At Trolley’d we shake our Lemon Myrtle Margarita with Illawarra plum and quandong-infused tequila, fresh lemon and lemon myrtle syrup. Olsson’s saltbush and mountain pepper leaf salt goes on half the rim. The classic Margarita has a less certain recipe history. A London bartender published its familiar proportions in 1937 under another name, the Picador.[4]
Lemon myrtle leaf gives the drink its lemon scent. Fresh juice gives it bite. If you have plain tequila, jump to the blanco tequila version we teach in class.
Lemon Myrtle Margarita recipe
This is the house serve from our February 2023 crew card, photographed on the airline trolley.
- Makes 1 drink
- Glass: chilled coupe
Ingredients
- 40 mLIllawarra plum and quandong-infused tequila
- 20 mLTrolley’d lemon myrtle syrup
- 10 mLfresh lemon juice
- A dashsparkling lemon myrtle tisane (a sparkling infusion of the leaf)
- RimOlsson’s Saltbush & Mountain Pepper Leaf Salt Rub, on the outer half of the rim
- Iceto chill the glass and to shake
Method
- Moisten the outside of half the coupe rim with cut citrus. Dip that half in the salt, then fill the glass with ice to chill.
- Measure the infused tequila, lemon myrtle syrup and fresh lemon juice into a shaker tin. Add fresh ice.
- Close the shaker and shake hard.
- Open the shaker and taste. Add a dash of sparkling lemon myrtle tisane, then gently pour the drink between the tins to combine.
- Tip the chilling ice out of the coupe and strain the Margarita into the glass.
Making three? Our crew uses 120 mL infused tequila, 60 mL syrup and 30 mL lemon juice in one tin. Add the sparkling tisane after shaking.
Lemon Myrtle Margarita with blanco tequila
In our cocktail classes we make one drink with blanco tequila, a squeeze of fresh lime and a smoked chilli rim. You can make this version with a bottle of tequila and a batch of our syrup.
- 45 mLblanco tequila
- 30 mLTrolley’d lemon myrtle syrup
- Halfa fresh lime, juiced
- RimOlsson’s Smokin’ Chilli Cocktail Salt, on the outer half of the rim
Wet the outside of half the rim with the cut lime, salt it and chill the coupe. Shake the tequila, syrup and lime juice with ice for 10 to 15 seconds. Strain into the chilled coupe.
On our event menu we also serve the fruit-infused tequila with Olsson’s Smokin’ Chilli. At Wings Over Illawarra, we served a quandong tequila Margarita with saltbush salt. For the Wild & High dinner with Clayton Donovan, Christopher Thomas finished his plum pine and lemon myrtle Margarita with saltbush foam.
For another house recipe, try the Laughing Margarita.
For background on choosing ingredients and using infusions in a finished drink, read our alcohol infusions guide. It explains the safety boundaries rather than giving a universal infusion recipe.
Why lemon myrtle, lemon juice and half a rim
Lemon myrtle is Backhousia citriodora, an Australian rainforest tree. Its leaf carries fragrance. The lemon scent comes from citral, and it brings no sourness of its own. In our syrup the leaf is steeped in just-boiled water and the infusion is combined with lemon peel and sugar.
The fresh juice supplies the acidity. We use lemon with the fruit-infused tequila and lime with blanco. Extra syrup would sweeten either drink without giving it that bite.
For the mulberry leaf cocktail we make a different infusion. Our smoked quandong tequila method follows the fruit from the jar to the glass.
A standard Margarita gets its citrus-oil note from orange liqueur.[9] Here the lemon myrtle syrup takes that place and supplies the sweetness as well.
The salt goes on the outside of the glass and on half the rim only, so the drinker chooses a salted sip or a clean one. Olsson’s blend is sea salt flakes with saltbush and mountain pepper leaf (Tasmannia lanceolata).
At a Sydney cooking demonstration, Aunty Beryl Van-Oploo used dried lemon myrtle in biscuits. The City of Sydney published her recipe. Our lemon myrtle ingredient guide includes her work and other publicly shared First Nations sources.
The history of the Margarita
Who invented the Margarita? The surviving records point to several bartenders and several border towns. The Tequila Daisy appears in newspapers before recipes for the Picador and the salt-rimmed Tequila Sour appear in print. Drinks called Margaritas follow. No contemporary document ties all three milestones to one inventor.[1][3]
- 1930An El Paso newspaper prints “Tequila Daisy” as a proposed baseball team name.
- 1934The El Paso Times records a Tequila Daisy served at dinner.
