Blanco tequila and a generous squeeze of lime, lengthened with cola over ice in a salt-rimmed glass, make this essentially a Cuba Libre with agave where the rum would be. Salty, citric and gently fizzy, it drinks easy, the salt rim sharpening the lime while the cola's sweetness rounds off the tequila's peppery, vegetal edge.
Garnish: Salt Rim, Lime Wedge
Built · Highball · On the Rocks
rinse
Moisten the rim of a highball glass with a lime wedge and coat it in salt.
build
Fill the salted highball glass with ice cubes.
add
Pour in the blanco tequila and the lime juice.
top
Top with cold cola (Mexican Coke is traditional).
stir
Stir gently to combine — at La Capilla, famously with the lime-cutting knife.
garnish
Garnish with a lime wedge.
The Batanga goes back to 1961 and to Don Javier Delgado Corona, owner of La Capilla, a bar in the town of Tequila, who conceived it as a tequila answer to the Cuba Libre. He gave it the name of one of his regulars, a stout man who frequented the bar. Part of its lore is how Don Javier mixed it: every glass was stirred with the very knife he kept for cutting limes.