Mexican Mule
The Mule, gone south
- Method
- Built
- Style
- Modern Classic
- Glass
- Collins glass
- Time
- 5 min
Ingredients
- 60mlTequilaa 100% agave blanco
No Tequila? Mezcal — adds an earthy smokiness — it changes the character of the drink rather than sitting quietly in it
- 22.5mlLime Juicefreshly squeezed
- 120mlGinger Beerspicy, not ginger ale
- Garnish
- Lime wheel and a mint sprig
Make it well
Built, properly.
Fill a Collins glass, or a copper mug if you've got one, with .
Add the tequila and the lime juice.
Top with ginger beer and give it one gentle . Any more and you'll flatten it.
Add a lime and a mint sprig. Slap the mint between your palms first to wake it up.
On the palate
On the nose it's ginger and lime with something green and peppery underneath, which is the agave and it's much more obvious here than vodka ever was in a Moscow Mule. On tasting the ginger leads, the lime keeps it sharp, and then the tequila sits right in the middle of the drink refusing to be background. That's the whole difference between this and the original: the Moscow Mule is a ginger drink with alcohol in it, this one is a tequila drink with ginger on top. Better or worse is genuinely down to you. Use a proper fiery ginger beer either way.
Where it came from
Nobody invented the Mexican Mule, and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing. It's a Moscow Mule with tequila in place of vodka, and the Moscow Mule is a documented 1941 drink with a documented commercial motive behind it. The tequila version has no bar, no bartender and no date attached to it anywhere we can find. That's what happens to a drink whose recipe is a one-word substitution: everyone gets there independently and nobody gets the credit. The idea is older than the name, though. Trader Vic's Book of Food and Drink in 1946 has El Diablo, which is tequila, lime and ginger with crème de cassis, and that sits in the buck family, the old category of spirit plus citrus plus ginger that the Moscow Mule itself belongs to. So tequila and ginger were already getting on nearly eighty years ago. The Mexican Mule just stripped it back and borrowed a more famous drink's name to travel under.
Keep pouring
If you like the Mexican Mule, try these
The bartender’s note
One drink, one story, one bottle worth buying.
Thursday evening, so you have time to shop. No more than that.