Key Takeaways
- Tequila is legally restricted to blue Weber agave grown in Jalisco and nearby states; anything labeled only "made with agave" is a cheaper mixto blend.
- The Margarita most likely evolved from the tequila Daisy (margarita is Spanish for daisy), not from any single bartender's origin story, several of which don't check out historically.
- Three of the five recipes here are Margarita variations, and two more, the Paloma and the Oaxaca Old Fashioned, show what tequila and mezcal do once you set the Margarita aside.
Every bartender who claims to have invented the Margarita is probably lying, or just wrong. The truer story is that nobody invented it at all.
Three men claim credit. Carlos Herrera says he mixed one near Tijuana in 1938. Margaret Sames says she poured the first at an Acapulco party in 1948. Pancho Morales dates his to 1942 in Juarez. None of them can prove it, and all three describe the exact same drink.
That is because the Margarita already existed under another name. It is a tequila Daisy, and margarita is simply Spanish for daisy. A Tequila Daisy shows up in a Tijuana newspaper in 1936. A drink with the same proportions, called the Picador, appears in a 1937 London cocktail book. That is years before the word Margarita ever reached print.
Picture the drink itself: a chilled coupe with a rough ring of salt on the rim. One lime wheel floats on pale gold liquid, catching the last light on a dark wood bar. That image is older than any of the three legends attached to it.
The Margarita never needed an inventor. It only needed a name people would remember.
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