Episode 227 - The Margarita: A Sweet Technology

From Phylloxera to Triple Sec

This event, of course, is the phylloxera plague that wiped out grape production on the European mainland for decades to come. No grapes means no brandy, and no brandy means no brandy-based Curacao. We can assume that the Dutch were just fine. They had plenty of sugar cane distillates to pivot to, but supply chains moved even more slowly back then, so the pest outbreak caused a major disruption nonetheless.

This is where Triple Sec enters the picture. It was said to have been invented back in the 1830s (when Curacao was still popular) by the Combier family, who owned a distillery in Saumur, France (about 200 miles Southwest of Paris). Like many European liqueurs, there’s a little bit of hocus pocus and smoke and mirrors surrounding why it’s called Triple Sec. Some say it’s because the product was originally triple distilled, which would kind of make sense. “Sec” literally means “dry,” and the more times you distill something, the less water it contains. Other origin stories allude to the possibility that the Combier family used three different types of dried orange peel in their maceration. And still other explanations point to the fact that triple sec has (in general) less sugar than traditional Curacao formulations. So that last explanation would be calling it “dry” in the same way that a wine can be “dry,” meaning “less residual sugar.”

These new Triple Secs were created in a similar manner to Curacao, except the peels were macerated in a neutral sugar beet spirit (the predominant spirit made in the immediate wake of Phylloxera) then distilled, and fortified with sugar also derived from the sugar beet. Unlike dark, sweet Curacaos, these products were lighter and more ethereal in flavor and appearance, but they still packed a huge punch of orange flavor.

In 1875 – at the height of the Phylloxera crisis, Cointreau created its iconic brand of Triple Sec, using a method we can only assume was very similar to the one pioneered by Combier. Until the introduction of Maison Ferrand’s Dry Curacao in 2011 (which was actually developed in partnership with Dave Wondrich), Cointreau was pretty much the gold standard for what a clear orange liqueur is and should be. So if you encounter – at any point – a cocktail recipe that calls for Triple Sec, go ahead and assume that Cointreau is going to be an exemplary representative of the category.

A Felicitous Partnership

5 years after the launch of Cointreau in 1875, a new player entered the picture and its name was Grand Marnier, a mashup comprised of the surname of the family responsible for inventing it and a timeless suggestion from a helpful friend. The family were the Marnier-Lapostolles, who ran a distilling operation in a town called Neauphle-le-Château just west of Paris, and the friend was César Ritz, the Swiss Hotelier responsible for creating what we now know as the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain.

After tinkering with a large stock of Cognac acquired by his father-in-law, Eugène Lapostolle, Louis-Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle decided that it would benefit from the addition of a rare orange extract from the Caribbean (in all likelihood, the very same flavorant used in Orange Curacao). Some fine old Cognac, some orange extract, and a little bit of sugar to marry it all together…et voila! A star is born.

But to be a star, you need to do more than walk the walk. You need to talk the talk, and you need to dress the part.

In 1880, “La Belle Epoque” was really kicking into high gear in Paris, ushering in a cultural golden age that featured a ton of fashionable trends and innovations. One linguistic fad was to call everything “petite,” which literally means “small,” but is often informally taken to mean “cute” or “charming.” So you didn’t just have a dog, you owned a “petit chien,” and you didn’t just read the daily newspaper, you read either, Le Petit Journal, or Le Petit Parisien. Those were the actual, official names of the publications, not just nicknames.

From Petite to Grand Marnier

So amidst all this cutesy petite-ness, one day, Louis-Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle poured a dram of his orange-infused, sweetened Cognac concoction for his good friend, César Ritz, and the latter decided that it would be smart to buck convention, to go against the grain, and call this delicious nectar, “Grand Marnier,” a name that was loud and proud, big and bold, in a world where many seemed ready to kick back against the stifling “petiteness” of the bourgeoisie.

So now we’ve got a spirit that talks the talk AND walks the walk…but how would it dress the part? Well, that’s where the tradition of the Cognac region comes in. If you look at a bottle of Grand Marnier, you’ll notice that it resembles the traditional alembic (or “Charentais”) still design used by French brandy distillers. This, of course, is no coincidence. The bottle was designed to look strikingly different – to stand out from the herd – and the whole ensemble is adorned with a red ribbon (or “cordon rouge”) affixed to the bottle with a wax stamp. For this reason, the term “cordon rouge” very quickly became synonymous with Grand Marnier’s signature product.

