Tequila Cocktails
26 recipes, page 1 of 2
This Field Manual holds 26 recipes built on agave: 19 tequila and 7 mezcal. Both are made from agave and the law separates them by region and species, but in a glass the difference is smoke.
Tequila is steamed, which keeps the agave clean and vegetal, and it is what a margarita and a paloma are built around. Mezcal is roasted in a pit, and the smoke that comes with it will take over a drink built for tequila unless the recipe expects it. Swapping one for the other is not a substitution, it is a different drink. A blanco keeps the agave forward where a reposado puts oak in front of it.
What counts as tequila here
Base Spirit
Difficulty Level
21st Century
The 21st Century is a deliberate act of succession: Jim Meehan built it at New York’s PDT in 2007 as the next stop after the 20th Century, updating the art deco classic for a new
Añejo Old Fashioned
The Añejo Old Fashioned is an Old Fashioned with aged tequila in place of whiskey, and it works for one specific reason: añejo has spent at least a year in oak, so it arrives
Batanga
The Batanga is the drink Don Javier stirred with the knife. Don Javier Delgado Corona created it in 1961 at La Capilla in the town of Tequila itself, naming it for a portly
Cantaritos
Cantaritos is tequila with three citrus juices and grapefruit soda, salted and served in a small clay cup. The cup is not decoration: it is called a cantarito, it gives the drink
Division Bell
The Division Bell is Phil Ward's mezcal answer to the Last Word, built at Mayahuel in 2009 and named for the Pink Floyd album: mezcal, Aperol, maraschino and lime, with the mezcal
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
Grand Margarita
The Grand Margarita is a Margarita with Grand Marnier in place of triple sec, and the substitution changes more than the label suggests. Grand Marnier is built on cognac rather
Illegal
The Illegal is a mezcal sour with a rum backbone, and it is one of the drinks that made mezcal make sense to people who thought they disliked it. Thirty millilitres of espadín
Margarita
The Margarita is the most ordered cocktail in the United States, and that status has done to it what it did to the Mojito: margarita mix, bottled lime and the frozen resort serve
Mexican Firing Squad
The Mexican Firing Squad is tequila, lime, grenadine and Angostura, which is a margarita's shape with two of its four parts swapped out. Charles H. Baker found it at La Cucaracha
Mexican Mule
The Mexican Mule is tequila, lime and ginger beer over ice in a copper mug: the Moscow Mule's formula with the vodka swapped out. It is a modern drink with no author, born out of
Mezcal Margarita
The Mezcal Margarita is a Tommy’s Margarita with mezcal in place of the tequila: spirit, lime and agave syrup, no orange liqueur. That last absence is the whole reason it
Mezcal Negroni
The Mezcal Negroni is what happens when Italy’s bitterest institution meets Oaxaca’s smokiest: the equal-parts Negroni template with mezcal standing where the gin stood, smoke
Naked and Famous
The Naked and Famous is a modern classic with a full pedigree on file. Joaquín Simó created it at Death & Co in 2011 and described it himself as the bastard love child of the Last
Oaxacan Old Fashioned
The Oaxacan Old Fashioned is the drink that put mezcal on the cocktail map: Phil Ward built it at New York’s Death & Co in 2007, splitting the Old Fashioned’s base between
Paloma
The Paloma is Mexico’s most popular cocktail by volume, considerably outselling the Margarita in the country that produces the tequila both are built on. Outside Mexico its
Passion Fruit Margarita
The Passion Fruit Margarita is the family's perfumed wing: the fruit that built the Pornstar Martini's empire, meeting tequila's pepper in a frame that turns out to suit it. The
Picante de la Casa
The Picante de la Casa is Soho House's chilli Margarita, and it is built on the Tommy's rather than the classic: tequila, lime and agave syrup, no orange liqueur. Chilli goes into
Rosita
The Rosita is the tequila Negroni the revival nearly walked past. The spec surfaces in the American bar guides of the 1970s and owes its modern life to Gary Regan, who put it back
Silk Stocking
The Silk Stocking is tequila’s dessert secret, and almost nobody knows it exists. Blanco folded into cream and white crème de cacao with a grenadine blush, dusted with cinnamon
Spicy Margarita
The Spicy Margarita is the twenty-first century’s favourite margarita and a rare modern standard with no inventor to credit. Chilli-spiked tequila drinks are as old as Mexico, and
Strawberry Margarita
The Strawberry Margarita is the frozen daiquiri's agave twin, and the machine age's other great casualty: a blended berry classic that resort slush turned into a punchline. The
Tequila Ceremony
The Tequila Ceremony, salt then shot then lime, is the most performed drinks ritual on earth and the most misunderstood. The lick-sip-suck routine is a border-cantina invention
Tequila Sunrise
The Tequila Sunrise in its famous form was born at the Trident in Sausalito around 1971, where Bobby Lozoff and Billy Rice mixed tequila, orange juice and a sinking grenadine