11 Best Tequila Cocktails for Summer, From the Margarita to the Siesta

El Diablo

With a name like El Diablo (“the Devil” in Spanish) you might not expect a fruity and charming tequila sipper, but since “Trader” Vic Bergeron invented it in 1946, the El Diablo has been enchanting drinkers with its tart berries and gentle spice. It’s a simple tequila version of a Moscow Mule, essentially, with a bit of the fruit liqueur creme de cassis making it juicy and the oaky richness of the aged tequila making it plush.

Combine all ingredients over ice in a tall glass. Stir briefly to combine and garnish with a couple blackberries on a pick, or a lime wedge, or both.

Paloma

“Some things are so modest and unassuming,” we say of the Paloma, “the best way to understand their size is by measuring the shadow they cast.” We’re tempted to think of the Margarita as the star of the tequila show, but look above the title on the marquee, and you might be surprised, at least in Mexico, to find the Paloma—a simple drink of tequila, lime juice, grapefruit soda, and a pinch of salt. Palomas are sweet and tart and bright and preternaturally refreshing, a worthy match for the pitiless heat of the Mexican summer, and deployed in great numbers whenever a little reprieve is in order. The classic version is below, or but there is also a freshly squeezed Paloma you can make.

Add ice to a tall glass. Add tequila and lime and top with grapefruit soda. Mix the ingredients around with a straw (or, as they do at La Capilla de Don Javier in the town of Tequila, with a large knife), sprinkle a pinch of salt on top, and garnish with a lime wedge or, honestly, nothing at all.

White Toreador

The Toreador cocktail is tequila, apricot liqueur, and lime juice, and is among the first tequila cocktails ever printed in the English language, in William J. Tarling’s Cafe Royal Cocktail Book, in 1937. It’s essentially a Margarita with apricot instead of orange, and it’s justifiably overshadowed by its orangey sister because the apricot speaks a little too loudly in a classic Toreador—the boldness of the fruit too brash on the midpalate. But one of the best bars in the world, Jigger & Pony in Singapore, correctly saw that a little yogurt could solve that problem perfectly. After traveling around the world to try the bar’s White Toreador myself, I took the bar’s recipe and made a few tweaks for home bartenders.

Adapted from Jigger & Pony, Singapore

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker and shake briefly without ice to whip the egg Add ice and shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds. Strain up into a cocktail glass. No garnish.

Margarita

There is no better or more convincing a liquid cheerleader for tequila than a well-made Margarita. Those who’ve had one already agree. Those who haven’t—those for whom all they know is some $13 bottle of tequila mixed with day-glo “Margarita Mix,” with respect, you’ve not had a Margarita, you’ve had citric acid and sodium benzoate and high-fructose corn syrup cosplaying as a Margarita. A proper Margarita is exuberance in a glass, “the spirit of unfussy joie de vie,” we write, “that acknowledges the potential for fun in any situation.” The classic version is below, or learn how to make the extremely popular Tommy’s Margarita.

For both: Add ingredients to shaking tin, or blender, with lots of ice. Shake, or blend, until ice cold. Pour into a glass, garnish with a bright slice of lime, and indulge.

El Lupolo

This cocktail is what would happen if you just started listing everything that goes best with tequila, and combined the top three or four in one drink just to see if life really is that easy. For starters, lime, obviously. Then grapefruit as well, a legendary combination that appears several times on this very list. And then there’s hops by way of an IPA, a duo so perfect they don’t even really need the others (but it’s nice to have friends). Add Campari to punch up the IPA’s juicy bitterness, and you’ll have a beer cocktail you won’t want to put down.

Add all ingredients except for beer into a shaker tin and shake on ice for six to eight seconds. Strain into a tall glass and top with about 3 oz. IPA. Garnish with a grapefruit peel.

North Beach Cooler

The outstanding women’s cocktail competition Speed Rack has been going for well over a decade, showcasing the talents of the world’s best female bartenders. Founders Ivy Mix and Lynette Marrero have created a book as well called A Quick Drink featuring those same stellar barkeeps. The recipes inside are great, and we could’ve picked any one of them to feature, but for seasonality, ease of creation, and honestly for sheer deliciousness, we kept coming back to the North Beach Cooler, from Melbourne bartender Priscilla Leong, made of tequila, lime, Campari, dry vermouth, and soda. It’s a cross between a Siesta and a Rome with a View, leveraging tequila’s affection for Campari and Campari’s affection for dry vermouth into a devastatingly tasty little thrupple. 

