What tequila should I actually use?

One hundred percent agave blanco, full stop. Read the label. If it does not say one hundred percent agave it is a mixto, cut with cane sugar spirit, and it will give you a headache and a flat drink. You do not need to spend forty dollars. A solid mid-shelf blanco like a decent Espolòn or Cimarrón does the job beautifully. Save the aged stuff for sipping.

Can I use simple syrup instead of agave nectar?

You can, and it will be a perfectly good sour. But you will lose the point. The agave nectar ties the sweetener back to the spirit, so the drink reads as one continuous agave idea instead of tequila plus sugar. It is a small thing that makes a real difference. If you are out, simple syrup will keep you alive.

Because this drink does not need rescuing. A salt rim is great when you want that savory hit against the cold and sour, and there is no shame in it. But Tommy's is built to be clean and bright, and salt can bully the agave note into hiding. Try it once without. If you miss the salt, rim half the glass next time and decide for yourself.

Tommy's Margarita: The Margarita Stripped to the Studs

Somebody finally took the Margarita to therapy and told it to stop hiding. No triple sec, no salt rim, no slushy machine glow. Tommy's Margarita is tequila, lime, and agave, three honest ingredients standing in a rocks glass with nowhere to run. It is the drink you order when you actually want to taste what you are drinking.

2 ozTequila Blanco

1 ozLime Juice

0.5 ozAgave Nectar

Garnish: Lime wheel

Three ingredients, so each one has to earn its place. Two ounces of blanco tequila, one ounce of fresh lime juice, half an ounce of agave nectar. Fresh lime is the whole game here. The bottled stuff tastes like a scented candle and there is nothing else in the glass to cover for it. Agave nectar does the sweetening, and it is a smart partner because it is made from the same plant the tequila came from, so it deepens the agave note instead of dragging the drink toward generic sweet. Cut it with a little warm water if it pours like syrup, otherwise it sticks to the bottom of your shaker and lies to you about how sweet the drink is. Shake hard with cubed ice until the tin frosts and your hand wants to quit. Strain over fresh cubes in a rocks glass. Lime wheel, and that is it. Skip the salt unless you mean it. This drink does not need a costume.

Tommy's belongs to the Daiquiri family, and once you see why, you cannot unsee it. The Daiquiri template is the complete sour, a spirit propped up on two legs, tart citrus on one side and a sweetener on the other, balanced so neither tips it over. Rum, lime, sugar. Swap rum for blanco tequila and sugar for agave and you have not invented anything, you have just translated the Daiquiri into another language. What makes it a Daiquiri and not a Margarita in the textbook sense is the absence of a daisy liqueur. A classic Margarita leans on orange liqueur, the curaçao that puts the daisy in daisy, and that pushes it toward a different structure. Pull the liqueur out and the drink collapses back into its purest sour shape, the same skeleton holding up a Bee's Knees, a Brown Derby, or a Bramble. Different spirit, different sweetener, same three-point balance. That is the quiet genius of the family. Once you understand the spine, you can build a dozen drinks from memory.

The name is not marketing. Tommy's is a restaurant in San Francisco, a Mexican spot in the Richmond District, and the drink came out of it in the late 1980s thanks to Julio Bermejo, whose family ran the place. Bermejo got fed up with the sour-mix swill the Margarita had become, the frozen radioactive green stuff served by the gallon. So he did the obvious radical thing. He took out the triple sec, which most bars were using as cheap sweetness anyway, and replaced the sugar with agave syrup to keep the conversation inside the agave family. The result tasted like tequila instead of like a theme park. Cocktail people noticed. By the time the craft bar movement got going in the 2000s, Tommy's Margarita had quietly become the bartender's Margarita, the one the person making your drink orders on their night off. There is a lesson in that. The best version of a famous drink is usually the one with the fewest ingredients and the most respect for the main one. Bermejo also did the un-glamorous work of championing real tequila, the hundred percent agave stuff, back when most Americans thought tequila was a hangover with a worm in it. Drink this one slowly and you can taste why he bothered.

Open the Tommy's Margarita recipe card on Speed Pour

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FAQ

What tequila should I actually use?: One hundred percent agave blanco, full stop. Read the label. If it does not say one hundred percent agave it is a mixto, cut with cane sugar spirit, and it will give you a headache and a flat drink. You do not need to spend forty dollars. A solid mid-shelf blanco like a decent Espolòn or Cimarrón does the job beautifully. Save the aged stuff for sipping.
Can I use simple syrup instead of agave nectar?: You can, and it will be a perfectly good sour. But you will lose the point. The agave nectar ties the sweetener back to the spirit, so the drink reads as one continuous agave idea instead of tequila plus sugar. It is a small thing that makes a real difference. If you are out, simple syrup will keep you alive.
Why no salt rim?: Because this drink does not need rescuing. A salt rim is great when you want that savory hit against the cold and sour, and there is no shame in it. But Tommy's is built to be clean and bright, and salt can bully the agave note into hiding. Try it once without. If you miss the salt, rim half the glass next time and decide for yourself.