The Tequila Daisy is one of the more puzzling drinks in the canon: the first tequila-based drink to gain a toehold in the mixological canon, it is mentioned in print widely and frequently beginning in 1930 and was popular in both Mexico and the American Southwest, yet no datable recipe for, or detailed description of, it appears in print until 1958. (There are, however, two very similar recipes in a pair of drink booklets collectors have found from rival liquor stores in Monterrey, Mexico; these are undated but probably from the late 1930s or early 1940s.) Henry Madden (1882–1948), an itinerant Kansan who was co-owner of the popular Turf Bar in Tijuana, Mexico, claimed to have invented the drink during Prohibition, when Tijuana was thronged with thirsty Americans. “In mixing a drink,” he told a reporter in 1936, “I grabbed the wrong bottle and the customer was so delighted that he called for another and spread the good news far and wide.” His bar called itself for years afterwards the “home of and the originators of the famous Tequila Daisy,” a claim that appears to have been accepted in Tijuana and has yet to be disproven.
One must assume that that customer ordered a daisy—but what kind? If it was a Jerry Thomas–style, orange-liqueur-sweetened Brandy Daisy, that puts Madden’s mistake at the head of the lineage of the Margarita, under which one will find further discussion of that possibility. See Thomas, Jeremiah P. “Jerry”, and Margarita. If, however, it was the turn-of-the-century, grenadine-sweetened Gin Daisy, then what he would have made is something very much like the original Tequila Sunrise: tequila, lime juice, grenadine, and soda water, with ice. See Tequila Sunrise. This is congruent with the 1958 version, and not too different from the ones from Monterrey, which omit the soda and use cherry brandy in place of the grenadine. Eventually, both versions would exist side by side, in a way: margarita is the Spanish word for “daisy,” and the drink we know under that name is practically identical to a tequila version of Thomas’s Daisy. Unfortunately, without further evidence, one cannot say which of these versions was first or most circulated. Was it merely the John the Baptist to the Margarita’s son of God, as it were, or was in fact an early avatar of the son himself? Perhaps it was both.
With the rise of the Margarita in the early 1950s, the grenadine-sweetened Tequila Daisy fell into eclipse. Despite its historic charms, it has not been revived.
Recipe: Shake 60 ml blanco tequila, 22 ml lime juice, and 15 ml grenadine with ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass and add 15 ml sparkling water.
See also Daisy.
Brown, Helen Evans. A Book of Appetizers. Los Angeles: Ward Richie, 1958.
Graham, James. “Grahams Sightseeing Southern California.” Moville (IA) Mail, July 23, 1936.
By: David Wondrich
“Main Street” (Avenida Revolución) in Tijuana, Mexico, in the 1920s. Just to the left of the ornate San Francisco Cafe is the Turf Bar, which claimed to be the home of the Tequila Daisy.
Wondrich Collection.
“Main Street” (Avenida Revolución) in Tijuana, Mexico, in the 1920s. Just to the left of the ornate San Francisco Cafe is the Turf Bar, which claimed to be the home of the Tequila Daisy. Source: Wondrich Collection.