As you pick up some roses for your sweetie this Valentine’s Day and pay twice the rate of the rest of the year, take solace in the fact that they went through a lot to get here. Those pretty flowers you are holding were probably growing in the soil of Ecuador or Colombia just a few days ago.

There’s a bit in the Quito and the High Valley story we published recently about a rose plantation I visited near Otavalo. There I saw the process in action, people working against the clock in the short window they have between cutting and shipping.

Basically the process works like this. The flowers grow until they are exactly the right shape, the workers moving through the rows each day cutting just those particular ones. They move on a cart to the cleaning area, where some of the excess leaves are stripped and they are cut to a uniform length. Then the flowers moved to a refrigerated packing room where like colors are sorted and packed together. They go into a colder refrigerated room and are packed into boxes. The packed roses go onto a refrigerated truck where they make the journey to Quito’s airport.

Each night thousands of boxes of roses leave the Quito airport and fly to the U.S., Russia, and Europe. On the other end they are loaded onto more refrigerated trucks to go to distribution centers. After that they get to your local florist then onto a dining room table or cubicle desk. All within a few days so they don’t start wilting.

So what are you paying for when you lay out the cash for those flowers? A little for the flowers themselves, but mostly for a lot of coordinated shipping.

Want some chocolates instead? Ecuador won’t mind. They ship out plenty of cocoa as well.

Most travelers heading to Central America and South America are not doing it just to lie on a beach every day or putter around museums. So if there’s an element of nature or adventure in your itinerary, make sure you’ve got some decent travel gear before taking off. If what you’re packing is 10 years old, that stuff is probably far heavier and less durable than what you can get today.

Historically late August and September have been the best time to buy travel clothing and gadgets on sale. Retailers both real and virtual need to move out the warm-weather inventory and move in the fall/winter gear. When you add in a slumping economy and fewer people traveling, it’s a bonanza out there for the savvy shopper.

Here are a few great sales going on right now. Most of them are only going on for a few weeks, so go browsing now instead of putting it off.

Semi-Annual Sale: Up to 70% Off 12,000 Items at Backcountry.com

Find Sale and Clearance items at REI.com!

Teva sandals and shoes on sale now for men! 40-80% off for a limited time!

Clearance Sale Up to 50% at RockCreek.com

Extra 10% OFF + Free Shipping over $50 at eBags.com

Magellan’s Web Specials

Swiss Army Watch Closeouts – All 50% Off!

ExOfficio.com Sale – Up to 70% off the original price

Now through September 2nd at Sierra Trading Post: Spend $100 – Get $30 gift card Use Code: ALAUGUST9 at Checkout.

In Europe? Click here for huge discounts at WildDay.com

Milagro tequila

I’ve been wanting to review Milagro Tequila for a while because no matter what airport I’m flying out of in Latin America, Milagro always seems to be front and center at the duty free store. But who are these guys? You never see their bottles in a regular store in Mexico—just in the U.S.—and I don’t recall ever seeing an ad or a review in a magazine. (In all fairness, their website does link to four reviews from last year, though one of the magazines—Travel + Leisure Golf—is now kaput.)

Unfortunately, their Flash-heavy website is high on form, light on substance. I still have no idea where this tequila comes from and who is behind it. The contact page lists only a single e-mail address, with no phone number or physical location. Is Dr. No running this enterprise, or is it the front business for a drug cartel? Probably not, becaue it is distributed by William Grant & Sons, the same well-known distributor that has Glenfiddich and Hendrick’s Gin in its portfolio.

The proof is in the product though and I have to admit that from a price to payoff standpoint, this tequila is a bargain. In many duty-free stores, you can get the blanco version for 20 bucks and the reposado version for under $25. When I was in Mexico City recently they were offering a 3-for-2 special, but traveling alone I couldn’t stow that much in my luggage. I picked up some of their agave nectar instead for my wife and it was a pretty and useful gift.

I’m not going to tell you that Milagro tequila will blow you away and one sip will be a transformative experience. The reposado I bought, however, was more than good. It is good enough to sip on its own and it made a killer margarita I was happy to serve to my guests a few weeks ago. (And no, I don’t use that awful store-bought margarita mix, so you really could taste the tequila.) It’s a bit sweeter and more flowery than the norm, with a triple-distilled smoothness that would appeal to those not accustomed to drinking this spirit neat.

