Two tequila cocktails made with fresh citrus and no bottled mix, a classic old fashioned, and a non-alcoholic drink good enough to order on its own.
My recipes. The margarita is "Tommy's" style (tequila, lime and agave, no triple sec). The sparkler goes in the same glass with the same garnish, so there's always a good option that isn't alcohol.
Per drink. A US standard drink is 14 g of alcohol. The tequila cocktails are about 1.3 standard drinks, and the old fashioned is 1.3–1.7 depending on the whiskey's proof.
Run a lime wedge around half the rim of a rocks glass and dip it in coarse salt. Shake the tequila, lime and agave hard with ice for 15 seconds, then strain over fresh ice.
This is the "Tommy's" version: agave syrup instead of orange liqueur, so it's cleaner and less sweet. Salting half the rim lets each sip be salty or not.
full nutrition ↓Salt the rim of a tall glass if you like and fill it with ice. Add the tequila, grapefruit, lime and agave and stir, then top with club soda. Garnish with a grapefruit wedge.
Grapefruit interacts with many common drugs, including some statins (see grapefruit). Blood orange juice makes a good swap.
full nutrition ↓In a rocks glass, stir the sugar, bitters and teaspoon of water until the sugar dissolves. Add the whiskey and a large ice cube and stir 20–30 seconds to chill and dilute. Squeeze the orange peel over the glass, shiny side down, to spray its oils across the top, then rub it on the rim and drop it in.
A single big cube melts slowly, so the last sip tastes like the first. Skip the muddled fruit and soda water. The orange oil is the whole garnish. The numbers use an 80-proof spirit. Most bourbon is 90–100 proof, which makes it about 1.5–1.7 standard drinks.
full nutrition ↓Shake the orange juice, lime, honey, ginger and salt with ice, then strain into an ice-filled glass and top with club soda. Garnish with an orange wheel or mint.
Serve it in the same glass with the same garnish as the cocktails, so it never feels like the kids' option. The pinch of salt rounds out the citrus, the same trick as the salt rim.
full nutrition ↓This is calculated from the same USDA data as Build a Day. Tequila uses USDA's 80-proof spirits entry.
% of the daily target for men (the same targets as Build a Day). ~ = mostly estimated. Carbohydrate is what's left of the calories after protein, fat and alcohol (7 kcal per gram), so here it's almost all sugar. Only part of a salt rim gets eaten, and the numbers count about half a gram.
Grapefruit contains furanocoumarins, which shut down an enzyme in the gut wall (CYP3A4) that normally breaks down many drugs before they reach the blood. The result can be much higher drug levels. More than 85 drugs are known or predicted to interact, and 43 of them can cause serious harm.[1] One whole grapefruit or 200 mL of juice is enough to matter, and the effect lasts: a quarter of it remains 24 hours later. A paloma has only about 60 mL, so less is known about that dose, but the statins matter here. Simvastatin, lovastatin and atorvastatin interact. Pravastatin and rosuvastatin don't (see Statins). Sweet oranges such as navel, Valencia and blood orange contain no furanocoumarins, so blood orange juice makes a safe paloma. (Strong: well-established pharmacology)
↑ back to summaryBottled margarita mix is mostly sugar or high fructose corn syrup with a little lime flavor, and a restaurant margarita can carry several tablespoons of sugar. Here the only sweetener is ½ oz of agave, about 15 g of sugar, and the panel shows the totals. The HFCS note on the sauces page explains why the amount of sugar matters more than the type.
↑ back to summary2 oz of 80-proof tequila is 0.8 oz of pure alcohol, which is 1.3 US standard drinks. Two margaritas are closer to three drinks than two. An old fashioned made with 100-proof bourbon is 1.7, so two of those are nearly three and a half. Your liver has to clear every gram, which is why alcohol gets its own page: Alcohol & Liver. Alternating with the sparkler keeps the night good and the next morning too.
↑ back to summary