Mamajuana at last! More than a decade in the uncorking, but its fumes were in the air right from the beginning of this Drunk Pynchon goose chase. Bleeding Edge was the original inspiration here, with the hollows in its DeepArcher crawlers’ webs sheltering obscure booze of various tantalising species, eminently googleable although often not so easily tracked down in meatspace.

Until today, I thought Mamajuana kicked off the party Bleeding Edge-wise. But in rereading chapter two, I find Maxine recalling a series of post-divorce “Crown Royal Shirley Temples,” right there on page twelve. Somehow these eluded me when I was List-compiling. Updated now. The well may never run dry! (And of course, a dreamed-of heavy and Hungarian scented rain’s about to fall all over the catchment for said well…).

The mamajuana appears in the same reminiscence as the spiked Shirley Temples. That freshly divorced young Maxine finds herself more or less accidentally on a Caribbean cruise for the American Borderline Personality Disorder Association—a fortuitous place for a meet-cute with Reg Despard. Soon, they’re docked in Manzanillo Bay, Dominican Republic:

At the end of the pier, souvenir stands have quickly materialized, snack vendors selling yaniqueques and chimichurros, practitioners of voodoo and Santería with spells for sale, purveyors of mamajuana, a Dominican specialty which comes in gigantic glass jars in each of which what looks like a piece of a tree has been marinating in red wine and rum. For a cross-borderline cherry on the sundae, there’s also been an authentic Haitian voodoo love spell laid on each jar of Dominican mamajuana. “Now you’re talking!” cries Reg. He and Maxine join a small group who have begun drinking the stuff and passing jars around, presently finding themselves a few miles out of town at El Sueño Tropical, a half-built and for the moment abandoned luxury hotel, screaming through the corridors, swinging across the courtyard on jungle vines, which have found a purchase overhead, chasing lizards and flamingos not to mention one another, and misbehaving on the moldering king-sized beds.

Pynchon’s hits all the key points in the typical mamajuana equation there: rum + red wine + bits of tree = aphrodisiac. Away from the tourists though, mamajuana gets prescribed more broadly. It’s not just herbal viagra, but a beloved national drink and something of a go-to cure-all tonic. Mamajuana is made from an eclectic mixture of barks, leaves, and herbs infused in rum and red wine and sweetened with some honey. Recipes seem to vary pretty widely, with some including raisins and spices. It’s descended from a pre-Colombian drink made by the Taíno people. The name stems from the same root as “demijohn” and refers to those big glass vessels Maxine and Reg get it in.

My own attempt at mamajuana started with a pack of mysterious bark and wood and leaves, looking more or less like the output of a wood chipper. Thanks to the beneficent marvels of modern global e-commerce, this sealed up bunch of weird Dominican leaf litter made its way to my southern Australian doorstep. I then covered it in 500 mL of Dominican rum and 200 mL of cheap shiraz someone gave me in a work secret santa. A week later, I added some honey, raisins, cinnamon, and star anise. I then gave it another week of melding together, before running the whole thing through a coffee filter and bottling it. After one more week, it was ready to go.

The resulting drink comes across something like a stiffer (ahem), more bracing version of mulled wine. It’s warm and spicy, mildly sweet, earthy and woody. There’s a honey-molasses sweetness set against an apertifesque woody bitterness. Medicinal and a little astringent. Not really easy drinking, but compelling. It’s not hard to convince oneself it might have healing properties—even benefits to circulation, stamina, and, uh, flamingo-chasing.