Are you a Discerning Drinker?
Join thousands of like-minded professionals and cocktail enthusiasts, receive our weekly newsletters and see pages produced by our community for fellow Discerning Drinkers.
Pancho Villa
-
Pancho Villa
Serve in a Coupe glass
| 1 oz | Light white rum (charcoal-filtered 1-4 years old) |
| 1 oz | Hayman's London Dry Gin |
| 1⁄2 oz | Luxardo Apricot Albicocca Liqueur |
| 1⁄2 oz | Pineapple juice |
| 1⁄4 oz | Heering Cherry Liqueur |
| 2⁄3 oz | Chilled water reduce if wet ice |
How to make:
- Select and pre-chill a Coupe glass.
- Prepare garnish of pineapple wedge.
- SHAKE all ingredients with ice.
- FINE STRAIN into chilled glass.
Strength & taste guide:
No alcohol
Medium
Boozy
Sweet
Medium
Dry/sour
Review:
Dilution is key to this cocktail so either shake with crushed ice (as per the original recipe) or do as I do and add chilled water. Even then, to quote Victor Bergeron, "This'll tuck you away neatly - and pick you up and throw you right to the floor".
History:
Named for Francisco Villaruel Guilledo (1901-1925), a Filipino professional boxer known as Pancho Villa. He was only 154cm (5 feet and 1 inch) tall and weighed 51kg (114 pounds) at his heaviest, and was the first Asian to win the World Flyweight Championship in 1923. Never knocked out in his entire career, he is regarded as one of the greatest Flyweight boxers of all time. He died suddenly, aged 23, from complications following a tooth extraction.
The Pancho Villa cocktail first appears in Charles H. Baker, Jr.'s 1939 The Gentleman's Companion volume II – An Exotic Drinking Book. Our recipe adapted from Victor Bergeron's 1947 Bartender's Guide by Trader Vic, a recipe repeated in his 1972 Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide.
PANCHO VILLA COCKTAIL, another CLASSIC from the PHILIPPINES that we absorbed in 1926, for the FIRST TIME
Charles H. Baker, Jr., The Gentleman's Companion volume II, 1939
The late Filipino gentleman of this name was probably the greatest man for his inches that ever drew on a pair of fighting gloves. In Manila he is still a national hero, his monument is impressive, and when Monk Antrim's Chino Number One whipped this one up in his honour, it proved more than good enough for us to insert here.
Carta de Oro Bacardi, 1 pony
Dry apricot brandy, 1 pony
Pineapple juice, r tsp
Dry gin, 1 pony
Cherry brandy, 1 tsp
Stuffed olive
This is a sweet one and must be very cold. Fill shaker with fine ice and pour into a big champagne glass. It is one of the very few cocktails calling for several conflicting ingredients that is worth its own weight in bicarbonate of soda.
PANCHO VILLA COCKTAIL
Victor Bergeron, Bartender's Guide, 1947
1 oz. Bacardi
1 oz. apricot brandy
1 oz. dry gin
1 tsp. pineapple juice
1 tsp. cherry brandy
Shake with shaved ice: serve in champagne glass.
PANCHO VILLA COCKTAIL
Victor Bergeron, Bartender's Guide, 1972
1 ounce light Puerto Rican rum
1 ounce apricot brandy
1 ounce gin
1 teaspoon pineapple juice
1 teaspoon cherry brandy
Shake with ½ scoop shaved ice. Strain into a large saucer champagne glass.
Nutrition:
One serving of Pancho Villa contains 195 calories
Alcohol content:
- 1.6 standard drinks
- 19.19% alc./vol. (19.19° proof)
- 22.5 grams of pure alcohol
Difford’s Guide remains free-to-use thanks to the support of the brands in green above. Values stated for alcohol and calorie content, and number of drinks an ingredient makes should be considered approximate.
Previous cocktail
Orange Mojito
Next cocktail
Peach Daiquiri
Apricot (brandy) liqueurs
Apricot brandy is a common term for the most popular style of apricot liqueurs, although most of these liqueurs are actually made by macerating apricots...
Cherry brandy & cherry (cerise) liqueurs
Cherry 'brandy' is traditionally the largest category of cherry liqueurs. A confusing term as most of these liqueurs are actually made by macerating cherries...
Brandy
Brandy is distilled from fermented fruit (not grain). The name brandy comes from northern Europe, where 'brand' means to burn, and is a reference to the...
Some cocktails benefit from added water
The size, and shape of the ice you use when mixing cocktails will affect the amount of dilution added when mixing. Large cubes in a cocktail shaker have...
20 best Amaretto cocktails
The bittersweet almond and vanilla flavour of amaretto mixes brilliantly with dark spirits – particularly whiskey but this versatile liqueur also mixes...
Join the discussion
Showing 5 comments for Pancho Villa.
See discussion in the Forum