“Chuntiki” is an awkward kind of portmanteau. The “tiki” part is obvious, a nod to the cocktail subculture with roots in Southern California. But when he took the word and appended it to an Hispanic term sometimes used as a classist slur, Julio “Jules” Gutierrez not only came up with a name for his traveling pop-up cocktail events based in Long Beach, California, but he also found a way to tell the overlooked story of Latino, immigrant, and native culture in cocktails.
“Chuntiki’s born out of necessity, of a need to talk about the lack of brown representation in the tiki world,” Gutierrez says. “The idea’s been to take classic drinks and make them more Hispanic based, and being able to tell immigrant stories.” Check out his Ajua’ Fresca cocktail here.
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