them and adds the salt.