“We’ve found that the Margarita recipe that best suits us is the Tommy’s Margarita,” says head bartender Kitty Bernardo of Princeton, N.J., eatery and bar Two Sevens. “The mellow sweetness of agave nectar plus the fact that its sugars come from the same plant as the tequila give the drink a brighter, more refreshing taste.” But for purists, it has to have the orange liqueur — be it brandy-based curaçao, Cointreau or triple sec. “There are so many different types of orange liqueur out there, and they have different appeal for different drinks,” says Mix. “I like a little more subtlety in my Margarita.” Our suggestion: Use a little of both orange liqueur and agave syrup. Together, they make a drink that’s bright, subtle and extremely drinkable. And who could argue with that? Amy Zavatto has contributed to Liquor.com since 2014 and has written about wine, spirits and food for two decades. Her work has appeared in Brides, Imbibe, Whiskey Advocate and Wine Enthusiast, among others. She holds a Level III certificate from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust, judges wine and spirits competitions on regional and national levels and works as a consultant for restaurants and wine and spirits retailers. Liquor.com is dedicated to good drinking and great living. We inspire, entertain and educate anyone—and everyone—interested in what happens in the glass and out of it.
highly improbable. As any cocktail historian knows, the more detailed an origin story is—time, place, inventor, circumstances all laid out—the closer you’re getting to nonsense-town.” Which is also, in a sense, where the finer points of the Margarita by and large took a siesta for a couple of decades. It got big, brazen and gauche, spilling forth from gigantic hat-size, multitiered eponymously named glasses filled to the brim with prefab sweet-and-sour mix and other ingredients of questionable quality. “The Margarita didn’t really play a role in my early drinking life,” says Simonson. “It was a big, sloppy, sugary drink that came in a ridiculously large glass that you ordered at Chili’s and the like.” Although, these days, even the Chili’s outpost in the Fort Lauderdale airport — not where one expects shining examples of elevated cocktailing—offers a house Margarita boastfully made with fresh lime and decent tequila. “It wasn’t until the ’00s, when the cocktail revival kicked in, when I realized it could be a carefully wrought cocktail, just like any other, if it were made with quality tequila and curaçao, and fresh lime juice,” says Simonson.
SIMPLE IS BEST Which isn’t to say there weren’t plenty of fine
establishments keeping things simple and classic. Little spots like Pepe’s in Key West, Fla., where a gigantic hand- juicer sits at all times on the outdoor bar for squeezing local lime after lime for its fresh salt-rimmed Margaritas. Or the famed Tommy’s in San Francisco, which, in a desire to highlight its wonderfully curated premium tequila selections, made the controversial move of eschewing the orange liqueur for a strict diet of tequila, lime and agave nectar. It was so popular that the Tommy’s Margarita has taken on a life of its own and is, perhaps, the one Margarita with an unequivocal inventor, Tommy’s owner Julio Bermejo.
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