Not long ago in this space, I wrote about the dominance of the margarita when it comes to drinks made with tequila. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of drinks made with gin, but there are only a handful of tequila cocktails: the margarita, the tequila sunrise, the Chimayo, the margarita, and, well, did I mention the margarita?
Tequila was long considered an exotic quaff, and well into the 20th century, it was all but unknown in the United States. It wasn’t until the 1940s, when the war interfered with the normal liquor import business, that tequila was shipped north in significant quantities. A newspaper ad campaign launched in 1944 provides a flavor of how tequila was introduced to American drinkers. “What’s New–? TEQUILA. HAVE YOU TRIED TEQUILA? A Bit of Old Mexico. TEQUILA. FOR FUN, TEQUILA. Let Your Guests Try, TEQUILA.” The spirit was hyped as “NEW AND FASHIONABLE.”
So new was tequila to American drinkers that the margarita was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the marketers suggest using it to make well-known cocktails, with the main spirit of the established drink removed and tequila put in its place. The advertisement recommended making a tequila sour, a tequila fizz, a tequila martini, a tequila Gibson, even a tequila sidecar. The savvy reader will recognize the sidecar, with brandy, Cointreau, citrus, and a sugared rim, as a precursor to the margarita. Just switch out the brandy for tequila and you’re nearly there.
As for the idea of a tequila Gibson, the less said the better.
It’s a shame, though, that drinks with tequila have for most of their career among the gringos been derivative. Famed cocktail voyager Charles H. Baker Jr. tried his best to promote tequila as the core spirit in original cocktails to his readers. In his two-volume Gentleman’s Companion of 1939, the second volume “Being an Exotic Drinking Book,” Baker declares tequila to be a “spirit of definite merit.” Tequila “is the same color as our corn likker, has the same kick,” he writes, “plus an odd flavor which cannot be described” — a pretty good description.
When Baker had been in Mexico, he and a few friends went on a “hunt” for ways to turn tequila into a credible cocktail. “We were greeted with raised eyebrows, expressions of commiseration for waning sanity,” and “open distrust.” They did finally find a bar or two that would play along. One in Mexico City came up with a simple but lovely drink they named “tequila por mi amante.” Take a quart of ripe strawberries and cut them in half. Put them in a jar or bottle and pour in enough tequila to cover the fruit. Let sit for the better part of a month. “We opine that handled in the same way as sloe gin,” Baker says, “discoveries would be made.” He suggests trying the recipe with wild cherries or blackberries.
A tall drink in the flavor family was created by a Taxco cafe owner named Bertitia. She combined tequila with lime juice and orange bitters on the rocks with some fizzy water. Baker’s variation on that theme was to mix tequila, lime juice, orange flower water, and a dash of grenadine and blend it with shaved ice
Again, even here at the earliest days of striving for a suitable setting for tequila, what emerged was a cocktail that would not seem the least bit strange to a college student throwing Cuervo, ice, and marg mix into a blender.
But while the true identity of the person named Margarita who lent her name to the drink has remained elusive, any number of claimants notwithstanding, Baker assigned a name to his drink that was unambiguous. He called it the Armillita Chico, the nickname of Mexico’s most celebrated bullfighter, Fermin Espinosa. Let your guests try it.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
