Updated July 9, 2026 by George Ciuciureanu, co-founder of Thirsty Bartender.
How do you make a classic Margarita?
A classic Margarita is 1.5 oz tequila, 1 oz freshly squeezed lime juice, 3/4 oz orange liqueur, and 1/2 oz simple syrup, shaken hard with ice for 15 to 20 seconds and strained over fresh ice into a salt-rimmed glass. Garnish with a lime wheel and it's done in about two minutes, most of which is the shaking.
That's the whole drink, and that's precisely why it's so easy to get wrong. Three ingredients and a little sugar leave nowhere to hide: stale lime juice reads instantly, a harsh tequila bites, and a heavy hand with the liqueur turns the whole thing into candy. The Margarita has survived nearly a century of bar trends not because it's forgiving but because when the ratio is right, nothing else on the menu touches it.
This is the recipe our Margarita Kit is built around, with every ingredient measured, tested, and shipped to your door across the GTA, tequila included. Yes, the alcohol is included. Order by 5 PM and you're rimming glasses by tomorrow evening.
Why this ratio is the one worth memorizing
Recipes for the Margarita argue with each other constantly, and most of the argument is about balance. The oldest school pours tequila, orange liqueur, and lime at 3:2:1, which made sense when orange liqueur was doing the sweetening. The trouble is that a liqueur-heavy Margarita tastes more like the liqueur than the tequila, and modern palates keep asking the lime to do more work.
Our card lands at 1.5 oz tequila, 1 oz lime, 3/4 oz orange liqueur, and 1/2 oz simple syrup, and each number is there for a reason. The tequila stays in charge. The full ounce of fresh lime gives the drink its spine. The orange liqueur drops to a supporting role where its job is aroma and depth rather than sweetness. And the half ounce of simple syrup, the part traditionalists love to skip, is what lets the lime be generous without the first sip puckering you. Skip the syrup and you'll spend the evening wondering why your Margarita is sharper than the one from your favourite King West bar. They're using syrup too. They're just not telling you.
There's a second reason these exact numbers are non-negotiable at our end: the whole kit is engineered backwards from them. Multiply the recipe by sixteen and you get, to the millilitre, the bottles we pack. Sixteen one-ounce pours of lime juice is 473 ml, which is exactly the bottle of freshly squeezed lime juice in the box. Sixteen half-ounces of simple syrup is 237 ml, exactly that bottle too. The orange liqueur and the 750 ml of tequila are sized to run out on the same last round, with just enough margin for an honest jigger. Follow the card, and when you garnish drink number sixteen the box is empty: no orphaned third of a bottle, no juice quietly dying in the fridge door, nothing wasted. We built the business around that feeling of done.
The technique: shake hard, dilute on purpose
Most advice on how to make a Margarita stops at the ratio, and the ratio is only half the drink. The unglamorous secret of a great Margarita is water. A proper 15 to 20 second shake with plenty of ice doesn't just chill the drink, it melts roughly an ounce of water into it, and that dilution is a planned ingredient. It softens the alcohol, knits the citrus and the agave together, and gives the drink its silky, just-off-freezing texture. A five-second shake produces a warm, harsh cocktail no ratio can rescue.
So fill your cocktail shaker generously with ice, seal it well, and shake like you mean it until the tin frosts over. Strain over fresh ice, never the ice you shook with, because spent ice melts fast and keeps diluting past the point you wanted. Measure with a jigger while you're at it. The difference between 3/4 oz and a glug is the difference between a balanced drink and a sweet one, and free-pouring is how good recipes get blamed for bad Margaritas.
The classic Margarita recipe
Yield: 1 cocktail
Prep time: 2 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Glass: Rocks (classic) or coupe (up)
Ingredients
- 1.5 oz tequila (our kit ships 1800 Tequila or Casamigos Blanco)
- 1 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
- 3/4 oz orange liqueur
- 1/2 oz simple syrup
- Sea salt flakes, for the rim
- 1 fresh lime wedge, for rimming
- Ice
- Garnish: 1 dehydrated lime wheel
Method
- Cut a fresh lime into 8 wedges. Add the sea salt flakes to a small plate and lightly crush with the bottom of a glass.
