Margarita
Tequila, orange liqueur and lime, shaken and strained into a salt-rimmed glass.
Tequila, orange liqueur and lime, shaken and poured over fresh ice in a salt-rimmed glass.
CC0 · Cropped, white-balanced, graded and re-encoded to WebP by eXir.
A pale, salt-rimmed Margarita over ice in a tall glass, garnished with a lime wheel
Serving
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring. Dilution is modelled rather than measured, as a fraction of the poured volume before any ice; dotted figures descend from that estimate.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Ingredients
25 ml fresh lime juice
50 ml blanco tequila
25 ml orange liqueurProprietary
2 g salt
½ lime (8 g)
- 25 ml fresh lime juice
- 50 ml blanco tequila
- 25 ml orange liqueurProprietary
- 2 g salt
- ½ lime (8 g)
- ~50 ml water
Glass
Vessel
150 ml of liquid, served without ice, inside the 180 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring. Dilution is modelled rather than measured, as a fraction of the poured volume before any ice; dotted figures descend from that estimate.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Ingredients
- 25 ml fresh lime juice
- 50 ml blanco tequila
- 25 ml orange liqueurProprietary
- 2 g salt
- ½ lime (8 g)
- 25 ml fresh lime juice
- 50 ml blanco tequila
- 25 ml orange liqueurProprietary
- 2 g salt
- ½ lime (8 g)
- ~50 ml water
Glass
Vessel
150 ml of liquid plus 130 ml of cubed ice occupies about 280 ml, inside the 300 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
5 steps · 1m 57sRun a lime wedge around half the rim of a coupe and dip that half in salt.
Only half the rim is usually salted, so the drinker can choose a sip with salt or without rather than getting it in every mouthful.
Squeeze the 25 ml fresh lime juice and strain out the pips and pulp.
Combine the 50 ml blanco tequila, the 25 ml orange liqueur and the 25 ml fresh lime juice in a shaker and fill it with cubed ice.
Shake hard for 12s until the tin frosts over.
Double strain into the rimmed glass, then set the lime wheel on the rim.
Common pitfallA reposado or añejo tequila poured here reads oddly against the salt and citrus; the barrel notes fight the lime rather than complementing it, which is why an unaged blanco is the usual choice for this build.
Keeping and make-ahead
Batched ahead, this keeps sealed and cold. The water line the engine adds is the dilution figure from the spec panel, not a rule of thumb.
Method
5 steps · 1m 57sRun a lime wedge around half the rim of a rocks glass and dip that half in salt.
Squeeze the 25 ml fresh lime juice and strain out the pips and pulp.
Combine the 50 ml blanco tequila, the 25 ml orange liqueur and the 25 ml fresh lime juice in a shaker and fill it with cubed ice.
Shake hard for 12s until the tin frosts over.
Fill the rimmed glass with fresh cubed ice and strain the drink over it, then set the lime wheel on the rim.
The shake still does the drink's whole dilution job; the fresh cube poured after is for holding the temperature over the time it takes to drink, not for diluting it further the way a stirred drink's ice would.
Keeping and make-ahead
Batched ahead, this keeps sealed and cold. The water line the engine adds is the dilution figure from the spec panel, not a rule of thumb.
About
A salt-rimmed tequila sour descended from the Victorian Daisy family, with no settled inventor: at least half a dozen bartenders and hosts have laid claim to it across the 1930s and 1940s.
"Margarita" is Spanish for daisy, and the drink's shape (a spirit, citrus and a sweetened liqueur, shaken) is the tequila branch of the older Daisy family of cocktails 1. A Tequila Daisy served in Tijuana is recorded in the Moville Mail on 23 July 1936, credited to a bartender named Madden who was said to have grabbed the wrong bottle by accident 1.
No single origin for the Margarita specifically is settled, and the claims that survive contradict each other on both the year and the inventor. Johnny Durlesser, a bartender at the Tail O' The Cock in Los Angeles, said he created it in 1937, though his own recipe matches one already published that year in the Café Royal Cocktail Book under a different name 2. Danny Herrera is said to have made it at Rancho La Gloria for the actress Marjorie King, who could tolerate tequila but not other spirits, in an account usually dated to 1938 1 2. Francisco "Pancho" Morales claimed to have improvised it at Tommy's Place in Ciudad Juárez in 1942 after mishearing an order 1 2. Margaret Sames, a Texan socialite, is separately credited with serving it at a Christmas party in Acapulco in 1948, an account that reached a wider audience once her guest Conrad Hilton put the drink on his hotels' menus 1.
None of these accounts is independently verifiable, and several were only put on record decades after the events they describe. What the competing stories agree on is a period (the late 1930s through the late 1940s, on both sides of the US–Mexico border) rather than a single bar or a single inventor.
- 1Margarita Cocktail Origins and Historydiffordsguide.com
- 2The Contentious History of the Margaritatequila512.com