Hispanic Heritage Month is coming to an end. If you’ve been following our coverage, hopefully, you’re leaving the month with some great new music to listen to, a new director whose work you can get lost in, a new favorite chef, and new artists to fill your social feeds. But before the month ends, we want to leave you with some skills to impress your friends with, especially as we enter the end-of-the-year party season. And nothing impresses at a party like being able to make some great cocktails.
As Uproxx’s sole tequila writer, I can’t tell you how often people at the parties I host ask me how I “learned how to make drinks” and “whether it’s hard” and let me just tell you — it’s not. If you understand the basics, you’ll be able to put together a great drink no matter what ingredients you have on hand. But understanding those basics is paramount, and the easiest way to get a handle on them is by making the tried-and-true staples.
So for Hispanic Heritage Month, we’re leaving you with the skills to make five of the most essential tequila-based cocktails. Congratulations, you’re now everyone’s favorite person at the party.
Classic Margarita
Why You Need To Master It & Tasting Notes:
If you learn to make one tequila cocktail, make it a margarita. Most bars and restaurants you frequent won’t make this drink right, opting to use sweet and sour, bottled lime juice, or worse, margarita mix (just typing it makes me shudder), instead of the classic trio of tequila, lime juice, and orange liqueur. The result is this awful candy-sweet drink that muddies the wonderful bite of a good tequila.
When you make it the right way, one sip will introduce you to a perfect balance of mellow barrel-influenced but agave-forward tequila, the bright, tart, citrus of lime juice, and the warm aromatic zesty spice of a good quality orange liqueur. Be warned though, once you have the real thing, it becomes impossible to enjoy any cheaply made margarita.
Ingredients:
- 1.5 oz. quality additive-free reposado tequila (for a list of options, click here)
- Juice of one lime
- 3/4 oz. orange liqueur (I prefer Cointreau)
- Salted rim
- Lime wheel
- Ice
Method:
- Run a lime wedge across the rim of the glass, dip glass onto a plate of coarse salt.
- Add ice to the rocks glass.
- Add tequila, lime juice, orange liqueur, and ice to a shaker.
- Shake vigorously until the outside of the shaker is cold.
- Pour the margarita into the rocks glass over the fresh ice.
- Garnish with a lime wheel.
- Serve.
Paloma
Why You Need To Master It & Tasting Notes:
As a person who hosts a lot of parties where I’m given the role of bartender, let me tell you, you’re going to want an easy people-pleasing drink that you can whip up in under a minute, especially as you get closer to the end of the night and you’re too tired (or drunk) to make a more complicated step-heavy drink. No better drink fits that task than a Paloma.
A good Paloma is sweet, tart, citrusy, bright, and wonderfully refreshing. There are two ways to make the drink, I’m going to show you the easy way because it tastes the best. If you want to get fancy and simmer real grapefruit juice with lime juice, apple cider vinegar, and maple syrup, by all means, do it (we have a recipe for that, but I wouldn’t describe it as “better,” but it’s certainly more impressive), but I find that this route is only worth it if you’re making a big batch and calling it a day.
Ingredients:
- 2 oz. quality additive-free blanco tequila (for a list of options, click here)
- Juice of half a lime
- Jarritos (grapefruit), Squirt, or any grapefruit soda of your choosing
- Lime wedge
- Ice
Method:
- Fill a Collins glass with ice.
- Add tequila and lime juice to glass.
- Pour grapefruit soda until glass is full.
- Stir to incorporate ingredients.
- Garnish with a lime wedge.
- Serve.
Charro Negro
Why You Need To Master It & Tasting Notes:
The Charro Negro is a lot like the Paloma in that it’s a sweet people-pleaser, but instead of bright citrus flavors, this drink comes across as rich, decadent, and somewhat chocolatey. If the Paloma is for hot summer days lounging by the pool, the Charro Negro, with its dessert-like richness, is for the moonlight.
It’s very important that when making this drink, you use Mexican Coca-Cola. Don’t settle for the American stuff. Mexican Coke is made with cane sugar, and you need that darker, earthier, more cinnamon-forward flavor that the glass bottle stuff has to make this drink shine.
Ingredients:
- 1.5-3 oz. high quality additive-free blanco tequila (for a list of options, click here)
- Juice of half a lime
- Ice
- Mexican Coca-Cola
Method:
- Fill a highball glass with ice
- Squeeze lime juice over ice
- Add tequila
- Pour Mexican Coca-Cola until glass is full
- Stir, garnish with a lime wheel and serve.
Ranch Water
Why You Need To Master It & Tasting Notes:
No cocktail showcases the flavor of tequila quite like Ranch Water. This straightforward cocktail is for people who love the characteristic bite and brightness of good-quality tequila. If you’re not a fan of sweet drinks, this one is for you.
What I love about the Ranch Water is that it allows the tequila to be the star of the show. As a result, it’s probably the only tequila-based cocktail I’d make using the more expensive bottles, as you won’t be diluting the tequila with sugar with this one.
Ranch Water is incredibly refreshing and bubbly; it’s the perfect tequila cocktail for a hot summer’s day.
Ingredients:
- 1.5 oz. high-quality additive-free reposado tequila (for a list of options, click here)
- Juice of one lime
- Topo Chico or any very fizzy water of your choosing
- Ice
Method:
- Fill the glass with ice.
- Squeeze lime juice over ice
- Add tequila
- Pour Topo Chico until glass is full
- Stir and serve.
Tequila Sunrise
Why You Need To Master It & Tasting Notes:
We’ve saved the most impressive for last. It’s not that the Tequila Sunrise is any more difficult to make than the four other drinks on this list, but with its bright orange to rich red gradient, it has this appetizing visual quality that’ll make whoever you’re serving it to say “wow,” and really mean it.
It’s a beautiful-looking drink and an absolute sugar bomb of sweet citrus and cherry flavor. The tequila isn’t really the main focus here, so this is a great option if you’re using a bottle on the cheaper end, though it’ll taste better with higher-quality tequila. The same goes for the orange juice — if you use the cheap stuff, this drink is going to taste cheap, so make sure you’re using a high-quality orange juice, the fewer ingredients the better.
If you have enough fresh oranges on hand, consider using the juice straight from the fruit. It’ll taste best like this and it’ll make the grenadine a bit easier to see.
Ingredients:
- 1.5 oz. blanco tequila (for a list of options, click here)
- 3-5 oz. orange juice
- 1 oz. grenadine
- 1 cherry
- 1 slice of orange
Method:
- Fill the rocks glass with ice.
- Add the 1.5 ounces of tequila and three-five ounces of orange juice.
- Pour the 1 oz grenadine into the drink and let it sink to the bottom.
- Garnish with a cherry and orange wheel on a spear. Serve.