I heard Ed McMahon on Johnny Carson tell your usual lounge lizard joke once, that I still think is kinda funny. He said if you’re ever hiking in the wilderness make sure to bring along everything you need to make a martini. That way, if you’re ever lost, you can make yourself a martini. And while you’re mixing it up someone will tap you on the shoulder and say “That’s not the way to make a martini,” and you can ask them how to get back to civilization again.

As I said…a lounge lizard joke. But a good one. And it probably works for making a margarita. I think I finally have the right mix of ingredients to make that perfectly smooth Italian margarita I’ve only been able to get sporadically at various bars and restaurants. And along with that, a silky smooth basic margarita. And probably someone will tell me this isn’t the way to make a margarita.

Whatever. I’ve wondered for so long why some places make their margaritas so tart I can barely sip them. Pretty sure now it’s too much lime.

I’ve seen the bartenders use all sorts of things…sour mix, Grand Marnier instead of Cointreau, simple syrup. It’s been hit and miss. Last summer my brother took me to Avila Beach golf club, just up the coast from Pismo, and there I watched a young bartender make me a margarita from scratch…a good tequila, Cointreau and a fresh lime she cut and squeezed herself, plus something in a mystery bottle that I thought might be sour mix or simple syrup. It was the smoothest, nicest margarita I’ve ever had. But when I tried to do that myself it came out way too tart.

I’ve tried ready made margarita mix. The Kirkland stuff is very good. But I can’t make an Italian margarita with it. I’ve tried a bunch of different recipes all to no avail. Your basic margarita follows a 321 rule. Three parts tequila, 2 parts Cointreau (some substitute Grand Marnier) and one part lime. I think that one part lime is where a lot of bartenders get it wrong and it turns out too tart. But just fiddling with the amount of lime wasn’t working for me. I bought some fresh limes to try and duplicate what I had at the Avila Beach Club and could not.

But I really Really like that Italian margarita. So recently I tried experimenting with it in ernest. I started subtracting lime from the accepted recipes but too little was no good either. A good margarita is a balance of sweet and tart and while I lean toward sweet in just about everything (my go-to tequila for making margaritas, Tres Generaciones plata, is a slightly sweet and very smooth tequila) the lime needed to be in there. Then I got a tip: use agave sweetener, but sparingly, to balance out the lime. Instead of one part lime, one half part lime and one half part agave sweetener. Or maybe two-thirds part lime and one third agave sweetener. I am stil fiddling with it.

But it works!

Now I can have my Italian margaritas at home whenever I want. Which isn’t often because at my age my body doesn’t take alcohol like it used to. I go out for dinner now I’m more likely to have a mocktail as an actual drink. In fact, a new gay mocktail only bar has opened up near the DC gayborhood I’d like to try sometime soon.