The Margarita cocktail, classically made with tequila, lime juice, and triple sec curaçao, has become one of the world’s favorite mixed drinks, in the process taking tequila from an often poorly regarded Mexican specialty to a global spirit. See tequila; triple sec; and curaçao. The Margarita’s journey from exotic novelty drink to icon of middle-class hedonism was one of the bright spots in the Dark Ages of mixology that preceded the cocktail renaissance, even if the promise of Jimmy Buffett’s 1977 hit song “Margaritaville,” where the drink is a symbol of a bohemian life beyond everyday responsibilities, faded away as tequila became big business and Margaritaville just another casual-dining restaurant chain. See
The precise origins of the Margarita are one of cocktail history’s most notorious swamps and remain resistant to even the most diligent investigation. It is a case not of too little information but too much; even putting aside the open question of the drink’s relation to the Tequila Daisy (margarita is Spanish for “daisy”), there are at least half a dozen plausible individual claimants to having invented the drink, none of them without problems. See Tequila Daisy. They are, in order of their claimed dates of creation and with the year each claim first surfaced:
1936 (1973). David Daniel “Danny” Negrete (1911–1996), at the Garci Crespo Spa, Tehuacan, Mexico.
1937 (1955). John Durlesser (1911–1971), at McHenry’s Tail o’ the Cock restaurant, Los Angeles.
1942 (1974). Francisco “Pancho” Morales (1918–1996), at Tommy’s Place in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
1947 (1987). Carlos Daniel “Danny” Herrera (1901–1992), at Rancho La Gloria, Rosarito Beach, Mexico (1987).
1948 (1963). Santos Cruz (1924–2005), at the Studio Lounge, Galveston, Texas.
1948 (1978). Margarita Miller Sames 1911–2009), at her house in Acapulco.
In cases like this it is best to stick to the timeline—the documented evidence as it appears. The timeline starts off with a pair of wild cards. The combination of tequila, lime juice, and Cointreau—the traditional brand of triple sec curaçao used in the drink—is first documented in 1937, in London (of all places), when William J. Tarling of the popular Café Royal included it, under the name Picador, in that institution’s cocktail book. See Tarling, William James “Billy”. This can be dismissed as a “typing monkey” case of parallel development, a fairly obvious tequila variation on the popular Sidecar, with the more-Mexican lime juice replacing the Sidecar’s lemon. See Sidecar. Not so easily dismissed, however, is the Tequila Sour found in the 1939 drink booklet that Charlie Connolly (1879–1969), longtime bartender of New York’s Players’ Club, put together for that city’s famous Cotton Club: it has the tequila and the Cointreau and the lime juice, but now it is served in a salt-rimmed cocktail glass with a wedge of lime.
In September, 1953, the recipe finally appeared under the name it bears today when a California newspaper columnist describes the Margarita as he encountered it in Ensenada, Mexico, salt rim and all; this item was rapidly followed by an appearance in Esquire magazine, complete with detailed recipe and the tagline “She’s from Mexico, Señores, and her name is the Margarita Cocktail—and she is lovely to look at, exciting and provocative.” A year later, Los Angeles Times columnist Gene Sherman ran into it at Rosarito Beach, Baja (one wonders if it was at Herrera’s Rancho la Gloria) and, inquiring as to its origin, was told that it was “belted hard by the international set at Acapulco.” A few weeks after that, the Valley News, another Los Angeles newspaper, corrected Sherman, explaining that the “Marguerita” was actually invented by Johnny Durlesser, longtime head barman of the Tail o’ the Cock, a tony Los Angeles steakhouse, “way back in 1937, when tequila first appeared here” (actually, it would have had to be in 1939, when the restaurant opened). Durlesser was a widely known figure and one of the most respected barmen in the city, by both his customers and his peers, and while his story might not be completely accurate, it is unlikely to have been completely fabricated either.
At the same time, early 1955, Vernon Underwood of Young’s Market, the Los Angeles distributor for José Cuervo tequila, noticed that the Tail o’ the Cock was suddenly selling a great deal of the stuff and persuaded his employers to enter into an agreement with Cuervo to distribute the brand nationally. Young’s promptly launched the first national advertising campaign for tequila, featuring a series of different drink recipes, among them the Margarita, which attracted the lion’s share of attention. From then on, the name “Margarita” and the tequila-Cointreau-lime formula were indissolubly joined.
Taking a step back, it’s possible to make at least some sense out of all this. It is clear that, in the late 1930s, there was a tequila-based variation on the Sidecar, incorporating the lime juice and salt generally served with tequila at the time, circulating in Southern California and the places in northern Mexico frequented by prosperous Americans. It is not impossible that this was first mixed by Negrete, who had worked behind the famous bar at the Agua Caliente resort in Tijuana, although his claim is somewhat undermined by its first surfacing in 1973 under the aegis of the Sauza company, to be used as a counterweight to the prevailing Cuervo story featuring Durlesser. See
By 1939, that drink had appeared at Durlesser’s bar (he “was asked to duplicate a drink a lady customer had once tasted in Mexico,” as he recalled in 1966) and had traveled to Connolly’s bar in New York, an easy trip—the Players had a number of members who worked in both the New York theater and Hollywood films. It is unlikely that the name Margarita had been attached to it by this point: during World War II, it turns up in advertisements as the “Tequila Sidecar,” and in the 1946 edition of Oscar Haimo’s widely used Cocktail and Wine Digest, without the salt rim, as the “Mexicano Cocktail” (this was one of the few American cocktail guides to be also distributed in Spanish). Se Haimo, Oscar. As late as 1950, Angelo’s Copper Room, in Hollywood, was serving it as the “South of the Border.”