But it wasn’t just Grand Marnier who benefitted from its relationship with César Ritz. The hotel magnate famously partnered with Georges Auguste Escoffier, one of the most famous and influential French chefs of all time. The liqueur was very quickly adopted by their respective food and beverage programs, also featuring in one of Escoffier’s most iconic recipes: Crêpes Suzette.

Orange Liqueur, In Summary

Taken as a group, the trio of Orange Curacao, Triple Sec, and Grand Marnier are the three orange liqueurs that best define the category of “orange-sweetened sours” that eventually evolved into the Margarita. Curacao focuses on the intensity and uniqueness of the bitter orange flavor, Triple Sec operates by trying to convey all the orange flavor of Curacao, but without nearly as much sugar, and Grand Marnier is predicated on the notion that extravagance and boldness can bring any beverage experience to the next level.

Orange liqueurs in general, and bottles like Cointreau and Grand Marnier in particular, were a huge part of beverage culture in continental Europe and beyond by the early 20th century, when Americans began quaffing “sunrise tequilas” at Mexican resorts, as we mentioned at the conclusion of Part I. But while all this experimentation with “new-style” and “old-style” daisies was happening in the new world, a new conflict was about to break out in Europe. I mean, yeah, there was some little squabble about an archduke assassination that got a few people bent out of shape, but the conflict I’m referring to is one that would push bartenders to not merely combine spirits, acids, and orange liqueurs, but also to seriously consider and ruthlessly defend the ratios they used in the cocktail shaker.

The Sidebar: Conflicting Formulations

To learn why, we need to set the timeline back about 100 years before the present day to a famous bar in Paris, where a bartender named Harry MacElhone was whipping up drinks for thirsty American Expats who couldn’t drink out in the open on their native soil, where the Volstead Act was in full force.

His venue was known as Harry’s New York Bar, and this eponymous joint is absolutely legendary in the beverage world as being the definitive or assumed origin of drinks like the French 75, Bloody Mary, Old Pal, Monkey Gland, and, importantly for this episode, the Sidecar. According to cocktail historian Simon Difford, whom we’ll return to in just a minute:

The son of a jute mill owner from Dundee, Scotland, Harry first worked at number 5 Rue Daunou in Paris (the site that he would later acquire and turn into Harry’s Bar) when Milton Henry Opened his New York Bar there in 1911. He then headed to America, working at the Elton Hotel Bar in Waterbury, Connecticut, and the Plaza Bar, New York, before serving in the air force in World War I.

When the war ended, Harry took up a role at Ciro’s Club, London, where he became enough of a celebrity to publish his first book, Harry of Crio’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails in 1921.”

In this book, we find a recipe for the Sidecar cocktail, which is described as containing equal parts Cognac, the orange liqueur Cointreau, and Lemon Juice. I managed to dig up a scanned PDF of the book online, so you can head over to the show notes page if you’d like to see how it appears in its original format. Unfortunately, the edition I was able to find was the 1923 reprint, and not the original version that came out two years prior, but you’ll note that at least this edition of the book credits the Sidecar to a bartender named Pat McGarry at Buck’s Club in London. The same equal parts recipe also appears in another 1922 book called Cocktails: How To Mix Them, by a Belgian-born bartender named Robert Vermeire.

Around the same time, a second recipe for the drink appears, courtesy of Paris Bartender Frank Meier, who tended bar at The Ritz. According to a Tweet thread I dug up from Dave Wondrich (also linked in the show notes), this recipe was published in 1923, a year after the two equal-parts formulas hit print, and had something that Wondrich describes as a ⅔ – ⅙ – ⅙ formulation. This looks SOMETHING like 1 ¾ ounces of Cognac, paired with about a third of an ounce each of lemon juice and Triple Sec.

A little less than a decade later, a book would come out that presented a schism in the church of brandy sours much like the schism between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The author was a barman by the name of Harry Craddock, the book was the legendary Savoy Cocktail Book, and HIS recipe for the Sidecar calls for 2 full ounces of Brandy and one ounce each of orange liqueur and lemon juice.

