It’s easy to be a lone star in the Lone Star State, which spreads as big and wide as any state I have ever attempted to drive across, leaving one to feel awful lonely on a long trip. But wherever this lonesome cowboy wrangled this behemoth of a Margarita, the stars at night are big and bright—especially if he finishes the drink.
Texas
Chuck Norris fact: Chuck Norris (a Texan) is the fastest reader on the planet. He’s already finished this book and made most of the cocktail recipes. His favorite was the Black Squirrel Old Fashioned (this page).
I would say Houston is the most genuine mixology scene in the entire country, without a doubt. We love drinks, we love fresh ingredients, we love classic cocktails, but we’re not gonna forget where we’re from.
—Bobby Huegel, owner, Anvil Bar & Refuge (Houston)
On July 20, 1969, Houston was the first word spoken on the moon. Texas can certainly feel like another planet on occasion, but nope, it’s still Earth. Especially in Earth, Texas (population: 1,109), the only city named after our planet. Lots of chaparral, cactus, and mesquite cover the huge expanse that is Texas, a state of more than 267,000 square miles, so big that El Paso, located on the far western side of the skillet, is closer to California than it is to Dallas.
These days, spirits in Texas are receiving a new mezcalitude. Mezcal bars like Ruins (Dallas), the Pastry War (Houston), Downstairs at the Esquire (San Antonio), and upstairs at Whisler’s (Austin) are working hard to impress on people the merits of good mezcal—of which there are many. Tongue-Cut Sparrow’s Alex Negranza singlehandedly guided my brother through a mezcal tasting when he stated that he had a rough time accepting its smoky, somewhat esoteric flavors.
Icehouses were typical places to get a drink back in the hot Texas days of yesteryear, but while just a few of the classics remain, Houston is fortunate to be home to most of them, such as the West Alabama Ice House, the D&T Drive Inn, and the Moon Tower Inn, all serving “cold ass beer and no bullshit.” Why am I mentioning icehouses in a cocktail book? Spend any time with a craft cocktail bartender, and you will recognize a threshold. Crafting cocktails can be labor intensive and mentally exhausting, and a cold beer helps alleviate the stress levels, aiding in restoring simplicity. Most bartenders love a Boilermaker at the end of their shift, or on their days off. It’s uncomplicated and refreshing. “I love the West Alabama Ice House,” says author and bartender Jacob Grier. “There’s not much better on a Houston night than a plate of tacos from the truck next door and a cold bottle of Shiner Bock.” Beer and cocktails have a symbiotic relationship, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we started to see a few more icehouses opening in the future.
Just as Houston (aka Space City) has come a long, long way in a galaxy of icehouses into the modern-day cocktailia solar system, there are some truly great bars throughout Texas, so make sure to spend some time when you visit. Austin is the cool aunt or uncle you want to hang with whenever your parents are away. It’s got live music, hip bars, great food, South by Southwest, Austin City Limits, and Donn’s Depot, where old-timers are still showing the young kids how to dance. Don’t hesitate to jump into Barton Springs if you need to cool off on a summer day, and at night, cool off in the Roosevelt Room, a cocktail bar making everything pretty—and pretty damn delicious.
After visiting Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, I have come to realize a few certainties: Austin lets its freak flag fly, high-speed scooters are not going away anytime soon, grackles are the strangest-sounding bird I have ever heard, and bartenders are superheroes, as evidenced by the Houston bartending community’s efforts to help the city after Hurricane Harvey.
TEXAS SPIRIT
Bert “Tito” Beveridge (yes, that is his last name, and yes, it has been pointed out to me that my last name is Bartels) started the award-winning vodka company in 1997, distilling vodka from a one-man micro-distillery shack, single-handedly raising the money and sources for opening Texas’s first legal distillery, hand-bottling his batches and slapping Elmer’s glue on the labels, and hoofing it around Texas in an effort to build a following. It took more than eight years, but the hard work, sleepless nights, and steadfast perseverance paid off. Tito’s has now captured an audience of millions in the years since its inception, producing upward of sixty million bottles of vodka per year and still growing.
Donn’s Depot is one of the only places in Austin where you can find old cowboys dancing alongside young hipsters—everyone is welcome. And there’s always dancing; I’m not much of a dive bar dancer myself, but with owner Donn there usually playing piano and people of all ages enjoying themselves over cheap beer, it’s really hard to not have a blast just sitting and people-watching.
—Emma Janzen, author of Mezcal
TEXAS BUCKET LIST BAR
Operating out of Austin since Donn started kicking up dust in 1972, the Depot has long been an Austin local favorite. You know you’re in a sacred place when you find all the industry folks hanging out at a bar during their time off. Sitting at a table while sipping a shot and a beer watching the old-timer band playing hit after hit and seeing older couples cutting a rug with shiny new dancing shoes and showing the kids how it’s done is an experience not to be missed.