At the end of the 1940s, however, the drink was clearly gathering momentum, whether because Sames was serving it to her influential guests in Acapulco and Herrera to his at Rancho La Gloria or simply because tequila had been around enough in the Southern California market to reach a tipping point. Then the Tail o’ the Cock started pushing it, and that finally put it over the top. Here, it’s worth noting that Shelton Henry, the restaurant’s owner, was a friend of Sames’s and went to some of her Acapulco parties. It’s even possible that she was Durlesser’s “lady from Mexico”: Underwood claimed in 1974 that the name came well after the drink and that McHenry had something to do with it.
That leaves Morales and Cruz. Both of their versions could very well be tequila Sidecar variations, particularly since neither of them originally had the characteristic salt rim, but by 1942, let alone 1948, the drink had been floating around for some time, so it is debatable what they invented. It’s possible that they hit on the Margarita name independently, through the drink’s connection to the Daisy. See Daisy. But in all of these cases one is entitled to be more skeptical of the claims to having first named the drink than of having first mixed it: it is easier to rationalize claiming a name for a drink you know you invented than claiming you invented one you know you did not.
With Cuervo’s 1956 advertising campaign, the Margarita quickly became established as the tequila drink. At first that did not mean much, but by the 1960s Mexican restaurants took off in popularity in the United States as the public began looking for more interesting culinary choices. As the drink spread, it picked up variations. By the beginning of the 1960s, some were making it in the blender. In 1964, Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron opened the first restaurant in his Señor Pico’s chain of Mexican restaurants, serving the Margaritas in amber Mexican bubble-glass champagne coupes; this would be widely imitated. See Bergeron, Victor “Trader Vic.” In 1971, Mariano Martinez (1944–) adapted a soft-serve ice cream machine to making Margaritas and installed it at Mariano’s Mexican Cuisine, his Dallas, Texas restaurant. The frozen Margarita machine would soon be a fixture of the age. Its spread was helped by the fact that it was perfectly adapted to the fruit-flavored drinks that were increasingly popular. Strawberry Margaritas, Raspberry Margaritas, Watermelon Margaritas—all had their turn. Tequila, it is safe to say, was not the focus of these drinks (indeed, in the 1980s one large New York City operator was caught using grain alcohol instead of tequila in its frozen Margaritas).
At the same time, the regular Margarita had fallen victim to sour mix and lazy bartending. By the end of the 1970s, the average one was likely to be compounded from tequila, and not too much of it; cheap, low-proof triple sec; and sour mix, and served on the rocks. It was larger than Durlesser’s had ever been, but most of the volume was sugar water (unless, as some did, you added Budweiser to the mix). The only real lime that came near it was the thin wheel of it perched on the rim. Yet there was also premiumization: the 1980s saw such developments as the añejo-tequila Margarita, including the “Cadillac Margarita” marketed by the Southern California–based El Torito Grill chain, with Grand Marnier replacing the triple sec.
In 1990, Julio Bermejo, of Tommy’s Mexican restaurant in San Francisco, put his foot down, so to speak, and introduced a Margarita that undid most of the damage. Sure, it was on the rocks, but it was shaken, with fresh lime juice and quality, 100 percent agave tequila. Instead of the Cointreau, however, Bermejo increased the agave quotient by using agave syrup. The resulting “Tommy’s Margarita” went on to become one of the success stories of the cocktail revolution. In recent years, many bartenders have also returned to the old, 1950s formula, but with mezcal replacing the tequila. Many, on the other hand, are still perfectly content to make the drink with mixto tequila, triple sec, and sour mix; as sales figures demonstrate, there are a great many people who have no objection to that.
Recipe: 45 ml blanco tequila, 22 ml Cointreau, 20 ml lime juice. Shake and strain into salt-rimmed coupe (run a cut lime around the outer rim of the glass and roll in coarse salt).Connolly, Charlie. The World Famous Cotton Club: Barman Charlie Conolly’s 1939 Book of Mixed Drinks. New York: 1939.
Cooper, Brad. “The Man Who Invented the Margarita.” Texas Monthly, October 1974, 76–80.
Demarest, Michael. “Memo from Mike.” Santa Rosa (CA) Press-Democrat, September 17, 1953, 20.
“Valley Ramblings.” Van Nuys (CA) News, January 13, 1955, 9-C.
Vilas, James. “In the Land of Tequila.” Town and Country, November 1980, 220.
By: David Wondrich
The newspaper advertisement that spread the Margarita across America, 1956.
Wondrich Collection.
The newspaper advertisement that spread the Margarita across America, 1956. Source: Wondrich Collection.