Quarantined Cocktails: Margaritas!

Every Friday we’re going to share professional cocktail tips and tricks for your at-home, weekend festivities. Whether you’re curious about new ways to work with spirits on your liquor shelf, or you want fresh ideas for mock-tails you can create, we’ll have something for you.

This week we’re making Margaritas! In two different styles, The Classic and The Tommy — with Tequila, as well as Mezcal. This all-time favorite but simple cocktail continues our series and maybe teaches you a little about the styles of margaritas. Please share with us your photos, recipes, and riffs on Instagram and Facebook. If you have specific ingredients or future requests, shoot an email to quarantinedcocktails@gmail.com.

Hey, community, I’m Leigh Ann.

I’ve been a part of CVC for about four years now, you might recognize my name from many emails. I work in beverage, and from here until the quarantine is over, I’m going to show you every Friday how to make an at-home cocktail.

So now we are on week two. So we’re just starting from very, very basic classics. So that you can start to kind of understand how these flavors all work together, maybe a little bit about the spirits that might be floating around your house.
And as we go, hopefully not too deep into all of this, we’ll start to get a little bit more creative. And maybe you guys will start to send me some ingredients and things that you’re really interested in. But for now, we made a classic Daiquiri last week, which was rum, lime, sugar, and this week I’m making a margarita which is very, very similar, slightly different format.

Here we’re gonna sort of be talking about really three different styles of Margarita. So again, similar to the Daiquiri, not the super sugary, sweet thing that you might be thinking but very fresh, very simple, nothing overly
complicated and with two different spirits.

So I have Aldez tequila, which is one of my favorites, and Montelobos Mezcal. Also another favorite of mine. So we won’t delve too deep into the fine details of the spirits right now, but you might know mezcal as the smoky tequila, which
is not entirely correct, but we’ll get further into that later on.

I’m gonna do the two styles of margaritas with each of these spirits, but you can make both styles of margaritas with either tequila or Mezcal, really it’s just a matter of if you like that really smoky flavor, or if you want just a traditional tequila.

So let’s get started with the tequila. I’m working with a Reposado as I am running a bit low on spirits at this point and I’m going to do two ounces of the tequila.
I talked last week a little bit about my ideas about citrus to sugar ratios. So I’m going to do three-quarter ounces of fresh lime because my sugar this week is going to be alcoholic.

It’s this very cute little Cointreau which is going to be the classic. I didn’t explain this. This is going to be the very classic Margarita, which is orange liqueur, tequila, fresh lime. This is the last of my orange liqueur. So I use three-quarter ounces of the lime and I’m going to use a full ounce of the Cointreau because my sugar is alcoholic.

And that’s it for my classic Margarita.

I have rimmed both of my glasses with Tajin. Which is this really lovely Mexican spice. You can use regular salt. This is not really a spicy salt. It does have some dehydrated chili in there, but it’s not super, super spicy. You can make it more spicy. You can use regular salt. You don’t need any salt at all if you don’t like it, but this is just what I like.

And then for my other style Margarita is going to be the Tommy Margarita. So this classic one was created, like late 1930s. And the Tommy Margarita came around in the early 1990s. I’m making mine today with mezcal. It’s traditionally with tequila.

Like I said, Mezcal is getting a little bit more popular these days. I’m a really big fan. So I thought I would throw it into the mix just to get you thinking in case you also like it.

Two ounces of that, three-quarter ounces of lime, and three-quarters of my agave (because it’s a 1:1 syrup and not very sweet!).

I would normally strain onto fresh ice, but I’m running low on ice. So I’m just gonna do a rough pour on this. Since we’re all drinking from home, eating at home. The presentation maybe is not quite as important as it tasting good at this point. So here are my two margaritas. Again, I did the classic Margarita with tequila. This one is a Reposado and the orange liqueur and then I did the Tommy Margarita with Mezcal.

All of these things are interchangeable. Let me know what you guys are drinking this weekend, what ingredients are working with things you’re interested in. As we develop this, it will certainly expand and get, you know a lot more creative as it goes on. Right now, like I said, just starting really simple.

Cheers!