Margarita, a Mexican cocktail
We start our trip in LA and drive to Mexico on a rented Buick convertible. After the border check, we arrive in Tijuana. We were actually there to visit relatives, but our uncle had to go to Mexico City for work, although he had left the key for us. Tijuana is a typical border town, but when you’re there, you get a desolate sense of melancholy and hope. For many Mexicans, it’s the place where they leave Mexico to go to the promised land.
Famed for the long traffic lines from Mexico to the US, but rarely the other way around. The apartment was good, but we were surprised by a cheerful Mexican voice. The concierge of the apartment was a young woman and she was a good acquaintance of our uncle’s. “Shall I show you around?” An offer we couldn’t refuse. After a short tour, we ended up on the coast in a bar with a thatched roof.
“And now something really Mexican”, and there were two delicious Margaritas waiting at the bar. The setting sun, great music, the bluest of oceans and two of the concierge’s friends gave us an unforgettable afternoon.
When we finally returned to our apartment, we fancied ourselves two genuine Mariachi’s.
Vamos caballeros!
Margarita (cocktail)
A Margarita is a Mexican cocktail that belongs to the short drinks. It is not clear who originally invented the recipe, but the thinking is that it was meant as a decent way to drink tequila. Normally, people would lick some salt off the back of their hand and chased it down with a shot of tequila and them suck on a piece of lime. Later, that became known as the tequila straight.
The Margarita is a cocktail consisting of tequila, orange liqueur and lime juice, often served with salt on the rim of the glass. It is shaken with ice (on the rocks), blended with ice (frozen margarita) or without ice (straight-up). Traditionally, it is served in the eponymous margarita glass, a variation of a cocktail or champagne glass.
Origin
It became popular during prohibition when American citizens travelled to Mexico to drink alcohol. There is a report from 1936, when the editor of an Iowa newspaper, James Graham, found a cocktail in Tijuana and wrote about the origin myths of the Margarita.
There are multiple people who are known as the inventor of the Margarita:
Francisco Morales, a Texan barman who started experimenting on July 4, 1942.
Margaret Sames, a bar owner from Acapulco in the late forties, who used Cointreau as ingredient, however.
Carlos Herrera, a barkeeper in Tijuana in 1938. He initially named the cocktail after a dancer calling herself Marjorie King. She didn’t like tequila straight, so he mixed it for her.
Enrique Bastate Gutierrez is supposed to have invented the drink in the 1940s in Tijuana. He named it after Rita Hayworth, whose real name was Margarita Cansino.
William Grimes wrote a book about cocktails entitled Straight Up or On the Rocks: The Story of the American Cocktail. He claimed that plenty of people drank the Margarita in the 1930s.
By all accounts, a real classic!!
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