Drink · 5 min · 1 rocks glass
Mezcal margarita
A margarita with the tequila swapped for smoke. Half mezcal and half blanco is the version most people actually prefer.
The sheet · 1 rocks glass · 5 min
easyWhy tonight. A margarita with the tequila swapped for smoke. Half mezcal and half blanco is the version most people actually prefer.
What it needs
Nothing confirmed on your shelf yet — this list is the whole ask.
- mezcal
- cointreau
- lime
Method
- 1½ oz mezcal, ¾ oz Cointreau, ¾ oz lime. Less spirit than a tequila margarita, because smoke is louder than agave.
- Shake hard, strain over fresh ice.
- Salt half the rim, and use flaky salt rather than table salt — the crystals hit at different moments instead of one sheet of saline.
- Split it half and half with blanco tequila if the first sip reads as bonfire. Most people prefer that and few will admit it.
An educational pour, not a reprint of a licensed spec. No allergen or alcohol-safety claim.
Cook or pour it, then edit the shelf if you emptied a bottle or used the last of something.
Why each of these is on the list
What the ingredients are actually doing
- mezcal
- Smoke over the same agave backbone, and it does not blend so much as lead.
- cointreau
- Clean bitter orange with real sweetness behind it, so it does two jobs in a sour and lets you use less syrup.
- lime
- Sharper and more floral than lemon, and it fades faster — juice it the same hour you use it.
Missing one of them? The substitutions are written against those jobs rather than against a chart, so they say what each replacement costs this dish in particular.
Cooks from the same box
If you bought for this, you can already make these
Shares mezcal, lime
Mezcal mule
Ginger beer against smoke, which is a better pairing than ginger and vodka ever was.
Shares mezcal, lime
Mezcal Paloma
Grapefruit, soda and lime over mezcal. Long, low and the easiest way into mezcal for somebody who thinks they dislike it.
Shares cointreau, lime
Cosmopolitan
Vodka, Cointreau, fresh lime and a splash of cranberry. Made with fresh lime it is a genuinely good sour; made with bottled it is why it fell out of fashion.
Shares mezcal, lime
Honey mezcal sour
Honey syrup and lime against smoke. Let the honey down with warm water first or it sinks straight to the bottom.
Next
Cook it, then tell the shelf what you used.
The ranking is only as honest as the shelf behind it. Empty the cream, and everything that leaned on cream should stop being offered.