The margarita is perhaps the most fought-over cocktail in history, with more than a dozen individuals and establishments claiming credit for its invention. The etymology of the word itself is clear, but the origin of the drink remains delightfully murky.
Margarita is a Spanish name derived from Latin margarita, meaning pearl, which in turn comes from Greek margaritēs. The same root gives English the name Margaret, French Marguerite, and Italian Margherita. In Spanish, margarita also means daisy, the flower, a usage that developed from the pearl-like appearance of the daisy's white petals around its golden center.
The most frequently cited invention story involves Margarita Sames, a Dallas socialite who claimed to have created the cocktail at her vacation home in Acapulco in 1948 for a house party attended by prominent guests, including future hotel magnate Nicky Hilton. The story is well-documented and Sames maintained it consistently throughout her life. However, the drink appears in cocktail guides and bar menus before 1948, undermining the claim to primacy if not to independent invention.
A 1936 Iowa newspaper mentions a tequila-based cocktail called the margarita. A 1945 advertisement in a Los Angeles newspaper refers to the drink. Carlos Danny Herrera, a Tijuana restaurant owner, claimed to have invented it in 1938 for a customer named Marjorie King who was allergic to all spirits except tequila. Don Carlos Orozco of Hussong's Cantina in Ensenada claimed a 1941 creation for a woman named Margarita Henkel, the daughter of a German ambassador.
The proliferation of origin stories suggests that the margarita may not have had a single inventor. The drink is essentially a tequila version of the Daisy, a classic cocktail template combining a spirit with citrus juice and a sweetening liqueur. The Spanish word for daisy is margarita. It is entirely possible that multiple bartenders along the Mexican-American border independently created tequila Daisies and called them margaritas, each unaware of the others.
This linguistic connection to the Daisy cocktail family may be the most important clue to the margarita's true origins. The Daisy was a well-established category of mixed drinks by the late nineteenth century, typically combining a spirit, citrus, and an orange liqueur such as Cointreau or Grand Marnier. Substituting tequila for the usual whiskey, gin, or brandy would have been a natural experiment for any bartender working near the Mexican border. The resulting drink would logically receive the Spanish
The margarita's rise to dominance among American cocktails tracks closely with the broader popularization of tequila in the United States. Through the 1950s and 1960s, both tequila and the margarita remained primarily border-region and specialty-bar drinks. The introduction of frozen margarita machines in the 1970s transformed the drink into a mass-market phenomenon. The frozen margarita, blended with ice into a slushy consistency, became a fixture of chain
The margarita glass itself, a broad, shallow-bowled coupe on a stem, has become an iconic shape in barware, instantly recognizable even in silhouette. The salt rim, supposedly added to balance the tartness of lime and the sweetness of the liqueur, is one of the few cocktail garnishes that materially affects the drinking experience rather than serving purely as decoration.
Today the margarita is the most popular cocktail in the United States by most measures, outselling the old fashioned, the martini, and the mojito. Its name has become a generic term for any tequila-based mixed drink, and margarita-flavored products, from popsicles to potato chips, line grocery store shelves. The Spanish word for pearl has become an English word for celebration.