What better way to end the summer than with a cerveza preparada? Whether you come for the acidic tomato juice, the kick of the chile, the citric tang of lime or the pleasant buzz that comes along with finishing a few, the bartenders at Chacho’s are ready to celebrate this delicious Latin beverage. Keep things simple with a straightforward chavela or go high-octane with the “super chavela,” which comes with an added shot of tequila. The fiesta continues until 6pm, so there’s plenty of time to split some Chacho’s nachos with a friend as you kick a couple back.Chavela Crawl
Sat, 1pm, Free
Chacho’s, San Jose

A year and a half ago, veteran Bay Area musician Carlos Elizalde nearly called it quits. For more than two decades the lead singer of Ruckatan had been playing in local bands—including The Yardies, Mirage, Bautista, Cantera and La Ventana—but he had hit a roadblock that seemed insurmountable.

Elizalde’s cousin was bowing out to go in a different musical direction and Ruckatan was without a guitarist. The prospect of finding a suitable replacement—someone who would be able to seamlessly integrate and contribute to the group’s complex, highly structured style—was daunting. After all, it had taken more than eight years to find the members he was currently playing with.

Ruckatan had become “a melting pot that fused really well together,” Elizalde says of his band’s sound—an eclectic mix of Latin, reggae, pop, rock, soul and world music. “We didn’t dumb it down. If anything, what we did was take it to a level where not only the people that are into jazz and Latin can identify, but regular folks can get [into a] hook from a song.”

Thankfully Carlos Hernandez, a fan of Ruckatan for the better part of a decade, stepped in, declaring he’d wanted to play with the group for years. With an ear for their sound, Hernandez clicked, and will be rocking out with his bandmates this Saturday at Chacho’s as part of the C2SV Latin Music Showcase.

It would have been a shame if Ruckatan had disbanded. Though this lineup has only technically been together for five years, Ruckatan has been an entire lifetime in the making.

Take the group’s moniker, for starters. The word “Ruckatan” comes from a line in a limerick that Elizalde’s father used to sing to him as a child.

Then there’s the work—as well as the providence—that went into getting all the right people together playing music as Ruckatan.

It was through Craigslist that Elizalde linked up with Blaine Hoopes, a multi-instrumentalist whom he calls “the mad professor.” But it was something almost nearer divine intervention that brought keyboardist Jose Angel Amador to the band. Elizalde happened to hear Amador playing on one of the store’s keyboards and was immediately taken with the power of his style. Elizalde urged Amador to try out for his group. “He was a perfect fit,” Elizalde says.

From there, the pieces slowly fell into place—with each member of Ruckatan’s current seven-man lineup bringing his own unique style to the table.

It’s little wonder Elizalde views the band as more than just a collection of musicians working toward a single goal. To him, Ruckatan is a “tribe.” It’s a notion that extends beyond the band to Ruckatan’s fans, who Elizalde views as possessing the same collective spirit.

Ruckatan will play C2SV’s Latin Music Showcase at Chacho’s on Sept. 13. More info.

Every decade has its cocktail fashions. The ’50s brought Irish coffees to the U.S., and, in the’60s, pink squirrels ran wild. Harvey Wallbangers and tequila sunrises raged in the ’70s and in the ’80s we had sex on the beach. The ’90s brought mojitos stateside and helped kick off the labor-intensive craft cocktail craze. The Moscow Mule returned to claim signature drink status in the present era.

While many drink pandemics originate in foreign lands, in decades past or in the ambitious, calculating minds of corporate brand marketers, every once in a while a humble entrepreneur contributes a libation to contemporary cocktail culture. Jorge Sanchez was recovering from a partnership implosion in Campbell when he took over Chacho’s, a dive on downtown San Jose’s San Fernando Street.

His luck turned with the creation of the Hennchata, a simple mix of traditional Latin American rice drink with Hennessy. And lest anyone question the addition of brandy from the Cognac region to an Aztec agua fresca, just remember that many people think mariachi music came from the French too, though no one would ever hire a guy named Pierre to play trumpet at a bar mitzvah.

Not only did Mexico save uniformed horn bands from extinction after the Maximilian Affair, its national drink has rescued French brandy from becoming a Coke mixer promoted in bad hip-hop songs. The enabling technology that makes a Hennchata more than just another mixed drink is an L-shaped plastic clip that clamps onto the rim of a thick-walled, stemmed chavela glass. The patented device holds an upside-down airline bottle of liquor in place, with the alcohol suspended by gravity-defying laws of physics.

The bottle is loaded into the plastic aperture and dropped inside the horchata without emptying its contents. There’s no fancy technique, like tilting the glass diagonally or sealing the bottle’s mouth. “You just do it quick,” explains bartender David Sizemore, demonstrating with a flick of the wrist how Monsieur Hennessy dives into the milky mix at a 90-degree vertical angle.

Drawn through a straw, it starts off as a plain horchata, with a sweet, full mouth and just a hint of alcohol.  A few sips in, the grape brandy gurgles slowly at first and the horchata turns amber. The remaining distillate evacuates its glass holding cell, creating a high alcohol mix. It’s the reverse of most cocktail experiences, where the drinks get weaker and less tasty as ice melts and dilutes the beverage.

Sanchez says he’s number one in Hennessy bottle sales in Northern California and sold 17,266 Hennchatas in a single year. LVMH Moët Hennessy executives have arrived by the busload to deconstruct the phenomenon and invite the restaurateur, a native of Gilroy, to red carpet movie premieres in Hollywood.

Not content to rest on his laurels, Sanchez was standing on a ladder Tuesday evening with a cordless drill in his hand, affixing sheet rock to steel studs. He was handed the keys to the former gourmet cupcake bakery location next door and will break down the wall to expand his now-cramped eatery.

Sanchez is also trying to invent the next bar hit, mixing Don Julio tequila with mango base to create the “mangolada,” another upside-down drink garnished with a tamarind chili dusted straw.

He’s hoping that lightning in a bottle will strike twice. Even if the laws of chance prevail, there’s still the Hennchata, a new drink classic invented in Silicon Valley whose popularity shows no signs of letting gravity get in its way.