STATE FACT
“Don’t Mess with Texas” started in the 1980s as a “Don’t Litter” campaign to combat the common behavior of motorists tossing their empty beer cans out their windows while driving, and eventually caught up to replace anti-litter sentiment with a source of pride for being from Texas.
TEXAS’S OLDEST BAR
Operating as one of the oldest beer halls in America, Scholz has been hookin’ horns with the locals, University of Texas students, and passersby with a proud German heritage menu featuring bratwurst, schnitzel, and obatzda, a Bavarian cheese dip served with smoky paprika and bread. Scholz gets a healthy number of its customers for the German beer selections, but what should not be overlooked is the terrific German spirit menu. On top of some speedy delivery draft cocktails, Scholz has a nice medley of German liqueurs, brandies, and bitters to sample, a rarity among German beer hall menus. That’s swell enough to make a punk rocker polka.
The Mexican Martini is a unique Texas cocktail, which is essentially a Dirty Margarita, made dirty with the addition of olive brine, and was rumored to have been created here in Austin in the late 80s.
—Justin Lavenue, owner, The Roosevelt Room (Austin)
TEXAS BEVERAGE
The Ranch Water cocktail is a spritz-y Margarita variation. Most bartenders make it by combining tequila and lime juice before topping off the drink with Topo Chico, a sparkling mineral water that some say is required for the drink to be authentic. Though the drink has been around West Texas for decades, the Gage Hotel, a historic hotel in Marathon, Texas, finally put it on its menu at the White Buffalo Bar in 2010 after serving it for years, and articles in PUNCH and the New York Times followed, proclaiming it to be Texas’s unofficial state cocktail. If it’s between May and September, when it’s arguably hotter than the surface of the sun in West Texas, there’s only one thing to do—keep ’em coming.
When I think about cocktails in Texas, the Margarita always pops to mind first because it’s ubiquitous throughout the state—from your average Tex-Mex restaurants to upscale cocktail bars, everyone has a Margarita on the menu. And most places always ask the classic question: “frozen or on the rocks,” because the icy-cold, blended counterpart is just as important as the one that’s shaken and served over ice. Nothing says Texas to me more than the frozen Margarita.
–Emma Janzen, author of Mezcal
TEXAS COCKTAIL BAR
Bobby Huegel co-founded the most talked-about bar in the South in 2009. Most people simply refer to it as Anvil, and to experience the bar is to submit to cocktail history and majesty at the same time, as Anvil boasts a rotating list of one hundred classic cocktails on its epic menu, along with a smaller selection of house originals, which you could argue should all be considered modern-day classics. Each staff member is engaged and friendly. At the end of each night, the least experienced bartender requests to taste an unfamiliar spirit, and all the closers sit and sip and reflect on its legacy. It’s also meant to foster a sense of community, as everyone closes together. “No one should ever have a shift drink alone,” says Huegel. Preach on, good sir.
Anyway, whacking a surly bartender ain’t much of a crime.
—Larry McMurtry (born in Archer City), in Lonesome Dove
TEXAS BEVERAGE
The Margarita is the most Instagrammed cocktail in the world for good reason: It’s refreshing, delicious simplicity in a glass. On a warm, sunny day, is there anything more fucking delicious than a Margarita? Anything? Cold and tangy. Sweet and sour. A little bit nice, a little bit naughty. Did you just break up with your girlfriend? Here’s a Margarita. Flight delayed? That’s okay, because a Margarita is always on time. Is it your day off? Here’s a Margarita! Have you been staring at a computer all day? Margaritas are known to help ease one’s eyes. Are your sinuses bothering you? Have a Margarita.
Joy of Mixology author Gary “Gaz” Regan said it best when he stated the Margarita has as many histories as rabbits have bunnies, but there is one origin for the frozen Margarita: Dallas, Texas. In 1971, Mariano Martinez, owner of a Tex-Mex restaurant, concocted a pitcher of frozen Margaritas made in a soft-serve ice cream machine, and the slushy goodness was picked up by every backyard barbecue, chain restaurant, and college kegger looking to impress. Houston even has a slew of drive-thru locations where one can acquire a frozen Margarita on a hot Texas day without stepping out of the car, but be warned: Drinking and driving is still illegal.
TEXAS BEVERAGE #2
Following the Southern tradition of Coke and peanuts, where one takes a bottle of Coke and puts a handful of salty peanuts inside the glass, we now give you the Texas-born soda Dr (there is no period after the “Dr”) Pepper and peanuts, a novelty adored in the state where Steve Martin, that wild and crazy guy, was born in 1945.
