Cutwater Fugu Habanero Vodka

Habanero is the taco-shop salsa, in vodka form. Cutwater built its Fugu flavors, in its own words, on the tastes served up at San Diego's neighborhood taco shops — spicy habanero peppers, creamy horchata, and aguas frescas with hibiscus or pineapple — and this is the hot one. Made about fifteen minutes up the road from Pacific Beach at Cutwater's Miramar distillery, the spin-off of Ballast Point Brewing that became one of the largest craft distilleries in the country, it starts with Fugu Vodka — corn-based, filtered fifteen times — and infuses it with habanero pepper, bottled at 40% ABV. Naturally gluten-free. Habanero is the chili that brings fruit with its fire — a floral, almost tropical note before the heat lands — and that's what shows here: expect a bright, fruity pepper aroma on the nose, opening into a clean vodka palate where the habanero builds a real, lingering warmth — spicy, not scorching — with a faint sweetness underneath, finishing with a slow-burning glow. Honest note: this is a genuinely spicy vodka built for savory drinks, not a sipper, and it's the Fugu for people who ask for extra salsa. It makes the Bloody Mary San Diego deserves, a Spicy Margarita-style vodka drink with lime and agave, a habanero Mule with ginger beer, a chili-pineapple highball, or a dash in a Dirty Martini. Cutwater's Miramar tasting room pours it in the Spicy Fugu Mary. Taco Tuesday's vodka.

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