London vs. Paris
Craddock’s Sidecar recipe became known as the “London” school, since he tended bar at a London hotel, while the equal parts rendition became known as the “Paris” school. Ironically, it may have been Frank Meier’s Paris Ritz version that inspired Craddock (since Craddock’s formula uses similar ratios, but different measures), and we know with very little doubt that the equal parts Paris version was originally created by Pat McGarry in London.

While all of this chiasmatic cocktail commerce twixt London and Paris makes for incredibly confusing historical commentary, the upshot is this:

As different palates and sensibilities had the opportunity to test and tweak the Sidecar formulation, it migrated from an equal-parts recipe to something that resembles what we today would think of as a classic sour ratio: 2 or 3 parts booze, one part sour, and one part sweet.

Now, all these measurements are a huge pain in the neck to keep track of if you’re just using automatic recall, so I’ve created a very special Google Sheet with all the recipes I referenced here and in Part I so that we can do a little bit of number crunching, and so you can compare these different builds based on other qualities like publication date, service method, and ABV. So please, if you have the chance, take a look at all these different sour cocktail recipes lined up next to one another on that spreadsheet. I guarantee it’ll give you a completely new appreciation for the format.

The Sidecar: Conflicting Formulations

To learn why, we need to set the timeline back about 100 years before the present day to a famous bar in Paris, where a bartender named Harry MacElhone was whipping up drinks for thirsty American Expats who couldn’t drink out in the open on their native soil, where the Volstead Act was in full force.

His venue was known as Harry’s New York Bar, and this eponymous joint is absolutely legendary in the beverage world as being the definitive or assumed origin of drinks like the French 75, Bloody Mary, Old Pal, Monkey Gland, and, importantly for this episode, the Sidecar. According to cocktail historian Simon Difford, whom we’ll return to in just a minute:

The son of a jute mill owner from Dundee, Scotland, Harry first worked at number 5 Rue Daunou in Paris (the site that he would later acquire and turn into Harry’s Bar) when Milton Henry Opened his New York Bar there in 1911. He then headed to America, working at the Elton Hotel Bar in Waterbury, Connecticut, and the Plaza Bar, New York, before serving in the air force in World War I.

When the war ended, Harry took up a role at Ciro’s Club, London, where he became enough of a celebrity to publish his first book, Harry of Crio’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails in 1921.”

In this book, we find a recipe for the Sidecar cocktail, which is described as containing equal parts Cognac, the orange liqueur Cointreau, and Lemon Juice. I managed to dig up a scanned PDF of the book online, so you can head over to the show notes page if you’d like to see how it appears in its original format. Unfortunately, the edition I was able to find was the 1923 reprint, and not the original version that came out two years prior, but you’ll note that at least this edition of the book credits the Sidecar to a bartender named Pat McGarry at Buck’s Club in London. The same equal parts recipe also appears in another 1922 book called Cocktails: How To Mix Them, by a Belgian-born bartender named Robert Vermeire.

Around the same time, a second recipe for the drink appears, courtesy of Paris Bartender Frank Meier, who tended bar at The Ritz. According to a Tweet thread I dug up from Dave Wondrich (also linked in the show notes), this recipe was published in 1923, a year after the two equal-parts formulas hit print, and had something that Wondrich describes as a ⅔ – ⅙ – ⅙ formulation. This looks SOMETHING like 1 ¾ ounces of Cognac, paired with about a third of an ounce each of lemon juice and Triple Sec.

A little less than a decade later, a book would come out that presented a schism in the church of brandy sours much like the schism between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The author was a barman by the name of Harry Craddock, the book was the legendary Savoy Cocktail Book, and HIS recipe for the Sidecar calls for 2 full ounces of Brandy and one ounce each of orange liqueur and lemon juice.

Sidecar Diplomacy

As a quick aside, two other Sidecar recipes that I think are important to share before we move on come courtesy of David Embury, author of the 1948 book, The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, and Simon Difford, who is a contemporary cocktail scholar and publisher of Difford’s Guide. Embury likes a decidedly extreme 8:2:1 ratio of 2 ounces brandy to ½ lemon juice, to ¼ oz triple sec, while Difford’s formulation attempts to draw up a peace treaty between the London and Paris recipes with a more gentle 3:2:2 ratio.

