The Margarita is the definitive tequila sour: blanco tequila brightened by orange liqueur and pulled taut by fresh lime, shaken hard and served up ice-cold. It drinks like a Sidecar with tequila where the cognac was and lime standing in for lemon — the agave's green, peppery edge rounded by the triple sec's sweet orange, with an optional salt rim sharpening every sip.
Garnish: Salt Rim, Lime Wheel
Shaken · Coupe · Up
rinse
Optionally rub a lime wedge around half the rim of a chilled coupe and dip it in salt for a half salt rim.
add
Add the tequila blanco, triple sec, and fresh lime juice to a shaker with ice.
shake
Shake well until thoroughly chilled.
strain
Strain into the chilled coupe.
garnish
Garnish with a lime wheel.
The name hints at its ancestry — "margarita" is Spanish for daisy, and the drink is generally read as the older brandy daisy rebuilt around tequila at some point in the 1930s or 1940s. Who did the rebuilding has never been settled: the claimants include Carlos "Danny" Herrera at Rancho La Gloria, Francisco "Pancho" Morales in Ciudad Juarez, the Dallas socialite Margarita Sames and Santos Cruz at Galveston's Balinese Room, among others, with their dates ranging from 1936 to 1948. Whatever its true birthplace, the recipe had reached print by December 1953, when Esquire published it.