Recipe by Priscilla Leong, reprinted from A Quick Drink

Add all ingredients except for soda to a cocktail shaker with ice, shake good and hard for six to eight seconds, and garnish with a basil leaf and/or a lime wedge.

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Mexican Firing Squad

The Mexican Firing Squad is one of the few classic tequila cocktails we have and it’s one of the earliest recipes published in the English language that makes use of the agave spirit. It’s incredibly simple, just some pomegranate and baking spices accenting a basic sour-style mix, but it unfolds like a story in four acts, each ingredient playing its role perfectly: You meet the tequila first before the bright juiciness of the pomegranate takes over, which turns tart with lime and then finishes with the dry textured spice of the bitters. It’s elegant, simple, and delightful, a worthy bit of cocktail reporting by an adventurer who couldn’t help but share this deliciousness, and his enthusiasm for it, with the world.

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake hard for six to eight seconds. Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice and garnish with a lime wheel, or if you’re feeling festive and want to do it as Baker suggests, “garnish with a slice of orange, a slice of pineapple, and a red cherry.”

Oaxaca Old Fashioned

If tequila is your best friend, mezcal is your best friend’s dangerous cousin, the one who rides a motorcycle and smokes cigarettes. It wouldn’t hit American cocktails until 2007, when a bartender named Phil Ward at Death & Co. in NYC decided to smuggle mezcal into people’s glasses, flanked on all sides by the now-acceptable tequila. Ward’s original Oaxaca Old Fashioned was 3 parts tequila to one part mezcal—if you, too, are a little iffy on the smoky, muscular spirit, feel free to make it his way.

Grab a rocks glass the biggest piece of ice you have that will fit into it. If you don’t have large cubes, fill with the biggest ice you have. Add ingredients, stir briefly to integrate them together and garnish with a large grapefruit peel, expressing the oils over the top of the drink before adding the peel to the glass.

Rosita

Most tequila recipes are bright and refreshing, leaning on the spirit’s inherent affinity for sunshine. The Rosita is the other kind. It’s a world away for Margaritas, another affair entirely—a cocktail bitter and sweet, darker and more complex. It was modernized and popularized (twice!) by none other than early cocktail revivalist and notorious eccentric Gary “gaz” Regan.

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with ice. Stir for five to 10 seconds (if using very small ice) to 25 to 30 seconds (if using very large ice), strain either into a rocks glass over fresh ice or up, in a coupe, depending on your preference. Garnish with a grapefruit peel.

Siesta

The Siesta is a lovely drink, complex and dynamic, with seams so tight you can’t even find them. It opens like a Margarita, with lime and tequila, transitions in the midpalate to the juicy grapefruit, and finishes with the herbal orange of the Campari amplifying grapefruit’s natural bitterness. Nearly two decades after its creation, bartender Katie Stipe’s cocktail endures as one of the great tequila-based neo-classics, helping usher in a new era of agave-based drinks.

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake good and hard for six to 10 seconds. Strain up into a coupe or cocktail glass, or over fresh ice on the rocks, as you prefer, and garnish with a grapefruit peel or lime wheel.

El Guapo

The El Guapo is an advertisement for innovation. Most of the time, you have a crazy new idea and try it and it’s terrible. Sometimes, though, it ends up like this: Take the same hot sauce you’d use on your burrito and put a bunch of it into the shaker tin with your Margarita, and the result, perhaps surprisingly, is among the most delicious and celebrated spicy cocktails of the last 20 years. This cocktail, created in 2008 by Sam Ross at NYC’s Little Branch, also throws in some salt and pepper, because why not? Make his original, below, or try out an even more refreshing variation of El Guapo.

Add lime pieces to shaker tin and muddle to get as much juice out as possible. At the rest of the ingredients, shake hard for five to six seconds and dump the whole thing, ice and all, into a large rocks glass. Taste for balance and add more lime juice as necessary. Garnish with a sprinkle of salt and a good crack of black pepper.