The Margarita is the most ordered cocktail in the United States by a comfortable margin. It outsells the next closest competitor every year, appears on the menu of every bar from dive to five-star, and has inspired more terrible versions than any other drink in history. Understanding where it came from, and why the best versions bear so little resemblance to what most bars pour, is a story worth knowing.
The Six Origin Stories Nobody Can Prove
The Margarita has more claimed inventors than almost any other classic cocktail, and most of the stories share a similar structure: a specific person, a specific bar, a specific date, and a woman named Margarita (or Margaret). The most cited version involves Carlos "Danny" Herrera at his Tijuana bar Rancho La Gloria in 1938, supposedly creating the drink for a dancer named Margarita Cansino, later known as actress Rita Hayworth. The date may be accurate. The story may be legend.
A Texas socialite named Margarita Sames claimed to have invented it at her Acapulco vacation home in 1948. Her recipe used Cointreau rather than triple sec, which produces a noticeably better drink. Santos Cruz, head bartender at the Balinese Room in Galveston, Texas, supposedly created it for singer Peggy Lee in 1948. At least three Mexican restaurants in Texas filed competing claims throughout the 1950s, all plausible, none definitive.
What all these stories share is a period: the 1930s and 1940s, when tequila was beginning its slow move northward from Mexico into American bar culture. The Margarita's basic architecture, tequila with citrus and a salt rim, was the natural evolution of the way tequila had always been consumed in Mexico: a shot of blanco with a lick of salt and a squeeze of lime. Someone, somewhere, put it in a glass with ice and called it something. Nobody wrote it down at the time.
Cointreau vs. Triple Sec: Why It Matters
The orange liqueur question is not trivial. A Margarita made with genuine Cointreau has a cleaner, drier orange character and about 40% ABV. Most bar-grade triple sec products sit at 15-25% ABV with a heavier, sweeter profile that throws off the balance of the drink. The choice between them is the single greatest quality variable in a Margarita, more impactful than the tequila itself.
This is why craft cocktail bars standardized on Cointreau when the revival began in the early 2000s. Some moved further, substituting Pierre Ferrand Dry Curacao, a Cognac-base orange liqueur with more complexity, or Grand Marnier, which adds brandy character. Each creates a genuinely distinct drink. Each can be excellent.
The frozen Margarita machine, introduced at Mariano Martinez's Dallas restaurant in 1971 using a converted soft-serve machine, did more to cement the drink's popularity than anything else in its history and simultaneously guaranteed that millions of people would never taste what the cocktail could actually be. Frozen Margaritas made with sour mix effectively erased the tequila from the equation. They were sweet, cold, and enormous, and Americans ordered them in vast quantities throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Tequila's Transformation
The Margarita's story is inseparable from the story of tequila itself. In the 1970s and 1980s, when most Margaritas were being made, the tequila going into them was often low-grade mixto, meaning the spirit was made from a blend of blue agave and other sugars rather than 100% agave. Mixto tequila has a harsher, more industrial profile that masks easily under enough sweetness and lime juice.
The 100% agave revolution changed everything. When premium brands like Patron, Don Julio, and Herradura began achieving wide American distribution in the 1990s, serious bartenders had genuine raw material to work with. The Margarita made with 100% agave blanco, fresh lime juice, and quality orange liqueur became a completely different proposition from its sour-mix ancestor.
Today the tequila market has fractured productively. Blancos from Ocho, Fortaleza, and G4 offer the pure agave flavor that showcases best in a Margarita. Reposado expressions add barrel character and complexity. The bars in Los Angeles cocktail bars and New York cocktail bars that take the Margarita seriously typically stock 6 to 12 tequilas specifically for the purpose. This is not excess; different agave expressions and barrel ages produce genuinely different drinks in the same recipe.
The Spicy Margarita and the Modern Era
The spicy Margarita, made with muddled or infused jalapeño, became the signature cocktail trend of the 2010s. By 2015 it was on every menu in America. By 2018 it was on most menus in Europe and Australia. The combination of heat from capsaicin, citrus acid, agave sweetness, and salt is genuinely compelling, and the trend accelerated the understanding that the Margarita's structure is strong enough to absorb additions without collapsing.
Mezcal Margaritas, substituting or blending the smoke-forward agave spirit for tequila, created another branch. Oaxacan and Mexican cocktail culture, particularly the bars of Mexico City, produced sophisticated Margarita variations using huitlacoche, tamarind, and chile liqueurs that would have been unrecognizable to the cocktail's original creators. The best mezcal bars in Los Angeles now serve versions that function as an entire course in Mexican flavor profiles.
What has remained constant through every iteration is the core principle: agave spirit, citrus, sweetener, salt. Every great Margarita honors that structure, whether it adds jalapeño, mezcal, seasonal fruit, or unusual orange liqueurs. Understanding the history makes you a better judge of what you are drinking. For the broader arc of cocktail culture from classic to contemporary, our piece on cocktail classics every drinker should know provides essential context. And if you want to read about another tequila-forward cocktail tradition, explore the best mezcal bars in Los Angeles, where the category has matured into something genuinely world-class.
