A matchless margarita

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/02/2025 (219 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It started as a tease; a good-natured taunt.

To poke fun at our grown-up son, Alex, back in cold-and-snowy Kelowna, my wife, Kerry, and I text him a photo of every margarita we drink here in sunny Mexico.

It’s a jeer that we’re in paradise and he’s not. (Don’t worry, he does the same to us when the shoe is on the other foot.)

Anyway, as our foray in Mexico is a long stay of 33 days in San José del Cabo, the photos become numerous — at least 33 and, somewhat shockingly, more. Oh well, we do it under the guise of documenting evidence.

We made it a research project — the quest for the perfect margarita in Cabo, the tourist enclave at the very southern tip of the Baja California peninsula.

It’s an absolutely unscientific undertaking.

We just drink and snap wherever we are — at our rented condominium at Lomas de la Jolla; in the infinity pool at said condo; at our favourite restaurant (Angler’s Landing) perched over the marina in Cabo San Lucas; at Eco-Bar, located at the same marina; at Zipper’s beachfront resto; at Mama Mia Los Cabos restaurant, also on the sand at the Coral Baja Resort; at Latino 8 in San José’s hotel zone; at the Drunken Sailor bar in San José’s marina; and in the clubhouse and beach club of Querencia Golf Club.

Every margarita we had was sweet, sour and salty delicious, so it’s hard to crown the perfect one.

But, if forced, I’d declare a tie between my own homemade version sipped while admiring the view of the Sea of Cortez in the infinity pool at Lomas and the one at Angler’s Landing, overlooking the marina in Cabo San Lucas that comes in a terrifically tacky glass with a cactus-shaped stem.

That’s our cue to talk about the glass in which a margarita is served.

A lot of bars and restaurants now simply use an all-purpose tumbler, but, obviously, the margarita-specific glass is best.

In true Mexican style, the wide, shallow bowl of the glass on a stem resembles an upturned sombrero, the wide-brimmed Mexican hat.

Naturally, a margarita is idyllic in Mexico, but it can also make you feel like you’re on a tropical holiday if you order one at a bar in Winnipeg.

Before we go any further, let’s talk about the actual concoction: Mexico’s premier cocktail made with the country’s national drink, tequila. While it’s indubitably linked with Mexico, some would say the margarita has become one of the most popular cocktails in the world, if not the most popular.

The margarita always tends to be in the top 5, if not right up at No. 1, of every favourite-drink list, along with stalwarts like the martini, the old fashioned, the mojito and the negroni.

The recipe behind the margarita’s icy-cold sweet, sour and salty allure is a deceptively simple and easy-to-remember 2:1:1 ratio of just three ingredients: two ounces of white (sometimes they called silver) tequila, one ounce of orange liqueur (in Mexico it tends to be Controy brand, but it could also be Cointreau, Grand Marnier or Triple Sec) and one ounce of fresh-squeezed lime juice.

(You can add a splash of simple or agave syrup if you like your margarita a little sweeter.) Then you toss it all together in a cocktail shaker with ice and have at it. Finally, strain the magical elixir into a salt-rimmed margarita glass over ice, and garnish with a lime slice.

This is generally the way Mexicans make and serve a margarita. However, you’re likely familiar with the frozen margarita, which is made with lots of ice in a blender. There’s no right way or wrong way to whip up a margarita, so go with your preference.

The origin of the margarita is somewhat murky, with many mixologists claiming to have invented the iconic cocktail. Of the numerous stories, the earliest claims that in 1936, Daniel Negrete created the cocktail for his girlfriend, Margarita (which is Spanish for daisy), who liked salty drinks, while he was manager at the Hotel Garci Crespo in Tehuacán, located in central Mexico, southeast of the capital city.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t close this story out with a mention of Jimmy Buffett’s 1977 smash hit Margaritaville.

The party song continues to propel the cocktail into our consciousness with its laid-back portrayal of paradise and the incredibly catchy lyrics we all know.

For instance, from verse 3: But there’s booze in the blender / And soon it will render / That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.

And, of course, the banger of a third chorus: Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville / Searchin’ for my long lost shaker of salt / Some people claim there’s a woman to blame / But I know it’s my own damn fault.

WestJet offers a five-hour non-stop flight between Winnipeg Richardson International Airport and Los Cabos International Airport weekly on Saturdays, seasonally, until April 27. WestJet Vacations also offers package flights with all-inclusive resort stays in Los Cabos. For details, check out: westjet.com/en-ca/vacations

smacnaull@nowmediagroup.ca