Pro Tips to Up Your

Margarita Game

The basic margarita recipe is pretty simple, but unfortunately over the years the recipe has been corrupted. Order a margarita at your local watering hole, and you’ll usually receive one of two tragic variations of the popular libation from the border—one involves a heaping dose of some sugary artificial mixer that makes your tongue shrivel up and die; the other demands a dozen ingredients requiring a basket of fruit, a fully stocked bar and sometimes even a live cactus. Both, in my opinion, are borderline cocktail abuse.

My wife and I love a good summertime margarita, especially after a long, hot day on the water, so a few years ago we started mixing our own. The result was something in between—not too sugary, not too complicated. It served a need but never quite whisked us off to Mexico, until the day my wife proudly strolled into the kitchen with a bag of limes from our local Costco and said, “Honey, we’ve been doing it all wrong.”

She had picked up a few tips from a local tequila expert, and since then, we’ve never had to endure a bottle of heartburn-inducing artificial sour mix again.

The key is to keep it simple. When you’re working with high-quality tequila and fresh limes, you really don’t need much else to make a legit margarita. Sure, extra garnishes and syrups add a punch of flavor, but they detract from the inherent freshness of this particular drink. For the ultimate classic margarita, all you need are five simple ingredients: tequila, fresh lime juice, simple syrup,

orange juice and an orange-flavored liqueur. Make sure to use fresh limes. And swap the simple syrup with the more authentic agave nectar. I recommend Tres Agaves for the galley, because it is “cocktail-ready,” which means it has already been diluted with water. (If you go with pure agave, use only half the amount noted below.) Either way, the end result is a brilliant, fresh cocktail that beats any dockside bar offering.

Ingredients

3 oz. Patrón Silver tequila

1 oz. Patrón Citrónge orange liqueur

2 oz. fresh squeezed lime juice

1 ½ oz. Tres Agaves organic agave nectar ½ oz. orange juice

Shake with ice, then serve over ice in a salt-rimmed glass. Garnish with a fresh lime wedge. And that’s it! Just be warned: Once you’ve savored a genuine fresh margarita, that artificially flavored swill might never taste the same again. —Andrew Parkinson