A Margarita is three things: tequila, orange liqueur and lime juice, shaken hard and served cold. It sounds too simple to get wrong, yet most bad ones are wrong in the same way, with too much sweet or too little lime. This piece gives you the spec, then lets you move the balance and see what happens.
| Ingredient | Measure |
|---|---|
| Tequila, 100% agave (blanco) | 50 ml (1⅔ oz) |
| Triple sec or orange liqueur | 20 ml (⅔ oz) |
| Fresh lime juice | 15 ml (½ oz) |
Method: shaken. Add everything to a shaker with plenty of ice, shake hard for about ten seconds until the tin is frosty, then strain. Glass: a chilled cocktail glass (a coupe or small margarita glass works too). Garnish: a salt rim on half the glass, or none.
For the salt, run a lime wedge along the outside edge of half the rim and roll it in coarse salt. Keeping the salt on the outside and on one side means the drinker chooses a salty sip or a clean one, and no salt falls in the drink.
The Margarita belongs to a family called the Daisy: a spirit, something sour and something sweet. The word margarita is Spanish for daisy, and the drink is widely seen as a tequila Daisy. The sour is lime. The sweet is the orange liqueur, which also adds a little orange aroma and body.
The job of the lime is to hold back the sweetness and to lift the grassy, peppery side of the tequila. The job of the liqueur is to round off the lime's sharp edge. If you push either one too far the drink stops being a Margarita: too much liqueur is a sticky sour, too much lime is a lime shot.
Shaking does a second job. Ice melts into the drink as you shake, and that water softens the alcohol and the acid. A shaken drink usually ends up with roughly a quarter more volume than you poured. Skip the shake or use small, wet ice and the drink tastes harsh and warm.
| Shopping list | Amount |
|---|
Strength assumes a 40% tequila and liqueur, no alcohol in the lime or syrup, and about a quarter extra volume from melted ice. The balance score is a rough guide using typical sugar and acid levels, not a lab reading.
There is no single correct Margarita, only a few common ones. The IBA spec (50/20/15) is the written standard. The 2:1:1 version (for example 50 ml tequila, 25 ml orange liqueur, 25 ml lime) is a very common house spec: equal sweet and sour, which tastes rounder and a little sweeter. Tommy's Margarita, from a restaurant of that name in San Francisco, drops the liqueur for agave syrup: about 60 ml tequila, 30 ml lime and 15 ml agave syrup, so the agave in the tequila stays in front.
Notice how the tool scores them. The 2:1:1 and Tommy's both come out brighter than the IBA spec, because more of the volume is lime. If your limes are sweet, or your liqueur is very sweet, nudge the lime up. Taste, then change one thing at a time.
Nobody knows who made the first one. Stories name bartenders and hosts in Mexico and California in the 1930s and 1940s, and several of them contradict each other. What the records do show is a path: Tequila Daisies are mentioned in 1936, a drink with Margarita's proportions called the Picador appears in a 1937 London cocktail book, and the first known use of the name Margarita in print is in a California newspaper in 1953, followed by a recipe in Esquire that year. Treat any single origin story as a good story rather than a fact.
Long and lighter: make it in a tall glass over ice, use 35 ml tequila and top with soda water. It is a bigger, longer drink with noticeably less alcohol per sip.
Alcohol-free: use an alcohol-free agave-style spirit, 15–20 ml lime and a small splash of orange juice with a teaspoon of agave syrup in place of the liqueur. Shake it with ice and keep the salt rim. These spirits vary a lot, so taste and adjust the lime.
Spicy: muddle two thin slices of chilli in the shaker before adding ice, and fine-strain.
A Margarita is a strong drink, closer to a Martini than to a long drink, so serve it in a small glass and take your time with it. If you are driving, choose the alcohol-free version.