Ingredients
- Lime wedge and salt
- 1 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice
- 1 ounce agave nectar
- 2 ounces blanco tequila
- Ice
- Lime wheel for garnish
Instructions
- Run a lime wedge around the rim of a margarita glass. Spread the salt on a saucer and dip the rim into the salt.
- In a cocktail shaker, combine the lime juice, agave syrup, and tequila.
- Add ice and shake to chill.
- Strain into the prepared margarita glass over fresh ice.
- Garnish with the lime wheel.
Variations and Substitutions
This is a simple margarita with a focus on agave. You can vary it in some ways:
- Muddle soft fruit, such as berries, with the agave syrup before adding lime juice and tequila for a flavored margarita.
- Blend it in a blender with ½ to 1 cup of crushed ice for a frozen agave margarita.
- Reduce agave to ½ ounce and add ½ ounce of orange liqueur for a more traditional margarita with pumped up agave flavors.
- Add a few jalapeño slices for a spicy margarita.
Garnish
The classic garnish for a margarita is a salt rim and a lime wheel or wedge. You can omit either of these, use a sugar rim, or garnish with a lime peel as well.
About the Agave Margarita
Agave is a desert succulent. There are over 300 species of it, but only one is used in tequila: Weber blue agave. The leaves are removed from the core of the plant, which is called the piña. Agave makers bake the piña and then extract the juice, which is fermented to become tequila. Agave gives tequila the characteristic earthy flavors.
Agave nectar also comes from the piña of the agave plant, although it is extracted from several species of agave plants, not just the Weber blue. It is also made from the agave juice using a process of heating and filtration. Heating concentrates the sugars to create the sweet, viscous syrup.
Adding agave nectar to the margarita in place of orange liqueur pumps up the agave flavors in the margarita while adding sweetness to the cocktail to balance the tart lime. The syrup complements the agave notes in the tequila for a truly sublime cocktail experience.
Exceptional Agave
If you're a tequila lover, then enhance the earthy, funky, sweet notes of its source plant by adding agave nectar to your margarita. The result will be ultra agave and extra delicious.