PLINY’S TONIC
The Pliny’s has been a standard at Anvil Bar & Refuge since the bar opened in 2009, and is featured on the Anvil classics list, located between the seasonal selections and “The 100 List,” which includes some of the most commonly ordered cocktails from the past two centuries. New bartenders at Anvil are responsible for learning all of these recipes. The list is a way to elevate the quality of its staff, a remarkable training technique, which should be lauded and copied by more bar programs across the country. This recipe hails from Paul Clarke’s wonderful book The Cocktail Chronicles.
2 ounces gin (Citadelle recommended)
1 ounce fresh lime juice
½ ounce rich simple syrup (2:1 sugar to water)
2 fresh mint leaves
¼-inch-thick cucumber wheel (about the size of the pickle in your Whataburger burger)
2 drops Bittermens Hellfire habanero shrub bitters
Garnish: fresh mint leaf
Combine the ingredients and shake until chilled; fine strain into a chilled coupe glass and serve up, garnished with the fresh mint leaf.
CIGAR BOX
Justin was kind enough to share this recipe after I had the pleasure of experiencing it at his wonderful bar in downtown Austin. I am a sucker for anything smoky on a cocktail menu, and when a drink features mezcal, lapsang souchong tea, and tobacco essence, it is a no-brainer for me to order. And the presentation is worth the price of admission: the drink arrives on a square glass ashtray with a smoking cinnamon stick riding sidecar. Every sip was a win. The tobacco essence is a bit labor intensive for the home bartender, so try using a smoky bitters instead.
2 ounces Del Maguey Vida Single Village Mezcal
¼ ounce Lapsang Souchong Syrup (recipe follows)
3 dashes Scrappy’s Lavender Bitters
3 dashes Crude “Pooter” Bitters Smoke & Salt, Mister Bitters Honeyed Apricot and Smoked Hickory, Cocktail Punk Smoked Orange Bitters, or other smoky bitters
Garnish: 1 cinnamon stick
Combine all ingredients in a chilled rocks glass with plenty of ice and stir until chilled. Burn one end of the cinnamon stick until it starts to smoke and set it next to (but not inside) the drink on a proper ashtray or plate to serve.
Lapsang Souchong Syrup
Makes 2 cups
1 cup of loose lapsang souchong tea
4 cups water
1 cup Sugar
Steep the tea in the simmering water for 10 minutes, stirring intermittently. Strain off the tea using a fine strainer. Measure the volume of the liquid, then add an equal volume of sugar (1:1 ratio). Stir well to dissolve all the sugar, then bottle. Keep refrigerated between uses for up to 2 weeks.
LUX PRINCESS
I only ever use Diamond Crystal kosher salt because of the texture, which makes the solution easy to dose.
—Dave Arnold, big fan of salt, author of Liquid Intelligence, co-owner Existing Conditions (Manhattan, NY)
This recipe comes from the January 2019 Imbibe issue featuring temperance drinks, which have grown in popularity in the past few years. Coltivare’s cocktail menu wields a lovely balance of seasonal offerings, homespun classics, and an equal number of zero-proof cocktails. We are all seeking a little more balance in our day-to-day lives, and these nonalcoholic drinks are terrific alternatives to feeling we have to burn the candle at both ends on a regular basis. The “soft cocktail” movement provides a lighter, equally tasteful, more refreshing buoyancy to alcohol’s weightier, sometimes derailing alternative. Look on the bright side: You get to keep your wits about you!
3 ounces coconut water 1 ounce fresh lime juice
½ ounce orgeat
½ ounce cherry syrup (recipe follows)
3 dashes salt tincture (recipe follows)
Handful of fresh mint leaves 1 ounce sparkling water
Garnish: fresh mint sprig, Luxardo maraschino cherries, and powdered sugar (if you have it)
Shake all the ingredients except the sparkling water with ice until chilled; strain into a chilled glass with (preferably) crushed ice and top with the sparkling water. Garnish with the mint sprig, a few cherries, and a sprinkling of powdered sugar, if you plan on using.
Cherry Syrup
Makes approximately 3 cups
3 cups cherries, stems removed
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Combine cherries, water, and sugar in a large saucepan over medium heat. Cover and cook until bubbling. Uncover and stir frequently until cherries grow very soft (about 20–25 minutes). Take off heat and strain cherries into a bowl, pushing down on cherries to extract more juice. Add lemon juice to the syrup and stir. Store in an airtight container and refrigerate for up to 10 days.
Salt Tincture
Makes approximately 2¾ ounces
20 grams Diamond Crystal kosher salt
¹⁄³ cup water
Combine the salt and water and shake until the salt is dissolved.
In terms of unique drinking traditions, it would be where you slam your glass down after cheersing, then drink. I guess I didn’t really notice this one until I moved to Texas.
—Travis Hernandez, bartender, Half Step (Austin)