Today's drink: Margarita

Today's ingredients: blanco tequila, agave nectar, lime juice

Today's gadgets:

Today's vocabulary: blanco, reposado, añejo

I am here to tell you--no, I am here to TESTIFY--that there is more to tequila than three-action shots, overly-sweet sour mixes, worshipping at the porcelain altar, and death-wish hangovers. Seriously, there is a world out there that includes tequila without the frat party. I bring this up now that Thanksgiving is past because, for many people, getting together with family during the holidays can really drive you to drinking. I'm fortunate in that my in-laws drive me to drinking places. Literally. As in I ride, they drive, and we commence partaking. I'm good with that.

I do want to get on my soapbox about tequila, though. I mentioned deep in the About page that I swore off tequila sometime during college because of a bad experience--granted, it was completely my fault and not the tequila's, but you know how you associate a food or drink or smell or sound with a particularly bad event in your life? Yeah, that was tequila for me. Couldn't even stand the smell of a margarita or straight shots or anything. Just turned my stomach. However, as I got into bourbons and scotches, I started noticing mentions of tequila here and there, maybe because the wife and I are trying to go to Mexico next year, but maybe because I was starting to find information that went beyond the quickest way to get hammered. As I was doing more research (reading, not sampling), my favorite nearby spirits purveyor happened to have a tequila tasting one weekend, so I went.

To be fair, many (most?) people consider Patrón or 1800 to be top-shelf tequila, and compared with the rotgut consumed during college, it's an understandable assumption that good tequila is clear and light on both flavor and aroma. It also helps that these are big names with sizable marketing budgets behind them. This tasting I went to, though, made what I'd read about truly good tequila come to life, that tequila is a crafted spirit just as nuanced and diverse as, say, gin, though certainly not to the level of whiskey. For the first time, I saw and tasted the three major 100% agave tequila styles side-by-side: blanco, reposado, and añejo.

Courtesy of Partida Tequila

I'll leave more in-depth research to your Google-fu, but suffice to say that good tequila is made to be enjoyed by itself. I sort of latched onto Partida initially because its aging process involves used Jack Daniels barrels, so there is a connection to the whiskey world I already knew by the time I started looking at tequila. From left to right in the above image, blanco is bottled 0-2 months after distillation, giving it a heavy agave character (think of how a succulent plant smells, along with a usually-corresponding creamy, heavier mouthfeel); reposado is aged 2-12 months in oak barrels before bottling; and añejo is aged 1-3 years. There are two other categories out there as well: "joven" is either pure blanco with added coloring or extracts, or it's a blend of blanco and an aged tequila; "extra añejo" is a recently created category (2006) that encompasses tequilas aged more than three years.

Courtesy of Casa Noble

Once I had a good grasp of the different tequila styles (easier to do if you try a single brand's lineup), I started looking at other producers, starting with Don Julio blanco since it's somewhat readily available. A newer product called Peligroso caught my attention, and it is currently my go-to blanco. However, the single best tequila I have tasted to-date and make sure I keep on my shelf is Casa Noble reposado. You know how there are things you like without being able to really spell out why? This is one of those where words wouldn't do it justice, but that's just me.

Margarita

So, after all of that, it's time to make a classic tequila-based cocktail, and not with anything I mentioned above. The IBA calls for:

• 3.5cl / 1.2oz tequila
• 2cl / 0.67oz Cointreau
• 1.5cl / 0.5oz freshly squeeze lime juice
• Pour all ingredients into shaker with ice, shake, and strain into cocktail glass rimmed with salt.

Those are some awfully precise measurements. You'd certainly be okay to ballpark some of that, but play around with the amounts to find what you like. This will require several attempts, ya know, for science.

I will admit that I keep a bottle of Lunazul blanco around as a mixing tequila. It has an all-around moderate nose and taste, is widely available, and goes for less than half the price of Patrón ($20 versus $50 for 0.75L). Plus, if you just have that type of crowd that's dying to do shots, Lunazul is a better option than Cuervo by a country mile.

Cointreau is simply triple sec produced in a certain area of France. If you were to have this as a standalone before- or after-meal sipper, splurge and get this stuff. For the purposes of mixing a simple cocktail, it's your call on this or another brand of triple sec. I have some Hiram Walker for some reason. No clue where that came from.

If you stick with the above recipe, this is going to likely be a tad more tart (and overall more flavorful) than what you might expect. That's because (a) this is served on the rocks--slushies water down quickly--and (b) this is only using lime juice, so no extra sugar is involved past the triple sec. The ingredients will give you a distinct "tequila" nose, which is a mixture of alcohol and agave--a higher-end blanco would soften the alcohol note and emphasize the succulent, and a nice aged product would further ease the agave in favor of some very, very subtle oaky sweetness.

Now, remember that Partida? Well, turns out they also make agave nectar, a product that can be found in many grocery and package stores. If you really want to punch your senses with an aura of agave, this stuff is great. It also replenishes that smell and taste if the tequila you use is lacking in this area. At any rate, I like the margarita recipe on the back of the bottle:

• 1.5oz tequila
• 0.75oz agave nectar
• 1oz fresh lime juice
• 0.75oz water
• Shake all ingredients with ice in standard bar shaker, serve in glass on rocks, never use salt.

Well, okay then, no salt (it was included in the pictures here for aesthetic reasons rather than taste). Personally, I don't add the water, either, but it's not a bad idea to include it the first time with such a concentrated recipe. The agave nectar will not be as sweet as Cointreau or other triple secs--this recipe really emphasizes the agave, so this isn't going to be your usual overly sweet, hands in the air, butt-wiggling, "WOO!"ing, cougar bar concoction. Try it with different tequilas (after sampling them by themselves, of course) and pay attention to the different flavor profiles. You might be surprised at how diverse and complex a stereotypically let's-get-hammered cocktail can be.

I won't get into using fruits because that wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of simplicity here, but if you do go that way, consider savory over sweet options, such as plum or fig, and muddle them in the shaker before pouring. Aim for subtlety rather than sledgehammer, at least to start. It's okay to add a small twist to a classic without completely abandoning it, especially since it'll likely be unexpected, but if you're using respectable-to-good tequila, don't hide it behind the other ingredients. Instead, let the ingredients complement the tequila. Enjoy!