Margarita of the Year

MargarEHta

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By Jared Schmidt

Patrón Perfectionist winner 2019, Canada

Serve in a

Rocks glass

Garnish:

3 blueberries on a metal pick and a cinnamon salt rim

How to make:


Prepare your glass: use a spice grinder (or blender/food processor) to lightly blend coarse sea salt and cinnamon powder at a 5:1 ratio by mass.

Add 6-8 whole blueberries (about 10g) to a shaker tin. Muddle firmly. Add all other ingredients with ice and shake. Double strain cocktail through a hawthorne strainer and a fine mesh strainer into the rocks glass over ice then garnish.

45 ml Patrón Reposado tequila
15 ml Cointreau L'Unique triple sec liqueur
7.5 ml Dry white port
22.5 ml Lime juice (freshly squeezed)
7.5 ml Maple syrup
10 gram Blueberries (fresh)
1 grind Salt

Origin:


The inspiration for this cocktail comes from day one of lockdown this year: I had blueberry pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. It was such an unassumingly simple breakfast, but using some of the most iconic Canadian flavours.

Fast-forward several weeks into the pandemic, and many bartenders were faced with the challenge of navigating an industry in turmoil, and being confined to their homes. However, sometimes creativity is born from constraints. This lead many of us to seek ways we could still exercise our creativity through making cocktails and sharing recipes that could easily be made from our home kitchens. Speaking from personal experience, some of the more ubiquitous ingredients you will find in the average Canadian pantry and fridge are blueberries (from British Columbia), and maple syrup (from Quebec). So when tasked with creating the Margarita of the Year, I can't think of a better way to express my own experience this year in a cocktail than by creating something that integrates the flavours from my pantry into a beautiful Patrón Margarita.


The Patrón Reposado is the backbone of my margarita, and provides a foundation of fresh agave flavour and wood. The cointreau and lime juice play the standard roles in a margarita, bringing bright citrus flavour and acidity to the balance. The muddled blueberries add rich dark fruit notes, while the maple syrup gives a robust and earthy sweetness. The white port enhances the honeyed apple notes in the Patrón Reposado, and pairs so perfectly with the decadent maple and berry flavours. Finally, the cinnamon salt rim stimulates your palate with the first sip, and emphasizes the light baking spice finish in the Patrón tequila.

The MargarEHta. Bringing the flavours of the Canadian home kitchen to the cocktail that the world craved during the strangest year of our collective lives.

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