Last night, I lit some candles, poured some tequila into a glass, and gazed across my dining room table at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Oprah Winfrey. They were laughing heartily: Oprah clutched a couple bottles of Teremana, Johnson’s brand of tequila, while he rested his arm across her shoulders. Maybe I should mention: They were not technically in my dining room, but rather on a page of a The Rock photo book that I had propped open on my table for the occasion.
The occasion being an unforgivably belated review of The Rock’s tequila, which came out a whole ten months ago. But all things The Rock are considered perennially relevant by me, personally. And sampling his tequila seemed about as close as I would ever get to The Rock himself—aside from that one time he tweeted at me.
There are no rules for how to taste The Rock’s tequila. You must go with your gut on such things, and my gut led me to set the mood with candles and my copy of The Rock: Through the Lens: His Life, His Movies, His World. A vision board, if you will. Or maybe a seance, a wishful invocation. I popped the cork and held it to my nose, scribbling down some notes: soil, sour, gym, grass, eau de Rock. Then I poured the golden Reposado into my glass and sniffed and scribbled again: earth, wood—
I’m sitting in The Rock’s study on a tufted red velvet couch. He has slippers. They are also red velvet. A fire crackles. There’s a pipe to his right, unlit. He laughs in that half throat-clearing way of his. Tires over gravel, then sliding across slick cement.
There’s a cat curled up in his lap. He’s petting it, gently.