Mama Juana (064)
The first time I had Mama Juana, I ordered a second shot immediately. It tastes like a super strong alcoholic cherry cough syrup, and it's fast acting. It's the national drink of the Dominican Republic. They call it an aphrodisiac, and I can attest to that claim.
Mama Juana is made by pouring rum, red wine, and honey over tree bark and herbs. I'm not sure what the herbs are, and a quick google search didn't answer my curiosity. This is research that should be done when I haven't drank two long islands, because vacation isn't over until we land in Detroit.
In previous years, this drink was free flowing at all resort bars. This year, we only had access in the gift shops, during special events when they had a drink and cigar cart out, and on the party boat. Sadly, the President of the Dominican Republic just banned drinks being served and consumed on party boats, which is going to drastically cut into the income of many tourism operations. I feel for the locals who make their living on people like us. We got our private party boat just in time. I had never purchased Mama Juana in the past to bring home, but after not having more than a few shots of it this time, I decided to stock up in the gift shop.
This is the culprit for our repacking several times last night. We are very lucky that Mike's parents somehow packed way lighter than we did—despite staying two full weeks—because they offered to take our heavy toiletries home so we could grab about 3 liters of Mama Juana. We are bringing some home for our three neighbors that looked over our place while we were away, Mike's sister that is picking us up from the airport, and for our Cheers-type family that has shared international liquors with us in the past. We are going to find some instructions online for each of them so that they may reuse the bottle with tree bark and herbs to ferment more Mama Juana after they finish the first batch. That might be the coolest part about it: you get many uses from the bottle. I hope they like it as much as we do.