While neither of these recipes is what I would personally gravitate toward as either a bartender or a consumer, I think they speak to the underlying reason why there’s no set recipe for the Margarita: because everyone has a slightly different opinion on how much sweet should be paired with how much sour. In the Sidecar world, as we’ve just seen, and as you can very clearly see on my spreadsheet, people have attempted to solve the sweet/sour problem via vigorous debate, diplomacy, ambassadorship, and entangling geographic alliances fueled by misplaced geographic attribution. It all feels very political. And when you look at these different recipes over time, it can seem like they swing back and forth much like the political pendulum: sometimes more sweet, sometimes more sour.

One thing that will become immediately clear when we turn our attention to Margaritas, however, is that questions about the ideal ratio of ingredients are not solved by politics or statecraft, but rather by technology.

Enter: Tequila

The earliest mention of a spirit like tequila enters the history books in the early 1600s, when the Spanish were really ramping up their colonial efforts in the New World. One thing we pretty reliably understand about the Spanish is that their Catholic religion played an integral part in the way they established and consolidated control over the people whose lands they claimed. And one thing we know about the Catholic church is that wine was pretty important to the way they did business.

So the Spanish would roll into an area, and while some of them were absorbed in spreading diseases and trying to part the natives with their luxuries and resources, others would be busy erecting churches and planting grapes. In some locales, these vines thrived. To learn more about that, you can tune into my interview with Macchu Pisco founder Melanie Asher in Episode 167. But in other areas of the new world, grapes just weren’t all that successful.

In places like Mexico, Catholic priests and missionaries were stuck trying to get creative with their communion wine sourcing. But that didn’t stop thirsty Spanish landowners and businessmen from capitalizing on the native crops and ferments. Since long before the Spanish had arrived, indigenous people had been fermenting a drink called pulque using the sap of agave plants, which were plentiful in certain parts of Mexico.

Sources disagree when it comes to establishing the exact date when these mezcal wines were first distilled. Early distilling proponents claim this could have happened as early as the 1530s, while more conservative estimates ascribe the first noteworthy distilling operation to Don Pedro Sanches de Tagle, Marquis of Altamira and Caballero de la Orden of Calatrava in the year 1600.

Who Invented The Margarita? Who Cares?

From the very first word I set down in this 2-part audio essay, I’ve been struggling to figure out exactly when and how to work in a bunch of conflicting origin stories for the Margarita. The reason for this is that most of the anecdotes referenced online seem to lack a certain element of validity or “definitiveness.”

To me, and hopefully to you, it doesn’t really matter which bartender reached into the well and grabbed the wrong bottle when somebody ordered a Daisy. It doesn’t matter which famous actress claimed to be allergic to all spirits except Tequila. It doesn’t matter at which bar in Tijuana, or Juarez, or LA, or Galveston, someone first shook up Tequila, and citrus, and orange liqueur and poured the mixture into a glass, very likely with a salted rim, and call it a “Margarita.”

As we established in part 1, “Margarita” is simply the Spanish word for “Daisy,” and as if the fact that we’re describing a “Tequila Daisy” isn’t enough, it also just so happens that “Margarita” was an extremely popular name in Mexico during the 1930s and 1940s when all these alleged origin stories are said to take place.

To me, there are precisely 2 cocktail recipes that matter when it comes to the origins of the Margarita. One is called the “Picador” and appears in UK bartender Billy Tarling’s

Café Royal Cocktail Book in 1937, and the other is New York Bartender Charlie Connolly’s “Tequila Sour” which appears in The World Famous Cotton Club: 1939 Book of Mixed Drinks in 1939.

The Picador is a 2:1:1 combination of Tequila to Cointreau to Lime Juice, while the Tequila Sour is a 3:1:1 combo of the same ingredients, featuring a salted rim. The fact that these two cocktails hail from bartenders in London and New York implies that Tequila, by this time, has become available to drinkers in both the US and Europe. And the fact that one employs a salted rim, while the other is more minimal implies that there’s some flexibility as to the precise service method for a drink sporting Tequila, orange liqueur, and lime.