- 1935The Turf Bar in Tijuana advertises itself as the drink’s home and originator.
- 1936An Iowa publisher reports the Tijuana Daisy and its owner’s story. No recipe.
- 1937London’s Café Royal Cocktail Book publishes the Picador with tequila, Cointreau and lime or lemon.
- 1939A New York booklet prints a Tequila Sour on the same formula, with a salted rim.
- 1953A California columnist describes salt-rimmed Margaritas in Ensenada. Esquire publishes a recipe that December.
- 1971A Dallas restaurateur adapts a soft-serve machine for frozen Margaritas.
When a Tequila Daisy appears: the border, 1930 to 1936
Margarita is the Spanish word for daisy, and the Daisy was an established American mixed drink: spirit, citrus and a sweetener, either orange liqueur or grenadine.[2] By 1930 the name Tequila Daisy was familiar enough in El Paso to be offered as a joke baseball team name, and in 1934 the El Paso Times reported one served as the cocktail course at a dinner.[3] In August 1935 the Turf Bar in Tijuana advertised in the San Diego Union as the home and originator of the drink. In January 1936 Vogue recommended Tequila Daisies to visitors in Ensenada.[3]
On 23 July 1936 the Moville Mail of Iowa ran a travel piece credited to its publisher, James Graham. In Tijuana he found a saloon whose sign read “The Home of the Famous Tequila Daisy” and asked the owner, a man named Madden, about it. Madden called the drink a mistake: he had reached for the wrong bottle, and the customer liked the result.[3] Graham printed no recipe. Historian David Wondrich identifies the owner as Henry Madden, a Kansan who co-owned the Turf Bar, and notes that no datable Tequila Daisy recipe appears until 1958, when it is tequila, lime, grenadine and soda.[2]
During US Prohibition, visitors crossed into Mexico to drink in cities including Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez. Mexican border bars had an audience for familiar cocktails made with tequila.[7] The 1934 dinner record establishes that someone ordered a Tequila Daisy. It leaves the bartender and the contents of the glass unknown.[3]
When the formula and the salt rim appear: 1937 to 1939
The familiar formula is in print in London in 1937. W. J. Tarling’s Café Royal Cocktail Book lists the Picador: half tequila, a quarter Cointreau and a quarter fresh lime or lemon juice, shaken.[4] In 1939 Charlie Connolly’s booklet for the Cotton Club in New York gives a Tequila Sour of tequila, Cointreau and the juice of half a lime, served in a glass with a salted rim.[5] That is the earliest salt rim on this formula in Wondrich’s account.[1] Neither book uses the name Margarita, and Wondrich reads both as parallel developments, not as the drink’s source.[1]
When a source calls it a Margarita: 1953
The earliest printed use of “Margarita” we could trace is a Press Democrat column from Santa Rosa, California, dated 17 September 1953. Michael Demarest described drinking Margaritas in Ensenada for 50 cents each. His glass had a salt rim and held tequila, Cointreau and lemon juice.[3] That December, Esquire printed an ounce of tequila, a dash of triple sec and the juice of half a lime or lemon.[3]
The lemon in our house recipe has precedent in both those accounts and in Tarling’s 1937 Picador.[3][4]
Six claims to the Margarita
| Claimant | Place | Event claimed | Published account |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carlos “Danny” Herrera | Rancho La Gloria, between Tijuana and Rosarito | 1947 or 1948. Some retellings say 1938. | Wondrich dates the account to 1987.[1] Margot Sheehan examined the story and the obituaries in the San Diego Reader in May 1992. |
| Francisco “Pancho” Morales | Tommy’s Place, Ciudad Juárez | 4 July 1942 | Texas Monthly, October 1974.[1] |
| Margaret “Margarita” Sames | A Christmas party in Acapulco | 1948 | 1978.[1] |
| Carlos Orozco | Hussong’s Cantina, Ensenada | October 1941, made with Damiana liqueur | A 1992 volume of the Baja California history seminar’s Memorias.[7] |
| David Daniel “Danny” Negrete | Tehuacán, Puebla, or the Bar Andaluz at the Riviera, Ensenada | 1936 or 1948 | Wondrich dates the Tehuacán account to 1973.[1] Ensenada’s city chronicler attributes the 1948 Riviera account to Negrete’s own testimony.[6] |
| Johnny Durlesser | Tail o’ the Cock, Los Angeles | 1937 | Van Nuys News, 13 January 1955.[1] |
