IntroductionWhen I first started drinking in my twenties in Los Angeles, my only encounters with the margarita were during happy hours, backyard parties, and Cinco de Mayo. Back then, I wasn’t much of a drinker. Cocktails weren’t meant to be enjoyed but were rather a means to a buzz. As a result, I thought the margarita came in two forms: a not-very-good drink with a heavily salted rim or a sweet slushy. It wasn’t until I became enamored by the cocktail scene—at the start of the cocktail renaissance in the early 2000s—and ended up blogging about it, that I finally experienced a well-made classic margarita. My mind was blown.
Cut to a couple of decades later—I can generally get a read on someone by the type of margarita they favor. If their go-to is a Tommy’s Margarita, odds are good that they’re an expert-level imbiber who enjoys the nuances of the spirit. If it’s a frozen strawberry margarita they’re after, they’re not too keen about the taste of tequila or their catchphrase is “It’s five o’clock somewhere!” (I started out the latter and am now the former.) For fun, I like to apply the same character assessment to which margarita origin story they gravitate toward. There are lots.
Unlike many classic cocktails, the margarita has people from all over claiming to have invented it. Most of those creation myths typically involve a remarkable woman for whom the drink was named. For silver screen lovers, there’s the story of the cocktail being created in honor of movie star Rita Hayworth when, as a teenager (née Margarita Cansino) during the ’30s, she performed at Agua Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana.
Fans of next-level hospitality will lean toward the canard about Carlos “Danny” Herrera, owner of Tijuana restaurant Rancho La Gloria, who, in 1938, supposedly created the cocktail for Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Marjorie King. This tale, given credence by Herrera’s 1992 obituary in the Los Angeles Times, tells that Marjorie was “allergic” to all hard liquor except, inexplicably, tequila. However, since she wasn’t a fan of the spirit, Herrera disguised its flavor with Cointreau, lemon juice, and salt.
Those who appreciate quick thinking and ingenuity will go for the story set in a bar called Tommy’s Place on the Mexican-American border. There, in 1942, the drink spontaneously came about because a bartender named Pancho Morales was too embarrassed to admit he didn’t know how to make the Magnolia cocktail a customer requested. He threw together the “juice of one lime, four-fifths tequila, one-fifth Cointreau, salt outside rim of three-ounce glass.” Even though it wasn’t what the customer ordered, “pretty soon she ordered another one and someone said, ‘Hey, what’s that?’” Morales mused.
Meanwhile, influencers and jet-setters will see themselves in the yarn about Texas socialite Margaret “Margarita” Sames. Her account in a 1953
Esquire article describing her invention—said to have been created during an Acapulco vacation—garnered the first printed mention of the margarita. The Cointreau brand has long sold this story, even quoting her as saying, “A margarita without Cointreau is not worth its salt.” According to the lore, Margarita simply wanted a day-friendly cocktail to enjoy by the pool and share with her famous pals, such as Lana Turner and John Wayne. But some credit her friend Conrad “Nicky” Hilton Jr., son of hotel magnate Conrad Hilton Sr., with spreading the recipe by serving it at the Hilton hotels around the world.
The most probable explanation of the margarita’s genesis was conveyed by esteemed cocktail historian David Wondrich, who wrote about its history for Patrón’s website in 2020. “It’s perfectly possible that several different people legitimately invented the Margarita,” he writes. “In other words, they may all have been right.”
During Prohibition, Americans who headed to Mexico, whether to work as bartenders or simply to drink booze, became acquainted with tequila. And since the Daisy cocktail—made with a spirit, liqueur, and citrus juice—was a standard bar drink around that time, of course tequila would find its way into the mix. “Margarita,” which is Spanish for “daisy,” really ramped up in popularity around the ’50s and ’60s. In 1953, the margarita was so beloved that Esquire named it December’s “Drink of the Month,” writing “She’s from Mexico, Señores . . . and she is lovely to look at, exciting and provocative.” Why Esquire chose the coldest month of the year to spotlight this chilly, refreshing tequila cocktail remains a mystery.
No matter how the margarita came about or is made, it garners nearuniversal appreciation. Celebrants and cocktail lovers reliably adore it, sure, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any drinker who would turn one down, especially on a hot day. Whether serious drinker or occasional tippler, tequila connoisseur or tequila agnostic, they’ll say, “Gimme.”
Copyright © 2025 by Caroline Pardilla. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