This duo of recipes establishes what I’ll refer to as the rough “Prototype” for a Margarita cocktail, which falls somewhere between Frank Meier’s and Harry Craddock’s Sidecar cocktail ratios, albeit using different measures. In most Margarita cocktails from this point forward, you’re going to encounter something like 2 or 3 parts booze, to 1 part orange liqueur, to 1 part lime juice. Any divergence from this should be considered a very conscious stylistic choice, and we’re going to take a look at two very important examples of this in just a minute.

The 1950s is really when the American drinking public discovered The Margarita, with references to the beverage appearing by name in quite a few periodicals. This comes close upon the heels of the first official Mexican standard for Tequila, which was published in 1949 and required that the spirit contain 100% agave. This standard was softened in 1964 to allow for 30% of a distillate to be comprised of non-agave sugars, which was again raised to 49% in 1970.

Remember when I said that this episode was going to be all about sugar? And remember how I said that the Margarita cocktail solved problems about its formulation using technology rather than diplomacy? Well, here’s where those predictions come true. This switch from 100% de Agave Tequila to blended-base Tequilas called “mixtos” is an elaboration on that first Industrial Revolution of Tequila in the 20s and 30s, when distillers started pitching yeast and using alternative sugars.

One thing that has never changed about agave (and hopefully never will) is the difficulty with which its starches are broken down into sugars. So these early yeast and sugar innovations in the Tequila world helped distillers be more efficient, likely saving them from ruin in a difficult business landscape after a decade of civil war.

But in the latter half of the 20th century, these further additions of non-agave sugars into the manufacturing process are all about increasing profits and appealing to an American consumer base that, by all accounts, seemed to favor bland spirits like vodka and un-aged rum.

The reason why consumers today are so leery of mixto Tequilas is because we feel like they’re trying to rip us off – trying to put an inferior product in our glass, when instead we could be drinking a genuine article. But if you soften your gaze a little bit and approach this question of mixing distillate bases not as a stock broker, but more like an artist, you’ll realize that what’s happening at the level of flavor is that we’re getting something entirely different on the palate when we start mixing different sugars. In the still, you get a more efficient ferment and distillate, and on the palate…well, let’s just say it’s about to get even MORE complicated.

Sweet Consequences

The two types of sugar that we need to look at here are sucrose (which you can think of as table sugar), and fructose (or fruit sugar). Sucrose is what we’re talking about when we think of those sweet orange liqueurs like Cointreau and Grand Marnier, and fructose is the primary sugar in those agave plants that we use to create tequila.

Researchers use sucrose as the baseline by which all other sugars are measured. So when a tasting study is conducted, and a participant is asked to taste and rate a number of carefully titrated sugar-water solutions, sucrose is always given a score of 1 and all other scores are calculated in relation to sucrose. So if you’re looking at a Margarita and trying to figure out what’s being hacked to give your brain an extra boost of happy chemicals, you’ll want to look at the amount of sucrose-based sweetener in the recipe and then consider the following three facts:

1. Under controlled, laboratory conditions, studies indicate that fructose exhibits perceived sweetness levels far higher than sucrose [Figure 1]. That means that if you have any fructose in your Margarita in the form of high fructose corn syrup or agave nectar, it’s going to be perceived as sweeter than it would with a corresponding amount of sucrose.

2. Fructose is perceived as sweeter in colder solutions (you know, like a cocktail you shake or serve over ice)[Figure 2].

3. In combination, sucrose and fructose have a synergistic effect on the taster, being perceived as sweeter than an equal amount of either sugar by itself.

One thing we need to be careful of here is assuming that Tequila contains fructose. Generally speaking, it doesn’t. That fructose is what gets transformed into alcohol. But with that one caveat in mind, I do need to drop a final fructose fact on you (and be warned: it’s big, dirty, and uncomfortable):

Fructose has a much lower glycemic index than sucrose (about 2.5 x lower, in fact), which means it doesn’t make your blood sugar spike when you consume it. But, even though it does you the favor of raising your blood sugar much more slowly, it needs to get processed directly by the liver, which tends to convert it straight into fat. Over time, this can result in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, or simply exacerbate a fatty liver issue caused by excess alcohol consumption over time.