- Rub a lime wedge around the rim of a rocks glass, then dip the rim into the crushed salt. One wedge rims about two glasses.
- In a cocktail shaker, add 1.5 oz tequila, 3/4 oz orange liqueur, 1 oz lime juice, and 1/2 oz simple syrup.
- Fill the shaker with ice and shake vigorously for 15 to 20 seconds, until well chilled.
- Strain into the prepared glass over fresh ice.
- Garnish with a dehydrated lime wheel. Serve immediately.
Tip: The shaker builds two drinks as easily as one. Double the measures, shake once, strain into two prepared glasses.
What's in our Margarita Kit
- 750 ml tequila (choose 1800 Tequila or Casamigos Blanco)
- 375 ml orange liqueur (we ship Cointreau)
- 473 ml freshly squeezed lime juice
- 237 ml small-batch simple syrup, made in Toronto
- 1 fresh lime, for rimming the glass
- 59 g Maldon sea salt flakes
- 16 dehydrated lime wheels, made in-house from fresh ripe limes
- A free jigger
- A printed recipe card with ratios calibrated to the kit
The kit makes 16 drinks, and the tequila choice was deliberate from the start: one premium bottle and one top-shelf bottle, both Blanco, both tested in this exact ratio. 1800 Tequila is the premium pick, a 100% agave Blanco made to the brand's original 1800 formula, with the cooked agave and black pepper profile that reviewers consistently describe as built for cocktails. Casamigos Blanco is the top-shelf pick, famously soft and creamy with a vanilla roundness so polished that tequila purists argue about it; in a Margarita, that smoothness is exactly what makes the drink disappear fast at a party, and it's why we gave it its own Casamigos Margarita guide. Either way, we already stood in the LCBO aisle for you.
Rocks or up, salt or no salt
On the rocks is the classic serve and the right default: the fresh ice keeps the drink cold through a long conversation and holds the dilution steady. Straight up in a coupe is the sharper-dressed version, colder and more concentrated at first sip, better suited to a dinner table than a patio couch. The recipe is identical either way; only the strain changes.
Salt is technically optional and practically not. A sea salt rim seasons each sip, tames the lime's bite, and makes the tequila taste rounder than it has any right to. If your guests are split, rim half the glass and let every sip be a choice. The one rule is texture: crushed sea salt flakes, never the fine stuff from the shaker, which clumps and oversalts.
What we learned building this kit
Lime juice first. We tried pasteurized lime juice and from-concentrate lime juice, hoping for a longer shelf life, and every version tasted cooked and flat, like a photocopy of a lime. The only juice that survives a proper Margarita is squeezed from fresh limes, so that's what ships in the box, and it's why we tell you to plan your kit for the week it arrives instead of the month.
The orange liqueur went through the same trial. We started with triple sec, because everyone starts with triple sec, and the drink kept coming out thinner than the recipe deserved. Cointreau settled the question in a single side-by-side tasting: cleaner orange, drier finish, more backbone in the shake. So Cointreau is what goes in the kit.
The details we refused to outsource. Our dehydrated lime wheels are made in-house from fresh, ripe limes, sliced and dried slowly so they keep their colour and snap. The simple syrup is made in small batches in Toronto. And the salt on your rim is Maldon sea salt flakes, the best salt in the world for this job, because the pyramid flakes crush into shards that season each sip instead of caking on your lip. None of this shows up in a two-minute drink photo. All of it shows up in the glass.
Margarita variations worth knowing
Once the classic is in your hands, the variations are small turns of the same wheel. A Tommy's Margarita drops the orange liqueur entirely and sweetens with agave nectar instead, which pushes the tequila forward and suits sipping-grade bottles. A skinny Margarita is just the classic with less syrup, and now you know why it tastes sharp. And when the crowd likes heat, the Spicy Margarita Kit runs the same fresh-lime backbone through a house-made chili syrup and a smoked salt rim, with the heat building politely instead of ambushing you.
If the occasion calls for something longer and lighter than a Margarita altogether, that's not a variation, that's a Paloma, and we've written that one up too.
