Kapena Tequila blends cultures with addition of salty-sweet dried plums

When we attended the University of Southern California in the late 1990s, my friends and I were more than happy to show everyone how Hawaii kids could party. While students from the continent were tossing handfuls of Skittles into bottles of vodka, we grabbed crack seed from care packages sent by our parents.

Our biggest success came when we dropped li hing mui into cheap tequila; the infusion would remove a lot of the tequila’s “hurl factor” — that stomach-turning reaction you sometimes get from the cheap stuff. The salty-sweet flavor combination was popular among local kids because it was so recognizable, but our mainland friends quickly gravitated toward it as well.

Turns out we weren’t the only ones to discover this tasty flavor combination. Local students were doing it up in the Pacific Northwest, too.

“I went to college in Oregon and ran with the Hawaii guys,” said Seattle-based entrepreneur Mike Goto. “We’d put li hing mui in tequila to make it tolerable.”

Goto, 35, never forgot about that college experience as he grew older and was introduced to “nicer” tequila.

“I remembered that li hing mui flavor and how it was really solid,” he said. “It’s a flavor people understand and gravitate towards. It’s a mixture that really works.”

For about a decade, Goto brainstormed the idea of creating his own brand of li hing-infused tequila. It wasn’t until he lost his full-time job in 2014 that he was able to turn his dream into reality.

“I got laid off on a Friday, and that next Monday I was on a plane to Mexico with my best friend, who spoke Spanish,” he explained. “We spent a week down there and made some great contacts.”

The result of that trip was Kapena Tequila, which went on sale in February. It’s a surprisingly satisfying sipping tequila, and in March it was awarded a bronze medal at the prestigious San Francisco World Spirits Competition, where it competed against more than 1,800 entries.

“Our tequila’s profile is more subtle and smooth,” said Goto. “All the flavoring comes from the li hing mui.”

In the glass, Kapena is almost peach-colored. Six li hing mui seeds are placed in every bottle, so there are little bits of skin floating around for extra flavor. Smelling it doesn’t burn the inside of your nostrils with alcohol fumes, and aroma from the li hing mui tempers the hurl factor mentioned earlier. It blossoms into an inviting fruitiness the longer it sits in your glass. Adding li hing mui gives this tequila a more oily, viscous mouthfeel that whiskey drinkers might describe as soft or chewy; much of the burn you’d typically feel after taking a shot is gone as well.

Toss a bottle in the freezer and you’ll find Kapena is even easier to drink, as the cold temperature removes any unpleasantness rookie tequila drinkers might find challenging and brings forward even more of the li hing flavor. I can see myself keeping a bottle of this on my bar for friends as a conversation piece we can open and enjoy.

Kapena’s initial production run of fewer than 1,000 bottles is a result of Goto’s partnership with a Mexican-based contract distiller, which let him experiment with more than 50 different base tequila profiles from the Los Altos region of Jalisco (where temperatures are lower and the blue Weber agave plants used to make tequila take longer to mature) to develop his final recipe. Li hing mui produced in China and sourced in Hawaii — which Goto said is the only ingredient added to his tequila before it’s aged for a proprietary length of time — is sent to the distillery and bottled in handmade glass decanters.

Taking bronze at the San Francisco competition came as a pleasant surprise.

“We thought, ‘What the heck, go big or go home,’” he said. “We submitted thinking nothing would come of it, especially given that infused tequilas aren’t very prevalent.”

For now, Hawaii customers are the only ones with access to Kapena. It’s poured at a limited number of bars and restaurants, including Bar Leather Apron and Square Barrels, and sold by the bottle exclusively at Tamura’s Fine Wine &Liquors for $44.99. Goto said plans eventually call for expansion to the West Coast and other markets with large populations of former Hawaii residents.

“We want this to be something the people of Hawaii can be proud of and enjoy,” he said. “We put a lot of time into the recipe and the packaging. We need to reflect the quality of what’s inside the bottle.”

Jason Genegabus has written about Honolulu bars since 2001. Contact him at jason@staradvertiser.com with suggestions of places to visit and drinks to try; read his blog at inthemix.staradvertiserblogs.com.