The Spicy Margarita Is 2026's Drink of the Summer: How to Make It (and the 8 Best Tequilas for It) — National Tequila Day, July 24
Ask a bartender what people are ordering in the summer of 2026 and you will hear the same answer over and over: the spicy margarita. It is the drink that broke out of the taqueria and took over everything — cocktail menus, canned RTD shelves, and roughly every third video on your feed. "Swicy" — sweet plus spicy — is the flavor profile of the year, and the spicy margarita is its clearest expression in a glass.
The good news is that it is one of the easiest cocktails in the world to make well, and one of the easiest to make badly. The difference is almost never the recipe. It is the chile, and how you get the heat into the drink. This guide walks through both, with tequilas we actually have in stock — right in time for National Tequila Day on July 24.
The 8 tequilas in this guide
The base recipe (get this right first)
Before you add heat, you need a margarita worth heating. The spec has not changed in eighty years and it does not need to:
- 2 oz blanco tequila
- 1 oz fresh lime juice — squeezed that day, not from a bottle. This is non-negotiable.
- 0.75 oz orange liqueur — Cointreau Liqueur ($42.99) is the standard for a reason: it is drier and more precise than the sugary triple secs.
- 0.25 oz agave nectar, thinned 1:1 with warm water so it actually integrates
Shake hard with ice for 12 seconds, strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice, and rim only half the glass so the drinker can choose. If you want the full breakdown of the classic and its cousins, we covered all of them in The Margarita, 5 Ways.
The real question: which chile?
Every chile brings heat. What separates them is what else they bring, and how the heat behaves once it is in a cold, acidic drink.
Jalapeño — the default, and the right one
Grassy, bright, vegetal, with heat that arrives late and fades fast. It tastes like it belongs next to lime because it does. Jalapeño is the correct starting point for roughly 90% of spicy margaritas, and if you are making one drink for one person you probably do not need to read past this paragraph.
Serrano — jalapeño with the volume up
A serrano is two to four times hotter than a jalapeño and slightly cleaner — less of that green-pepper flavor, more pure heat. Use it when you want the drink to actually bite. Two thin coins is plenty.
Habanero — fruit first, fire second
Habanero is a different instrument. It is genuinely floral and apricot-like before the heat lands, and the heat that lands is significant and lingering. It is spectacular in small doses and ruinous in large ones. One sliver. Taste. That is the whole technique.
Chipotle — the smoky outlier
A chipotle is a smoked, dried jalapeño, and it takes the drink somewhere else entirely: less bright, more barbecue, closer in spirit to a mezcal margarita than a jalapeño one. Worth doing on purpose, never by accident. If smoke is what you are chasing, our mezcal vs. tequila guide is the better road in — and Dos Hombres Mezcal Artesanal ($59.99) is the bottle we would reach for.
Two ways to get heat into the glass
Method 1 — Muddle (best for one or two drinks)
Drop two or three thin chile coins in the shaker, muddle gently — you are bruising, not pulverizing — then add everything else and shake. Double-strain to keep the seeds out. Total control, zero prep, and you can taste as you go. The downside is that it is slightly different every time.
Method 2 — Infuse the bottle (best for a party)
Slice three or four jalapeños, drop them into 750ml of blanco tequila, and taste it every 30 minutes. It will be perfect somewhere between 2 and 4 hours — and it will be aggressively, unpleasantly hot at 24. Chile infusions do not politely plateau. Strain the peppers out the moment it tastes right, and it will hold at that level indefinitely.
This is the method for a crowd, because it moves all the work to the day before and makes every drink identical. It is also the method that makes you look like you know what you are doing.
Method 3 — Buy it already infused (the honest shortcut)
There is no shame in this and the results are excellent. Tanteo Jalapeno Tequila ($39.99) infuses fresh jalapeños into every batch and is built specifically for this drink — it is the bottle we recommend most often to people who want one job done well. Tanteo Habanero Tequila ($39.99) does the fruit-then-fire thing properly, and Tanteo Chipotle Tequila ($44.99) brings the smoke without reaching for mezcal. If you want cucumber alongside the heat, 21 Seeds Cucumber Jalapeno Tequila ($37.99) is a softer, more sessionable take.
The 8 tequilas, and why each one is here
If you are muddling your own chiles
You want a clean, assertive blanco that will not disappear behind the pepper. 818 Blanco Tequila ($27.99) is soft, citrus-forward and the easiest entry point on this list. Espolon Tequila Silver ($39.09) is the workhorse — peppery on its own, which means it meets the chile halfway instead of hiding from it, and it is the single best value in the category. Teremana Tequila Blanco ($39.09) splits the difference: rounder than Espolón, still bright enough to cut.
Moving up, Herradura Tequila Silver 80 ($49.99) brings real cooked-agave weight and a touch of oak from brief resting — it makes a noticeably more serious drink. Don Julio Blanco Tequila ($57.09) is the smooth, crowd-pleasing choice when you are serving people who will notice what is in the bottle. And Codigo 1530 Blanco Tequila ($49.09) is the connoisseur pick if you want something a little rarer on the back bar.
If you are buying the heat pre-infused
The three Tanteo expressions are the shortlist, and they are all built on decent blanco rather than the neutral stuff most flavored tequilas hide behind. Jalapeño for the classic, Habanero if you want to frighten people slightly, Chipotle for the smoke.
The bottles that also work
Casamigos Blanco Tequila ($49.99) is vanilla-soft and makes a very approachable spicy marg for a mixed crowd — it needs a touch more chile than Espolón does to keep its balance.
The rim, and why yours is wrong
Plain salt on a spicy margarita is a missed opportunity. Mix coarse kosher salt with Tajín and a pinch of chile powder, run a lime wedge around half the rim only, and roll it in the mixture on a plate. Half a rim means every sip is a choice. A full rim means the drink gets progressively saltier and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Scaling it for a party
For eight people: infuse a 750ml bottle the night before, then batch 16 oz infused tequila + 8 oz lime + 6 oz Cointreau + 2 oz thinned agave in a pitcher and refrigerate. Do not add ice to the pitcher. Shake each drink to order over fresh ice — it takes ten seconds and it is the difference between a cocktail and punch. Our Paloma guide and tequila and tacos pairing guide cover the rest of the menu.
What to drink it with
Heat and fat are old friends. Carnitas, al pastor, anything with crema, anything fried. The drink cuts the richness and the richness tames the drink. Skip the delicate stuff — a spicy margarita will walk straight over ceviche.
Shop the guide
Everything in this guide ships from our Tequila collection, and the orange liqueur you need is in Cordials & Liqueurs. If the smoky version is calling, start in Mezcal. New York, Illinois and New Jersey customers can check delivery timing on our tequila delivery page.
National Tequila Day is July 24 — eight days out. Order by July 21 to have bottles in hand for the weekend. The premium blancos and the Tanteo expressions run thin every year in the last week, so if a specific bottle matters to you, now is the time. Browse the full Tequila collection or see our Best Sellers for what is moving fastest.
Still deciding what kind of tequila drinker you are? Our blanco buyer's guide covers the category from the ground up, and our sipping guide is where to go if you would rather drink it neat than mixed.
