‘Evo’ feels the love for Irish liqueur

Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, who visited Ireland last weekend, has designated an Irish-owned liqueur as the "official drink of the presidential palace" in La Paz, according to Dublin drinks company Babco Europe.

Babco is run by veteran spirits marketer Mark Wilson, who worked with a host of brands, such as Baileys, before setting up his own brand- owning business in the 1990s. The Mickey Finn brand is one of its notable successes.

In recent years, Wilson also cottoned on to the possibilities of liqueurs distilled from coca leaves, the same raw ingredient used to produce the marching powder that coats toilet cisterns in pubs all over the country.

One of Babco’s brands is CocaBlue, a premium blue liqueur made from coca leaves picked high in the Bolivian Andes.

Evo, as el presidente is known to his fans, is an advocate of the benign commercialisation of coca to provide employment for indigenous peoples. They happily munched the stuff for centuries before it was powdered into cocaine and introduced to Miami by Pablo Escobar in the 1980s.

The president met Wilson on his visit to Ireland, and the “official” designation was apparently made at a private meeting, according to the company.

But before Dublin’s monied classes make a mad dash to Babco’s Glasthule offices screaming for bottles of CocaBlue, it doesn’t have the same effect as cocaine. Coca leaves used in its production are transported from Bolivia to Amsterdam “under armed guard”, Babco says, where they are “de-cocainised” prior to distillation.

Otherwise, it would likely be one of the most popular shots in Dublin bars.