Tequila And Wine Come Together For One Devilish Cocktail

Wine is not among the most common cocktail mixers (the fortified variety better known as vermouth notwithstanding), so when it's uncorked for a recipe, imbibers tend to take notice. Wine-based libations, such as your more common sangria, spritz, or mimosa, are often complicated to categorize rather than fitting neatly in the more straightforward cocktail class. Even a kalimotxo, with its scant two ingredients of red wine and coke, is more of a mixed drink than a cocktail. But the devil's margarita is a more complex blend.

For one, it does not simply imbue a regular margarita with a little evil and call it a day; it could merely add a few drops of red food coloring, but instead uses a red wine float to conjure its demonic rouge hue. The float technique, just like you'd find layering a New York sour, aims to rest the wine on top of the other ingredients. It can be tricky, but, with a little patience and a common utensil, you shouldn't need to sell your soul to pull it off.

The base of the devil's margarita is similar to the morally neutral original version. But, while the perfect margarita recipe calls for tequila, triple sec, and lime juice, the devil's own swaps the orangey triple sec with simple syrup. This way it doesn't compete with any fruity notes in the wine. It's also typically made with blanco tequila, which creates a greater contrast with the wine than other tequila types. It's all shaken with ice and strained into a glass as usual, but the devil you know ends there.

Aside from the minor sweetener swap, the wine float is what gives the devil's margarita its satanic association. Were the wine merely poured in, the presentation wouldn't have quite the black magic quality that it does. Leave the dark arts for more serious matters and instead pour the ½ ounce of red wine required for each devil's margarita into a spouted jigger, if possible. This is easier to handle than the whole bottle. Then, hold an upturned teaspoon – the kind you'd use for actual tea, not for measuring — very close to the surface of the drink and slowly pour the wine over the back of the spoon. This more gentle liquid dispersal gives the wine a better chance of actually floating; if you just pour it all in at once, it might sink, and that would be a sin.