Drink at Your Own Risk: Mexican ‘Aragog’ Cocktail Made With Tarantula Venom

Mezcal-based Aragog is the creation of bartender at Mexico's Luciferina Bar.

May 25, 2017 5:00 am

If you happen upon Juárez, Mexico’s Luciferina Bar, know that when the bartender asks you to “pick your poison,” he’s actually being literal.

Mexican Bartender Creates Cocktail With Tarantula Venom in It
(Luciferina Bar)

As Luxury Launches notes, Luciferina’s head bartender, Romeo Palomares, has invented the Aragog cocktail—named for the giant spider in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books—which features an actual droplet of tarantula venom inside.

The idea came to him when his boss asked him to create something that would bring in foot traffic.

Although the exact recipe for the drink is being kept under wraps, we do know that it includes Mexican mezcal, Chilean pisco, Brazilian cachaça, mango juice, and lemon, as well as that drop of spider poison (it turns out that tarantula venom is weaker than a bee sting—at least to humans).

Below, watch a mixologist at the bar strain out an Aragog for a customer.

 

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