Recipes

Margarita

By Ryan Castelaz
 

Ryan Castelaz and co-creator/bartender Zoe Lomenzo crafted a margarita that is everything you want it to be, except alcoholic. Nonalcoholic drinks are trending, to be sure, but in Castelaz’s hands, they seem classic. The tequila he uses here, he says, isn’t the one to do shots with. “If you’re sipping N/A tequila and your own favorite alcoholic tequila, they’re going to be worlds different. But put [the N/A version] in a margarita and they’re going to perform pretty similarly.” That said, you might think that whipping up a truly delicious N/A cocktail worthy of the margarita name is an easy lift. No, this took time and testing.

 

For the Counter Bar at Crossroads Collective (which closed in mid-2023), Castelaz and Lomenzo started with experimental drinks – “things that taste really, really, really good” but aren’t meant to replicate tastes people were already familiar with. This was because the products themselves were new to them. “It takes a greater degree of mastery” to create “canonic” nonalcoholic concoctions, he says. But that was then. This is now: The two have progressed to what they’re calling Counter Classics. “What the margarita symbolizes is really that step in the journey for us of starting to dive in and refine these nonalcoholic versions of traditional cocktails in a format that feels every bit as satisfying as a margarita. And we’ve actually had some people now who drink this [and] prefer it to the alcoholic ones. It feels like a margarita – grown up and sophisticated.” To Castelaz, it’s a “celebration” of where “the N/A space is and where we think it can go.”

 

The zero-proof tequila used here has a “gentle, kind of cayenne-esque spice,” plus the smokiness of mezcal and “that soft sweetness” of the blue agave syrup. The Dhos orange liqueur’s heavy sweetness is balanced by the orange bitters. Add to that an unexpected ingredient: fennel salt. (Find it on Amazon.) The salt “adds just a back finish of that herbaceous fennel that cuts through some of the smoke on the front palate.”

 

This recipe is a template, not a mandate. Add some raspberries from the garden, or fresh mint or passion fruit juice. It’s your drink, a kind of invitation to experiment.

Ingredients

Serves 1 drink

2 1/2 ounces Ritual Zero Proof Tequila

1 ounce fresh lime juice

3/4 ounce Dhos Orange Liqueur

1/2 ounce blue agave syrup

6 dashes Bittercube Orange Bitters

Orange peel

Pinch of salt

Lime wheel

Instructions

Combine everything but the lime wheel in the small half of a shaker, then fill the tin with ice and seal it. Shake vigorously for 12 seconds, then strain into a double rocks glass. Top with fresh ice, garnish with a lime wheel and serve.

 

Quick Tip: Invest in an immersion circulator, which controls water temp when cooking sous vide style. The applications transcend food. “We use the immersion circulator, more than any other tool except the espresso machine,” says Castelaz. “It's constantly in use. They really blow open the doors of what you can do.”

Bio

Ryan Castelaz has over 10 years of experience behind the bar at coffee shops, cocktail bars and Michelin-starred restaurants the world over. His work brings the fields of craft coffee, modern mixology and modernist cuisine to your morning cup and evening glass, creating evocative concoctions that seek to engage the mouth and the mind. Castelaz is the founder and creative director of Discourse Coffee and the author of The New Art of Coffee: From Morning Cup to Caffeine Cocktail. He also serves as host of WITI-TV Fox 6’s "On The Counter" and co-host of Hot Coffee for the Creative Soul, a podcast focused on the lives of professional creatives with Milwaukee-based fashion designer Laura Bavlnka.

Ryan Castelaz

Discourse Coffee

Ryan Castelaz

Discourse Coffee

About Discourse Coffee
 

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