The TL/DR on fructose is that it gives you a lot of bang for your buck on the palate, which sends those sweet, happy signals on to your brain. This is AMAZING for mixologists because it allows them to decide if A.) they want to optimize for balance by using a smaller amount of fructose than sucrose, knowing that it packs a sweeter punch, or B.) they just want to go hog-wild and load in as much sweetness as possible…because your liver is YOUR problem.

The Cadillac Of Margaritas

This brings us to the Cadillac Margarita.

In the 1970s and 1980s, this drink started popping up on cocktail menus all over the US. PUNCH has a pretty good article on the topic, courtesy of past guest Aaron Goldfarb, so I’ll link to that in the show notes page and let Aaron walk you through most of the speculation about origins stories and the evolution of the drink. But what’s most important about the Cadillac Margarita for our purposes are its impressive sugar profile and its ability to play on the psychology of imbibers to evoke a luxury drinking experience.

The recipe for the Cadillac Margarita has been watered down, bastardized, and palimpsested rather viciously over time, to the point where even Aaron wasn’t able to offer a definitive recipe in his history article. But from what I’ve been able to gather, here’s the general idea:

• The drink kicks off with an ounce and a half of Tequila. So far, sounds like a Margarita.

• To that, we also add ¾ oz of lime juice. Okay…it sounds like we’re listing Billy Tarling’s Picador recipe measure-for-measure…what’s the big deal?

• Here’s where: true to 1970s and 80s mixology, this cocktail employs a measure of sweet and sour mix (I’m assuming ¾ of an ounce). And this mix more than likely contained a healthy dose of high-fructose corn syrup. So there’s your fructose.

• But wait, there’s more! It was served with either a float OR A WHOLE SHOT of Grand Marnier, which you could interpret to be anywhere from a conservative half ounce to a generous 2 ounces of added sucrose-laden modifier.

There’s no specific service method stipulated for the Cadillac Margarita, but most images I’m able to pull up involve that over-sized, stemmed Margarita glass filled with ice, and adorned with an aggressively salted rim.

I know that Taco Bell technically has a copyright on that whole “Live Mas” slogan, but man…if ever there was an appropriate time to use it, it would be when drinking a Cadillac Margarita.

The psychological genius of this cocktail is that it called for “premium” Tequila, which often means it employed reposado or anejo spirits, which conveyed a sense of “premiumness.” This is an excellent pairing with Grand Marnier, when you think about it, because this liqueur has been about “living big” from the start. Both the Grand Marnier and the barrel-aged Tequila are going to have small amounts of a third sugar known as xylitol [Figure 1], which is a wood sugar that helps create the “desserty” profiles of various barrel-aged spirits.

Long story short: A Cadillac is a big, luxurious car. A Cadillac Margarita is a big, luxurious drink. And if you drink too many of them, there’s no doubt that you’ll be carting around a big, luxurious gut (and a matching big luxurious liver) before too long.

Before we move on to our final Margarita of this series, I want to take a second to defend the Cadillac Margarita because I think it would be a bit hasty to view this drink 50 years later with our current mixology lens and laugh it off as a monstrosity. I think it pushed the envelope at a time when people were looking for something more interesting. And I think it got away with its over-the-topness with lots of salt, a very cold and self-diluting service method, the power of premium marketing, and of course, a consumer base with relatively low expectations.

The Tommy’s Margarita: An Exercise In Simplicity

That all changed in the 90s when people started getting a little more conscious about their waistbands and a little more skeptical about the truckloads of sugar that were being crammed down our throats by soft drink companies and large food conglomerates everywhere.

Enter Julio Bermejo. His family owned Tommy’s Mexican restaurant in the Richmond neighborhood of San Francisco. Before he was of legal drinking age, he experienced some vicious hangovers, allegedly caused by cheap “mixto” tequilas that he was able to sneak out of the bar. These early experiences led him to develop a decidedly lighter, more refreshing take on the Margarita cocktail when he took over the bar years later.

Initially, his Margarita build consisted of 2 ounces 100% de agave Tequila, ¾ oz fresh lime (an innovation at the time), and a similar measure of simple syrup, which had long since replaced orange liqueur as the sweetener at the bar. In the early 90s, most guests ordered these blended, and Bermejo famously discouraged the use of a salt rim, claiming that it was unnecessary. But by the end of the decade, even the blender was gone, and the simple syrup was replaced by agave nectar.