Morales, Orozco and Negrete tended bar in Mexico, and Herrera ran a restaurant there. They belong in the story even though none of the claims can be proven. Ensenada’s city chronicler, Horacio González Moncada, treats the origin as an open discussion and suggests the town’s bars may each have adapted a spirit-and-citrus drink that already existed.[6] Durlesser’s is the earliest claim to reach print, and it fails on its own date: the restaurant opened in 1939.[1]
How the frozen Margarita reached the machine: 1971
Blended Margaritas came first. Mariano Martinez’s father made them in a blender, and blender versions were in circulation by the early 1960s.[8][1] On 11 May 1971 Martinez, at Mariano’s Mexican Cuisine in Dallas, began serving frozen Margaritas from a second-hand soft-serve ice cream machine he had repurposed.[8] The blender made the frozen Margarita possible. The machine made it fast and repeatable across a busy room. The original has been in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History since 2005.[8]
The Margarita today
The International Bartenders Association gives the modern classic as 50 mL 100% agave tequila, 20 mL triple sec and 15 mL fresh lime juice. Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. The IBA leaves the half salt rim optional.[9]
A rhubarb Margarita for Moonacres
At Moonacres School in Robertson, in the NSW Southern Highlands, Trolley’d founder Byron Woolfrey taught a cocktail class built around the farm’s produce. Guests worked in pairs at six stations, cooking rhubarb syrup, then moved to the airline trolley bar to shake their drinks. Moonacres supplied seconds rhubarb and apples.
For this class, we infused organic tequila with rhubarb. Guests could taste the farm’s crop in the spirit alongside the lemon myrtle and fresh citrus. Read the Moonacres cocktail class case study.
Questions people ask
Who invented the Margarita?
No inventor has been established. Several claims were published decades after the events they describe. A newspaper column dated 17 September 1953 describes Margaritas served in Ensenada, Mexico.[1][3]
What is a Tequila Daisy?
A Daisy combines a spirit, citrus and a sweetener, often orange liqueur or grenadine. A Tequila Daisy is made with tequila. An El Paso newspaper records one served at dinner in 1934. “Margarita” is Spanish for “daisy”.[2][3]
Does lemon myrtle replace the citrus juice?
Keep the fresh juice. Lemon myrtle leaf gives the syrup its lemon fragrance. The juice gives the drink its sourness.
Lime or lemon in a Margarita?
Either has precedent. The 1937 Picador and the 1953 Esquire recipe allow lime or lemon, and the 1953 Ensenada account says lemon. The current IBA spec uses lime. Our crew-card serve uses lemon and our workshop serve uses lime.
Can I make it without the infused tequila?
Yes. For our workshop version, shake 45 mL blanco tequila, 30 mL lemon myrtle syrup and the juice of half a fresh lime.
Where do I get lemon myrtle syrup?
Make it. The Trolley’d lemon myrtle syrup recipe gives a home batch with quantities.
A signature cocktail for your event
For Olsson’s we built the drink around the salt on the rim. At Moonacres we started with the farm’s rhubarb. For a corporate cocktail activation, tell us what you’re launching, where you’ll host it and how many guests will be tasting. We can develop the serve and present it from our airline trolley bar.
Brief us on a cocktail activation
For a hands-on team session, explore our corporate cocktail classes.
Sources and further reading
- David Wondrich, “Margarita”, in The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, ed. Wondrich and Rothbaum. Entry and bibliography.
- David Wondrich, “The Tequila Daisy”, in the same volume. Read Wondrich on the Tequila Daisy.
- Barry Popik’s newspaper and magazine transcriptions. Tequila Daisy references from El Paso and Tijuana and Margarita citations including the 1953 Press Democrat and Esquire.
- W. J. Tarling, Café Royal Cocktail Book, Coronation Edition, London, 1937, “Picador”. Scan at the EUVS digital collection.
- Difford’s Guide, “Margarita cocktail: origins and history”, which transcribes the 1939 Cotton Club Tequila Sour. Read the 1939 Tequila Sour transcription.
- Zona Norte, interview with Ensenada city chronicler Horacio González Moncada. Se disputan Riviera y Hussong’s el origen de la “Margarita” (in Spanish).
- N. C. Stevens, “The margarita cocktail’s origins are murky”, Slate, 19 September 2026. Read Stevens on the Mexican origin claims.
- Smithsonian Magazine, The Uniquely Texan Origins of the Frozen Margarita. See also the machine in the National Museum of American History exhibition.
- International Bartenders Association, “Margarita”, Contemporary Classics. Current spec.