Margarita 2 ounces tequila 1 1/3 ounce Cointreau 2/3 ounce lime juice Shake with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass. Optional: You can prepare the cocktail glasss by miostening the rim with lime juice, and then dipping it into coarse salt.

Margarita
DrinkBoy Says: No, a properly made margarita never sees the inside of a blender.

The Margarita has suffered terribly in modern times. In an effort to make it hip, quick, trendy, and cheap it has been bastardized far worse then any cocktail before it. Whether it is the use of inferior (or just plain wrong) ingredients, or commercially made mixes, the common Margarita these days tastes more like a Limeade with a splash of orange juice then it does the delectable cocktail that it once was.

A true Margarita is made from three ingredients. Tequila, Cointreau (a Triple Sec), and fresh squeezed Lime Juice. Just looking at the ingredients it clearly falls into the same category of cocktail as the Sidecar, Whiskey Sour, Aviation, and Cosmopolitan. These cocktails are known as "Sours", and consist of a Spirit, Cordial, and Juice.

Like any cocktail, the true art comes in arriving at the proper ratio of the ingredients in order to present a balance of the flavors being used. And like most cocktail recipes, the more recipe books you look in, the more confused you will get as to the proper way to make a Margarita. While many recipe books will indicate that "equal parts" of the three ingredients should be used, to me this does not result in a well-balanced drink. What I've discovered, through many long nights of experimentation, is that the best ratio for a Margarita is 3:2:1. Three parts Tequila, 2 parts Cointreau, and 1 part freshly squeezed lime juice.

As in all cocktails, I always recommend the use of quality ingredients. For the Tequila I recommend a decent quality silver (or blanco) tequila. This unaged tequila will have a crisp and lively flavor that works well in mixed drinks. Any tequila with "gold" in its name simply means that it has been artificially flavored and colored to make it look and taste like and aged (or Anejo) tequila. My choice for Triple Sec is always Cointreau, and the juice should always be fresh squeezed.

Histories Shadow
Nobody truely knows when, or by whom, the first margarita was made. There are many stories, several of them quite convincing, but no one story has been able to stand out as deplicting the true origin of this classic drink.

Here are just a few of the stories that claim to recount how this drink was first created:

In the early 1930's, it was created at the Caliente Race Track in Tijuana.

In 1936, Danny Negrete invented this drink for his girlfriend, Margarita, while working at the Garci Crespo Hotel.

In 1938 or 1939, Carlos Hererra invented this drink for Marjorie King, who apparently couldn't drink any hard liquor except Tequila without getting sick. (Some stories will call him "Danny Hererra", apparently confusing him with Danny Negrete)

On the 4th of July, in 1942, a customer asked Francisco "Pancho" Morales for a "Magnolia", but he couldn't remember exactly how to make it, so he made something up, and named it the "Daisy" instead (which in Mexican is Margarita)

Sometime in the 1940's, Enrique Bastante Gutierez created this drink for Rita Hayworth, who's real name was Margarita.

In 1948 Margaret Sames created this drink for a party she was holding in Acapulco.

In 1948 it was created in Galveston, Texas by Santos Cruz. Who mixed it up for singer Peggy Lee.

In the early 1950's It was created at the "Tail o' the Cock" restaurant in Los Angeles in order to find a way to introduce Jose Cuervo tequila into the market.

...and there are of course countless others as well.