Few basic cocktails have been tinkered with as a lot because the daiquiri and margarita. The margarita has grown together with tequila’s rising recognition to turn into perhaps essentially the most iconic cocktail within the U.S., and has spawned numerous variations swapping in numerous juices, including spice with jalapeños, or utilizing mezcal instead of the unique agave spirit. Daiquiris have adopted a barely totally different path. Being one of many older pre-prohibition cocktails in existence, the-old faculty daiquiri, just like the Tom Collins or Whiskey Bitter, turned a sugary punchline within the late twentieth century. Pre-made mixes and frozen flavored variations overtook the basic recipe at eating places and on retailer cabinets, to the purpose the place lots of people in the present day would nonetheless image a frozen strawberry daiquiri slushie first if you supply them a daiquiri.

Whereas many of those variations do not reside as much as the originals, it isn’t stunning that each daiquiris and margaritas have impressed so many knock-offs. They’re two very comparable cocktails, with the large distinction merely coming right down to using white rum within the daiquiri versus the margarita’s tequila. Past that each are easy, citrusy drinks with a versatility that lends them to countless variations. The daiquiri has fairly totally different origins that the margarita, being extra intimately tied to the oldest of cocktails, whereas the margarita was created as a contemporary variation on an present cocktail. However neither would exist with out the unique trio of liquor, citrus, and sugar.

The fashionable type of the daiquiri cocktail is an easy combination of rum, often white, with lime juice and easy syrup. That is it. The cocktail’s first recorded look is within the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with its creation being attributed to an American named Jennings Stockton Cox working in Cuba close to the namesake city of Daiquiri. Cox based mostly the cocktail on drinks the native employees would make, and the daiquiri is probably going a direct evolution of the favored canchànchara, a Cuban cocktail which used honey as an alternative of cane sugar.

In actual fact, mixtures like this even predate the canchànchara, together with what is commonly thought-about among the many first “cocktails”: British navy grog. This was a mix for satiating sailors and stopping scurvy; it was manufactured from watered down rum, lime juice, and sugar, or typically lemon and spices like cinnamon. This was as a result of citrus, sugar cane, and rum have been all merchandise of the British Caribbean colonies, so the combination of lime with liquor and sugar was a pure native creation.

The most typical ratio for the daiquiri is the usual 2:1:1 method for bitter cocktails, which means two components spirit to at least one half bitter and one half candy. The combination is shaken with ice to emulsify and dilute the cocktail, very similar to water did with the sooner navy grog. That is the idea for all of the totally different daiquiri variations, together with the well-known Hemingway daiquiri.

A margarita makes use of the identical 2:1:1 bitter method because the daiquiri, however with tequila as an alternative of rum. And whereas many unique tropical drinks used native sugar cane, the unique margarita makes use of an orange liqueur as its sweetener: triple sec. Additionally like a daiquiri, a real margarita is made by being shaken with ice and strained, because the water is an important a part of the cocktail’s drinkability and texture.

The origins of the margarita are extra murky than the daiquiri, and there’s no single clear story that may be verified as the reality. As an alternative, just like the daiquiri, it seems to have advanced from a number of predecessors. One is the Picador, which mixes Cointreau with lemon or lime and tequila, and seems in some late ’30s cocktail books. The extra documented various is a Mexican variation on the daisy cocktail. The unique daisy blended brandy with lemon juice, syrup, and orange Curaçao, whereas later variations swapped the orange for grenadine. A complete suite of bitter daisy cocktail variations appeared, together with a tequila daisy in Mexico which was similar to the fashionable margarita, save for using lemon juice as an alternative of lime. In actual fact, the Spanish phrase for daisy is “margarita.”

Whereas the totally different base spirits and the margarita’s addition of triple sec make every of the 2 cocktails a novel expertise, each are refreshing drinks that owe a debt to the Caribbean. And also you get loads of historical past if you’re sipping both one.