This came at an incredible time for the bar world, which was just about to experience a true Renaissance, so when Bermejo’s bar and his incredible Margarita was discovered by rising star bartender Tony Abou-Ganim in 1995 or 1996, it very quickly started taking the industry by storm. First, it became a cocktail staple in Las Vegas, where Abou-Ganim went on to build massive beverage programs, and from there, it spread its influence over the world.

If the Cadillac Margarita is an exercise in excess, the Tommy’s Margarita is an exercise in simplicity. The question for Bermejo wasn’t so much “how much can we add,” it was, “how much of the accumulated artificiality, distraction, and technology of the 20th century can we take away” and still have a Margarita?

There’s two things I’d like to point out about the Tommy’s Margarita that make it a stand-out in the category.

First, it splits the difference between the 1937 Billy Tarling Picador recipe and the iconic Harry Craddock sidecar recipe, and to me, that makes it a simply wonderful, booze-forward, and refreshing addition to the tequila sour family.

And second, the absence of salt and the utilitarian “on the rocks” service method really signal that the Tommy’s Margarita isn’t looking to hide anything. On the surface, and looking back after nearly two decades of excellent cocktails, it might be easy to say: refreshing Margarita on the rocks…big deal. But this move toward transparency and quality ingredients really was a mammoth innovation that shook the bar world to its core.

Despite its virtues, however, this drink does come with a couple important catches, and I wouldn’t be doing my job if I left without mentioning them.

One is that many people (myself included) would argue that it’s not technically a Margarita. Without the orange liqueur, I feel like it needs to be classified as a humble tequila sour (even humbler than Charlie Connolly’s 1939 Tequila Sour recipe that DID include Triple Sec).

Also, I know that the implication is that the agave nectar in the Tommy’s Margarita makes it somehow “healthier” than whatever came before it, or maybe that it’s referencing back to Tequila’s agave distillate base. But that’s just good marketing. Agave nectar is simply the latest in a century-long hit parade of largely fructose-laden sugar technologies that allow us to throw back one of the world’s most delicious and crushable drinks and not feel as bad about ourselves for doing so.

Does the agave nectar give the cocktail more flavor than simple syrup? Undoubtedly. And for that reason alone, I’m happy to give the Tommy’s Margarita a valued place in the Margarita pantheon, EVEN THOUGH, it doesn’t contain an essential ingredient. But this is like one of those episodes of the show Chopped, when someone leaves a basket ingredient out of one of their dishes, but wins the competition anyway. It’s not impossible, but you know that when you commit an error so serious, everything else had better be perfect.

Takeaways

The technical genius of the Margarita cocktails is that, no matter what kind of recipe you have in front of you, there’s a very, VERY high chance that it’s hacking some part of your physiology that makes you want to have another one – whether that hack is driven by a salted rim that makes you thirsty while simultaneously calming your taste perception of the spicy tacos you’re eating, our by our inability to produce endogenous vitamin C, or by fructose that’s talking nice to your blood sugar while kicking your liver under the table, or by the mere perception that the ingredients in your glass are somehow more “premium” or “natural” than the alternatives.

In other sour cocktails, I feel like body and acid are the real stars of the show. That’s why egg white or aqua faba are so popular in a whiskey sour and why a truly delicious lime cordial is the key to a perfect gimlet experience. And of course, we can’t leave out the Daiquiri, which will always be the ultimate litmus test of a bartender’s ability to balance sweet, sour, and booze.

But the Margarita ain’t any of those things.

• Body? Who cares? Serve it up! Serve it blended! Serve it on the rocks! I’ll drink it however you bring it.

• Acid profile? Lime juice. Fresh. Nothing else to talk about here.

• And as far as balance goes…well, let’s just say the Margarita is far more concerned with perception than it is with reality.

Today’s Margaritas have come a long way from the vestigial grogs, the dandyish, sugar-rimmed crustas, and the flamboyant, new-style Daisies we covered in Part I. They’ve survived numerous changes in the laws governing their most important ingredient, Tequila. And by looking around at the kinds of Margaritas being served at your favorite bars and restaurants, by analyzing those ingredients and asking questions about what they’re telling you outright, and what they might be trying to hide, you just might be able to learn a little bit about the pulse of the drinking culture you’re experiencing at any given moment.