Wasting Away in Margaritaville

Most people have been to Margaritaville and, by all accounts, it is a wonderful place to visit. There’s sun, there’s sand and there’s a sort of blissful manana torpor brought on by the seemingly endless parade of tequila-lime juice-orange liqueur cocktails for which the town is named.

Margaritaville doesn’t really exist, of course. It is just the tropical somewhere that Jimmy Buffet crooned about in his 1977 ode to the margarita. He sang of lost salt shakers, tourists covered with oil and, most famously, returning home with tequila to keep the party going:

“I blew out my flip-flop

Stepped on a pop-top

Cut my heel had to cruise on back home

But there’s booze in the blender

And soon it will render

That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”

Not to promote alcohol dependence, but there’s something about a well-made margarita that makes life’s battles appear winnable. Shaken with tequila, fresh-squeezed lime juice and Cointreau and served in a glass with a salted rim, the sublime drink is the right combination of bitter, sour, sweet and salty. Throw in hot weather — and some ice to the glass — and you may imbibe so many you’ll find yourself in Buffet’s rather enviable predicament.

The margarita has weathered decades of changing cocktail trends because of its ability to morph slightly and please palates. Pulverize some strawberries and it is a strawberry margarita. Sub in Blue Curaçao for Cointreau and you’ve got a blue margarita. Use grapefruit juice with a bit of lime juice for a grapefruit margarita. That’s just how it rolls.

As with all good things, there’s controversy over who invented it and when. One of several Mexican claimants, Danny Herrera of Rosarita Beach, is said to have created the drink in 1938 for a showgirl named Marjorie (Margarita in Spanish) who was allergic to all liquor save tequila (seriously, you can’t make this stuff up).

The Americans would like to take credit for the cocktail as it is the most popular boozy sipper in the U.S., consumed liberally at Cinco de Mayo parties and throughout the summer on Applebee’s patios across the nation. Any Yankee worth his margarita salt will tell you Dallas socialite Margaret Sames came up with it in the late 1940s while partying at her cliff-side ranchero in Acapulco. We’re highly skeptical of this story, however, as there are too many references to the drink prior to 1948.

If there’s one thing most aficionados agree on, it is the rules surrounding how to make a margarita. No offence, Jimmy, but please don’t use a blender. Ever. Or a margarita mix. Even chain restos are removing their margarita slushie machines in favour of versions shaken with fresh lime juice and sweetened with agave syrup and Cointreau. Finally, beware an over-salted rim, a warning that shouldn’t be hard to heed if you’re still searching for your lost shaker of salt.

Ingredients

2 oz 100% agave blanco or reposado tequila

1 oz Cointreau

1 oz fresh lime juice

1/2 Tbsp agave syrup or simple syrup

coarse salt, for rim

Method

Shake, strain and serve over ice in an old-fashioned glass with a salted rim.

Exerpt from Avenue Magazine's May 2012 issue. Written by Lisa Kadane, a Calgary-based lifestyles and travel writer. She also writes the Spirited Calgary cocktails column in the Calgary Herald. Follow her on Twitter @LisaKadane.

Margarita photographed by Jared Sych at Salt and Pepper (1413 9 Ave. S.E., Calgary, AB)