Q: If I go to a fiesta and take a twelve-pack of Lone Star with me and only drink eight, can I take the remaining brews home with me?
John Valdez
Austin
April 2008
A: Experience tells the Texanist that even when one arrives at a party empty-handed, drinks one’s fill, makes a horse’s ass of oneself with the host’s college-age daughter, steals out the back door with an armful of clanking liquor bottles, and stumbles down the street loudly singing that old Larry L. King favorite “Jesus on the Five-Yard Line” until a very stern policeman who appears out of nowhere and looks like one’s Uncle Gary asks one to shut the hell up, even then, Mr. Valdez, nobody is likely to say a word. Shocked gasps? Maybe. Real verbal confrontation? Doubtful. There is a limit, however, to the number of times one can blithely trample on society’s good graces, so if for no other reason than to build up a great storehouse of credit for those terrible groggy mornings when you will need to spend it, the Texanist advises you to not relieve the icebox of the remnants of the $8.49 twelver of Lone Star longnecks with which you so generously blessed the festivities. Just go on home.
Q: Salt, lime, tequila; or tequila, lime, salt; or lime, salt, tequila? What’s the right way to shoot tequila?
Stanley Brown
El Paso
May 2009
A: Traditionally, gulps of Mexican rotgut have been taken with the salt first, then the tequila, and then the lime, followed by a lot of puckering, wincing, and fanfare. But the Texanist would urge you to have it however you prefer it, whether that be with additional ingredients or slurped straight from the navel of a giggling Swedish dental technician late one night in the Cattle Baron Suite at the Driskill Hotel in Austin after a Jerry Jeff Walker birthday celebration that overlapped quite pleasantly with an international oral hygiene convention.
Q: What are skinny margaritas, and who should or shouldn’t be drinking them?
Name Withheld
August 2013
A: Often purported as a Texas invention, the classic margarita, in its purest, most unadulterated incarnation—as opposed to the lime-juiceless margs made from sugary mixes for consumption by college students—is the best chilled tequila-based drink to ever pass the Texanist’s parched lips. Such margaritas make for a perfectly refreshing accompaniment to a hot Texas evening. An evening just like this one, in fact. Excuse the Texanist for one moment, will you? [ Editors’ note: The Texanist’s first draft of this month’s column ended here, and initial attempts to reach him regarding the whereabouts of the remaining material were unsuccessful. However, thanks to an apparently inadvertent 45-minute-long message left on his editor’s voicemail containing only the sounds of splashing liquor, clinking ice, shaking, pouring, and off-key humming of Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville,” he was finally located and brought to the office. The following “advice” was subsequently squeezed out of him, like so many drops of juice from an old and pithy lime. We offer it for what it’s worth. ] Advice? You want more advice? Look, the Texanist told you that he doesn’t have any more time for advice. He’s busy with a very important project this afternoon, and he needs to get back to the, uh, lab. Pronto! Listen up, you. What if you knew that right now you were putting at risk a serious scientific advancement? Because that’s what you are doing. The Texanist is on the brink—and this is not to be repeated by or to anyone—but the Texanist is on the brink of ascertaining the precise formula for el supremo, the mother of all margaritas. ¡La madre de todos las goddam margaritas! Do you comprehende? Hey, what happened to the Texanist’s shirt? Never mind. See, traditionally you mix tequila, lime juice, and Cointreau on a 1.5-to-1-to-.5 ratio, and then you shake it, salt the rim, yadda yadda yadda. But the Texanist is working on some brand- newmethods—some recipes that cannot be presently discussed. With anyone! We’re talking about variations that could revolutionize the whole idea of the margarita, but they must be tested. And retested! And yet here you are, dragging the Texanist into the office at this ungodly hour of two in the afternoon to answer what is frankly a rather silly question. What’s a skinny margarita? Nothing more than the delicious original rebranded for the modern health-conscious imbiber. Of course, calling it that is unnecessary, since a margarita should always be served as the simple, no-frills, and relatively low-calorie alcoholic concoction God intended. At least until the Texanist finishes his landmark research. Now if you’ll excuse him, he simply must get back to his work.
Q: What’s with people using beer as a cocktail mixer these days? I seem to be running across this weird phenomenon more and more lately. Beer with tomato juice? Beer with orange juice? Beer on ice? What’s wrong with drinking a traditional Texas “coldbeer” straight from the packaging (or keg) that the brewer (and God) intended it to be drunk from?
Name Withheld
Austin
October 2012
A: The beer cocktail—or cerveza preparada, as it is known south of the border—is nothing new, although a few of its numerous variations do seem to be more prevalent in the state’s watering holes of late. Why, in the last week alone, the Texanist has had the following libations forcefully pushed upon him: a bevy of Bloody Mary–esque micheladas, one overly citrusy Brass Monkey, a Shiner on the rocks, a couple of Flaming Dr Peppers, four boilermakers, an unknown quantity of sake bombs, and one extremely large and overpowering Mexican Bulldog, which is basically a schooner of frozen margarita with an upside-down longneck stabbed into it. No doubt some of these doctored-up drinks constituted a flagrant display of beverage blasphemy, but variety is the spice of life. And when that spice is applied to the rim of a glass containing a frosty and refreshing alcoholic concoction, the Texanist