If you’re looking for tequila that will cover the basics for a good price, Milagro is good enough and if you are trying to grab a gift for someone, the bottle is pretty enough to make it look much more expensive than it is. For a step up in price to a C-note or so, there are versions that are truly impressive from a visual standpoint (second set in the photo above), but again at about half the price of competitors’ most showy versions. In my opinion you have to have a really sensitive and experienced palate to tell the difference between a $50 tequila bottle and a $250 tequila bottle anyway. Extensive aging doesn’t help tequila, so after a certain point it’s more about the bottle than what’s inside. Unless you’re buying for a true conneisseur, Milagro is a good bet.

Related Luxury Latin America story -Â Tequila Gets Ready for its Close-up in Jalisco

For the past six years, sales of premium tequila have been averaging growth of 20 percent per year. The good side of that is that the rot-gut stuff that is only half agave is becoming less popular and the finely crafted good stuff is showing up in more and more bars. But which brands are for real and which ones are just riding the bandwagon?

Fortunately, most of the good stuff is quite good, so most of the silliness in pricing comes from fancy hand-blown bottles, silver medallions, and carved wooden cases. If you’re paying more than $80 for a bottle that hasn’t been aged for years, you are likely paying for one of these marketing enhancements.

Siembra Azul (Blue Harvest) tequila is a nice departure. Trusting buyers to purchase based on taste instead of flash, this is a high-end, high-scoring tequila that puts its money into agave fruit instead of eye candy bottles.

I’ve been sipping the añejo version of Siembra Azul this past week and it ranks among the best I’ve sampled over the years, with the distinct floral and herbal overtones you get from the highland regions of Jalisco and the perfect interweaving of flavors you get from an attention to high quality throughout the process. In this region, the agave plants grow at an average elevation of 7200 feet above sea level, giving them a terroir and flavor profile that many believe is more distinctive and complex than the brands grown at lower elevations.

This version was developed by David Suro-Piñera, a Guadalajara native who has owned a restaurant and tequila bar in Philadelphia since 1986. He wasn’t content to go halfway: each liter requires around 11.5 kilos of agave, compared to a standard level of 7 kilos. The agave piñas are roasted in ovens for 36 hours, with each oven cleaned between roastings. There’s double distillation, copper pot stills, and then the añejo is aged for 12 months in new American oak barrels.

The quality shines through and this tequila has been winning raves in blind taste tests, even before the judges find out that the list price is $45. But what about a hook? Anything to make Siembra Azul really stand out from the pack? Well, how about this—it’s kosher!

For more on the subject, see our feature story on premium tequila in Jalisco.

It’s been awhile since I did any Latin American spirits taste test posts on here, so it’s time to pull out my reliable duty-free favorite Ron Zacapa. “Ron” is “rum” in these parts, but Mr. Zacapa is the king when it comes to Central America. You may see a local brand from Costa Rica or Panama here and there and Nicaragua’s Flor de Cana wins the prize for the best distribution. But if you’re going for quality, reach for the rum from—of all places—Guatemala.

I’m personally partial to the 15-year version, which seems to have the perfect balance of sweetness, caramel, butterscotch, and oak. It envelops you with the comfort of a warm blanket and a fireplace at the first sip and lingers on the finish like a night you never want to end. It’s smooth, warm, and elegant, with the complexity you would expect from something made well and aged well. There’s none of that typical rum “black strap bite” you get from its Nicaraguan counterpart and you can sip it neat all night long.

There’s a 23-year version as well, though for my taste buds it seems like too much of a good thing. The oak is much more prominent and it loses some of the character you can taste in the version that’s not almost a quarter-century old. For Scotch stored in cold climates the extra years can help, but in the hot tropics, there’s a limit to how long is too long.

The brilliant thing about this rum is the price: in duty-free shops you can commonly find the 15-year version for around $20, which is one of the world’s screaming spirits bargains. Even the 23-year version is often on sale for less than $35, fancy wood box included. If you’re heading home from Latin America and are looking for an appropriate gift, this one will elicit some appreciative smiles later. If you’re buying a gift for someone in Central America, this is a sure bet.