How to serve Margaritas to a crowd
A Margarita night for eight is a rhythm, not a chore, and it never involves a jug. Before anyone arrives, cut the lime, crush the salt, rim your glasses, and stage them on a tray with the bottles lined up in pouring order. Then work in rounds: two drinks per shake, doubled measures, fifteen hard seconds, strain across two prepared glasses, garnish, hand off. A round for four is two shakes and change, every glass lands frosty with the foam still on top, and your guests get the small theatre of watching their drink get made, which is half of why they'll ask when they can come back.
The 16-drink kit is built for exactly this pace, and if the night is bigger than a round of drinks, our complete guide to hosting a cocktail party in Toronto covers the rest, from glassware math to timing the food.
The Toronto part
Making a proper Margarita in this city usually means three stops: the LCBO for tequila and orange liqueur, the grocery store for a bag of limes that may or may not be juicy this week, and somewhere else entirely for decent salt. Then an hour of squeezing, because a 16-drink night takes about a pound and a half of limes, and bottled lime juice from the grocery aisle has the personality of damp cardboard.
The kit collapses all of that into one box at your door: the tested tequila, the Cointreau, freshly squeezed lime juice, house simple syrup, the Maldon, the handmade garnishes, and a jigger to keep the pours honest. Order by 5 PM and it arrives the next day anywhere in the GTA, Toronto to Mississauga, Scarborough to Vaughan, Etobicoke to Markham. Patio season does not wait for errands.
Margarita FAQ
What is a Margarita made of?
Tequila, freshly squeezed lime juice, and orange liqueur, shaken with ice and served with a salted rim. Our recipe adds a half ounce of simple syrup, which rounds the lime's sharpness and is the quiet standard at most good cocktail bars.
What's the best tequila for a Margarita?
An unaged Blanco. It keeps the drink bright and lets the agave and lime lead, where barrel-aged tequilas fight the citrus. Our kit ships your choice of 1800 Tequila, an agave-forward premium with a peppery backbone, or Casamigos Blanco, the soft and creamy top-shelf pick. Both were tested in this exact ratio.
Do I need Cointreau, or will any orange liqueur work?
Any quality orange liqueur works, but we tested this exact question while building the kit and Cointreau won: cleaner orange, drier finish, more structure in the shake. Bottom-shelf triple sec tastes like orange candy instead of orange peel, which is why our kit ships Cointreau.
Should a Margarita be shaken or stirred?
Always shaken. Citrus drinks need the hard chill, the aeration, and the roughly one ounce of dilution that only a real 15 to 20 second shake provides. A stirred Margarita is a warm, harsh Margarita.
Is a Margarita served on the rocks or straight up?
Both are correct. On the rocks is the classic and stays cold longer; straight up in a coupe is colder at first sip and a little more formal. Same recipe, different strain.
How do I make Margaritas for a party without a bartender?
Prep ahead and shake in rounds. Rim and stage the glasses before guests arrive, then shake two drinks at a time with doubled measures. A round for four people takes about five minutes, and every drink is as fresh as the first. Never mix ahead into a jug; a shaken Margarita is at its best the minute it's poured.
How strong is a Margarita?
Around 20% alcohol in the finished glass, which makes it a proper cocktail to be sipped rather than a long drink. If the afternoon calls for something gentler you can stay with all evening, that's the Paloma's territory.
Where can I buy a Margarita kit in Toronto?
Order our Margarita Kit before 5 PM and we deliver next day across the GTA. The tequila, Cointreau, fresh lime juice, simple syrup, Maldon sea salt flakes, house-made dehydrated lime wheels, a fresh lime, a free jigger, and the printed recipe card all arrive in one box. Toronto, Mississauga, Etobicoke, Scarborough, North York, Vaughan, and Markham covered. The alcohol is included.
Sending it as a gift? The Margarita Kit is the housewarming and birthday gift that gets talked about after: add a free gift note at checkout and pick the delivery date so it lands fresh on the occasion. Not sure they're Margarita people? A Thirsty Bartender e-Gift Card arrives instantly and lets them pick their own kit.
Best served with a patio that gets the evening sun, a playlist you'll deny choosing, and the smug calm of someone who didn't spend the afternoon squeezing limes.