El Diablo
El Diablo is the devil in a highball, and a Trader Vic creation from 1946: tequila and crème de cassis under a ginger beer top, lime squeezed and dropped, one of the first cocktails anywhere to treat tequila as worth building around. Vic printed it as the Mexican El Diablo when tequila was still exotic; the drink outlived the qualifier. The blackcurrant is the sly part. Cassis colours the drink a plausible devilish crimson and sweetens the seam between agave and ginger, the tequila’s pepper answers the ginger beer’s bite, and the lime keeps all three honest: a mule’s architecture wearing a darker suit. It drinks easier than its name and colour promise, which was presumably the joke. Among tequila highballs it sits between the Paloma’s sunshine and the serious stirred drinks: fruitier than the former, more playful than the latter, and the best possible answer to a ginger beer bottle already open from Storm & Spice duty.
Glassware: Highball Glass
Garnish: Lime Wedge and spent shell in
Ingredients
45ml
The engine: peppery blanco meeting the ginger beer’s bite, the mule pairing with agave in the saddle.
15ml
The devil’s colour and the drink’s sly heart: fifteen millilitres of French blackcurrant doing colour, sweetness and fruit in one pour. A thin cassis turns the devil to squash.
15ml
The honesty in the glass: acid keeping the cassis and the ginger in line. Fifteen millilitres is all there is, so squeeze it fresh and drop the spent wedge in afterwards.
90ml
The fire: a properly fiery brew, since the cassis brings sweetness enough. A soft ginger ale surrenders the drink to it.
Instructions
Fill a highball glass with ice and add the tequila, cassis and lime juice.
Stir briefly to combine.
Top with the chilled ginger beer and stir once more, gently.
Squeeze the lime wedge over the top and drop it in.
Expert Tip
Fiery ginger beer or nothing. The cassis brings all the sweetness the drink needs and then some, so a soft golden ale of a ginger beer simply surrenders: what you get is blackcurrant squash with tequila in it. A properly hot, dry brew is what keeps the devil honest. Fifteen millilitres of cassis is the calibration and it is easy to overpour, because the bottle is thick and slow. Measure it. At twenty the drink turns jammy and the agave disappears; at ten the colour goes and so does the point. Add the ginger beer last and stir once. The tequila, cassis and lime want combining first, because cassis is dense and sinks, but once the mixer is in every extra turn costs carbonation.
Flavour Profile
The Origin
Trader Vic printed El Diablo in his 1946 book as a Mexican curiosity, tequila being a novelty on American back bars, and the drink waited out the century until the agave revival recognised a fully-formed classic sitting in the archive: a tequila buck with a blackcurrant heart, needing not one adjustment. Its revival badge is that rarest thing, a Vic drink with no rum in it.
The Cassis
Fifteen millilitres of crème de cassis does three jobs: the devil-red colour, a jammy blackcurrant seam between tequila and ginger, and all the sweetening the drink needs. The French blackcurrant original is the right bottle, dark and properly tart; a thin syrupy cassis turns the devil to squash.
Tequila and Ginger
A peppery blanco meets a genuinely fiery ginger beer in the drink's engine room, which is the mule family's logic with agave in the saddle.
Blanco is the right call rather than a default. Its green, peppery edge is what answers the ginger's heat, and the two read as a single sensation rather than as two separate ones. Reposado's oak softens exactly that edge and leaves the cassis running the drink unopposed, which makes a pleasant enough glass and not this one.
The drier and spicier the ginger beer, the better the devil behaves. Sweetness is already covered by the cassis, so anything the mixer adds on that side is surplus, and there is no other acid to absorb it beyond fifteen millilitres of lime.
How to Serve It
Tall, cold, lime shell in, and early in the evening: it is a session-strength highball with a costume, not a heavyweight. It makes the natural third leg of a ginger beer trilogy with the Dark ’n’ Stormy and Storm & Spice, and a bucket of all three over ice has rescued many a warm afternoon.
The Cassis Bottle
Crème de cassis is French blackcurrant liqueur, and the gap between a good bottle and a poor one is wider here than for almost any other ingredient.
A proper cassis, with the Dijon style as the benchmark, is dark, thick and genuinely tart underneath the sugar, carrying a real fruit note rather than a confected one. Thin, cheap versions are essentially blackcurrant cordial with alcohol in them, and they turn the devil into squash: sweet, flat and one-dimensional.
It is also the drink's only colouring. Fifteen millilitres of good cassis gives a deep crimson that reads plausibly devilish under the ginger beer's gold, where a thin bottle gives a washed-out pink that undersells the whole joke.
Where It Sits
Among tequila long drinks, El Diablo occupies the ground between the Paloma's grapefruit sunshine and the stirred agave classics. It is fruitier than the first and considerably more playful than the second.
It is also a session-strength drink wearing a costume. Forty-five millilitres of tequila stretched with ninety of ginger beer is not a heavyweight, whatever the name and the colour suggest, and it belongs early in an evening rather than late.
It makes the natural third leg of a ginger beer trilogy with the Dark 'n' Stormy and the Storm & Spice, and a bucket of all three over ice has rescued a good many warm afternoons.
The Spirit
TequilaRead the label before the price. Tequila only has to be 51% agave sugars, and no bottle is ever labelled mixto, so the words 100% agave are the only thing separating a spirit made from the plant from one made half from cane or corn.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does El Diablo taste like?
A tequila mule with a blackcurrant heart: ginger bite and agave pepper over jammy cassis, with lime keeping all three honest. It drinks considerably easier than its crimson colour warns, which was almost certainly the joke Trader Vic intended.
Who invented El Diablo?
Trader Vic, who printed it in 1946 as the Mexican El Diablo, back when tequila was still exotic on American back bars. It is one of the earliest tequila cocktails from a major bar, and the agave revival rediscovered it needing no adjustment at all.
What is crème de cassis?
The French blackcurrant liqueur, dark and tart-sweet, best known from the Kir. Here it does three jobs in a single 15ml pour: it colours the drink, sweetens it, and supplies the fruit. A thin, syrupy bottle turns the devil into squash.
Master the Techniques
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Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits
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