The Margarita
After the Martini, perhaps the second finest cocktail ever created was The Margarita.
There are some very simple rules about a true Margarita, which unfortunately like the Martini, has been convoluted over time.
I saw one recipe on the Internet had egg white in it. The classic margarita recipe never had albumen in it. That would be a Ramos Gin Fizz. Some of the horrendous bottled or dry packaged margarita mixes carry an egg white derivative to give the cocktail a froth when shaken, not to mention all that other junk they put in it, like high fructose corn syrup, polysorbate 60, and yellow die #6, like we might be worried these chemicals have to be enumerated. Skip the packaged mixes. This is really a very simple cocktail.
No one can definitively prove where, when or by whom The Margarita was originally created. There are many stories, some quite convincing, but no one story has been able to stand out as the true origin of this classic drink.
The Margarita Creation Lore
In the early 1930s, it was created at the Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico.
In 1936, Danny Negrete invented this drink for his girlfriend, Margarita, while working at the Garci Crespo Hotel in San Antonio, Texas.
On the 4th of July in 1942, a customer at the same hotel asked Francisco "Pancho" Morales for a "Magnolia", but he couldn't remember exactly how to make it, so he made something up, and named it the "Daisy" (which in Spanish, is "Margarita").
Sometime in the 1940's, Enrique Bastante Gutierez created this drink for Rita Hayworth, who's real name was Margarita.
In 1948, Margaret Sames created this drink for a party she was holding in Acapulco.
In 1948, it was created in Galveston, Texas by Santos Cruz, who mixed it up for singer Peggy Lee.
In the early 1950's, it was created at the Tail o' the Cock restaurant in Los Angeles in order to find a way to introduce Jose Cuervo tequila into the market.
There does seem to be plenty of documentation of people who remember drinking a margarita before WW II, so it is likely that the cocktail was invented before the US entered the war in 1941. Since tequila wasn't distributed nationwide until sometime in the 1950s, it also stands up to logical supposition that the cocktail was invented in Mexico or along the border. Stories about it being invented in Tijuana on the 4th of July sound suspiciously like the story generally attributed to the creation of Caesar’s Salad, so that rings as dubious.
Personally, I like the story of the bartender naming it after his girlfriend, or the one who made it for Rita Hayworth, but the most likely story is the first one, that The Margarita was created in Tijuana at a race track. Perhaps there is no singular point in history nor a specific place on the map where this elixir first appeared. It seems to me that it might have occurred to several people over time, or maybe at the same time, that tequila and lime juice were pretty good when combined together, and something like triple sec would be a natural way to infuse sweetness into the beverage, round out its flavor and add more alcohol.
No matter; The Margarita certainly ranks up there as a classic cocktail, worthy of homage and reverence, and a little respect for natural, classic ingredients. Like the Martini, The Margarita has suffered terribly in modern times in an effort to make it hip, quick, trendy, and cheap. It has been bastardized almost beyond recognition whether through the use of inferior (or just plain wrong) ingredients, or commercially made mixes with the aforementioned chemically manufactured ingredients.
The Margarita requires three ingredients, not including ice.
And a properly made margarita should never see the inside of a blender. We can pretty much thank Jimmy Buffet for that one.
The holy trinity of a well-crafted margarita is tequila, Cointreau (or triple sec), and fresh lime juice. But like any cocktail, the true art comes in arriving at the proper ratio of the ingredients in order to present a balance of the flavors. And what I've discovered through many nights of experimentation, is that the best ratio for The Margarita is two parts tequila, one part Cointreau, and four parts lime juice.
I recommend a good quality, but reasonably priced silver tequila for margarita use; spending more for a Reposado or aged Añejo tequila is a waste of money. I also recommend Cointreau which is, in fact, a triple sec, but it’s the best on the market.
Some restaurants, in order to drive the retail price of the cocktail, have taken to adding Gran Marnier to their margarita. Like ordering Courvoisier and Coke, that is a waste of money and also decidedly changes the flavor of the cocktail. While the sweetness of triple sec comes from oranges, as does Gran Marnier, the latter is combined with brandy, and brandy is not in the classic recipe. If you use Gran Marnier, you're getting a different cocktail, which is just another bastardization of the original recipe.
The best way to bring all of these ingredients together is to pour them into a cocktail shaker, add the ice last, and shake until icy cold, strained into a margarita glass over fresh ice with a lime on the side as garnish.
And you do not need salt. I don't think salt was in the original recipe. Either it was added to the rim of the glass as marketing hype designed to make the cocktail more complicated than it really needs to be, or as I suspect, it was incorporated somewhere along the way to disguise the taste of really bad tequila.
The Margarita
Ingredients
- 1 stemmed margarita glass or champagne coupe
- 2 oz premium silver tequila (like, Patron Silver)
- 1 oz Cointreau
- 2 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
- hard ice
- lime wedge for garnish
Instructions
- Add hard ice to the margarita glass or champagne coupe, and fill with cold water. Allow to sit for 3-5 minutes.
- Measure all ingredients into a dry cocktail shaker.
- Pour the water and ice out of the margarita glass or champagne coup and fill with fresh hard ice.
- Add hard ice to the cocktail shaker to within an inch of the top, then cap it.
- Shake the cocktail shaker vigorously 29 times.
- Remove the cocktail shaker's cap and strain the chilled margarita directly into the margarita glass or champagne coupe.
- Garnish with a wedge of lime anchored on the rim of the glass.
- Serve immediately on a cocktail napkin.
Notes
- Shaking the cocktail vigorously 29 times ensures the contents are properly chilled and that dilution is minimal.
- The term "hard ice" is an old bartender term from the days when a mixologist would use an ice pick on a large block of ice to pick off large chunks of ice to make a cocktail. Today, the term "hard ice" is to distinguish it from "crushed ice" or "shaved ice."
