A terrible Margarita is a small tragedy, but a real one. The cocktail’s charm lies in its near un-mess-up-ability: tangy lime, bright tequila, sweet triple sec shaken together until fluffy and cold. Simple. Refreshing. Even losing lime for sour mix can’t completely mess up a Margarita.
What can mess up a Margarita? Clarifying it.
“Right now, everybody wants everything clarified, everything. And it’s ridiculous — it’s obnoxious,” says Kate Gerwin, owner of Happy Accidents Bar in Albuquerque, N.M. Gerwin laments that when a technique becomes popular, bartenders can run wild with it, without considering how it will improve or change a cocktail. Sometimes clarifying a drink is the right technique to achieve a creative vision. But when clarifying cocktails purely for appearances or to attract attention on social media, that’s where you run into thin, boring drinks, she says. (And deflated, watery, one-note Margaritas.)
Gerwin’s right. Clarified cocktails regularly go viral whether they taste great or not. So what’s behind this clarification proliferation? And what’s the line between a clarified drink that’s great, and one that’s a gimmick?
Clarifying Giveth
Clarified cocktails are easy to spot, and most venues we might reasonably describe as craft cocktail bars will offer at least one of them. The drink will invariably be dazzlingly translucent, transparent enough to read the menu right through. Or you might see one in a video on your social media feed, where a pitcher of murky mixture drops brilliantly clear and filters into a glass with a moniker like
