The Unsinkable Margarita Sames

Summary

Family Lore — “The Unsinkable Margarita Sames”

Date: April 8, 2026
Host: Lloyd Lockridge
Guests/Experts: Martha Sayers, Hank Saames, Elizabeth Pierce (drinks historian)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Family Lore unpacks the swirling legend of Margarita Sames—a woman believed by her descendants to have invented the classic margarita cocktail. Through a blend of family recollections, historical deep-dives, and a spirited exploration of mid-century cocktail culture, host Lloyd Lockridge investigates: did Margarita Sames truly create the iconic drink that bears her name, or is this just another frothy family myth?

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Family Legend

• Introduction to the Tale ([01:02]–[04:07])
  Lloyd introduces his own fascination with family lore before passing the mic to guest Martha Sayers, whose great-aunt Margarita Sames is at the center of this episode’s cocktail mystery.

• Meet Margarita ([04:17]–[06:45])
  Martha’s vivid childhood memories depict Margarita as enigmatic, glamorously over-the-top, and possessing an energy that left an impression on everyone:

  “She was stunning, very attractive, and...just over the top on everything...” — Martha Sayers [04:43]
  Martha adds:
  “I've heard my whole life that she invented the margarita.” [06:45]

2. Filling in the Legend – Family Lore from Laredo

• The Saames Backstory ([07:33]–[12:02])
  Hank Saames, Hank and Martha’s cousin, describes how Margarita entered the family via an affair with Uncle Bill—escalating to scandal, remarriage, and flight from small-town Texas to glamorous Acapulco after Bill sells the family car dealerships:

  “They bought a house up along the Caleta...that was where it was happening. And Acapulco was starting to take off.” — Hank Saames [10:04]

• The Birth of a Cocktail
  Cocktail parties in post-war Acapulco required host ingenuity, as tequila was the only cheap liquor available:

  “The old tequila was horrible. And nobody drank it. It was rotgut.” — Hank Saames [10:57]

  Seeking to make tequila palatable, Margarita experimented, leading to the famed mix:

  • Tequila, lime, Cointreau, salt on the rim—served in custom glasses inscribed “Margarita.” [11:45]
  • The circle of American expats (notably Nicky Hilton, hotel heir) were among the first to experience the drink, allegedly helping spread it internationally:

    “Nicky Hilton...took the recipe back to one of his hotels in LA and started serving it there. And it, you know, spread from there.” — Hank Saames [12:29]

3. Separating Fact from Fiction – Investigating the Margarita

• Earliest Records of the Margarita ([14:16]–[15:54])
  Lloyd scours newspaper archives, finding the first printed evidence of a margarita cocktail in a 1955 Los Angeles Times article, which credits a bartender named Johnny Durlesser at the Tail of the Cock Lounge as the inventor.

• Meeting a Drinks Historian ([15:54]–[26:27])
  Drinks historian Elizabeth Pierce traces the rise of tequila in the U.S., especially during Prohibition when Americans crossed the border and encountered local spirits.

  • The “Daisy” cocktail, a mix of liquor, lemon juice, and sweetener, was popular in America and adaptable (e.g., Gin Daisy, Whiskey Daisy).
  • The “Tequila Daisy” emerges when Americans begin trying tequila; importantly, “Margarita” is Spanish for “Daisy.”
  • However, period sources show that Margarita (the cocktail) and Tequila Daisy are not identical:

    “El Paso column lists recipes for both the Tequila Daisy and Margarita. The Margarita contains Tequila, Cointreau, lime, sugar, blended with a salt rim. The Tequila Daisy is tequila, lime, sugar, grenadine, and no salt rim.” — Elizabeth Pierce [23:49]

• The Naming Paradox
  Pierce speculates that while the “Tequila Daisy” may have inspired the drink, the transition from Daisy to “Margarita” as the cocktail's name is likely thanks to a woman named Margarita literally putting her name on the glass:

  “I believe she labeled it...I think she might be the reason that mixture of ingredients is called a margarita, which is what made it the marketable cocktail we all drink today.” — Elizabeth Pierce [25:47]

4. Tracing the Cocktail’s Spread

• Did Margarita Sames Name the Margarita? ([26:27]–[27:41])
  Lockridge suggests the commonly accepted story—that “margarita” is simply Spanish for daisy—misses the point: it was likely Margarita Sames’ signature and flair that turned the Tequila Daisy into “the Margarita,” branded and ready for celebrity-fueled dissemination.

• The LA Connection

  • The 1955 column, which credited Johnny Durlesser at LA’s Tale of the Cock, seems at odds with the Sames legend. However, Lloyd discovers that at one of Margarita’s parties, the guest list included Shelton McHenry—owner of the bar in question—potentially bridging the two stories. ([27:41]–[29:32])

5. The First Print Appearance - The Allure of the Margarita

• Esquire, 1953 ([29:32]–[29:45])
  Elizabeth Pierce shares an even earlier mention of the cocktail from Esquire magazine:

  “The margarita—she’s from Mexico, senores, and she is lovely to look at, exciting and provocative.” — Esquire (read by Elizabeth Pierce) [29:32]

  Lockridge notes the description itself seems to echo the charisma of Margarita Sames, cementing her as the likely muse, if not the exclusive creator, of the drink.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Family Legends:
  “These stories we hear in this show aren’t taken from textbooks or documentary series, they’re preserved in a different format. This is family lore and I’m your host, Lloyd Lockridge.” — Lloyd Lockridge [03:16]

• On Margarita's Vibrancy:
  “She was just over the top on everything. And it was always just a little bit, you know, Margarita and Bill are coming to town, you know, so get ready.” — Martha Sayers [05:37]

• On the ‘Marketing’ of the Margarita:
  “I believe she labeled it...she might have named it. I think that’s—I believe she labeled it.” — Elizabeth Pierce [25:47]

• On the Allure of the Drink and the Woman:
  “The margarita—she’s from Mexico, senores, and she is lovely to look at, exciting and provocative.” — Esquire Magazine, read by Elizabeth Pierce [29:32]
  “Who does that remind you of?” — Lloyd Lockridge [29:45]

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Key Timestamps

• [01:02] — Lloyd’s introduction to the concept of family lore
• [03:00] — Martha Sayers enters, recalls childhood in Laredo, Texas
• [04:43] — First description of Margarita Sames’ larger-than-life personality
• [06:45] — “She invented the margarita.”
• [07:33] — Hank Saames fills in familial backstory and scandal
• [09:31] — The couple flees scandal, lands in Acapulco
• [11:45] — Details of the first margarita: recipe, inscribed glasses
• [12:29] — Nicky Hilton helps popularize the drink
• [14:16] — Archival deep-dive: earliest print appearance of the margarita (1955 LA Times)
• [16:01] — Drinks historian Elizabeth Pierce joins, gives tequila history
• [20:38] — The “Daisy” cocktail lineage explained
• [23:49] — Margarita and Tequila Daisy: similar but distinct
• [25:47] — Theory: Margarita Sames as the eponymous force for the drink
• [29:32] — Esquire, 1953: first appearance of margarita in print
• [29:45] — Episode draws parallel between the drink and Margarita Sames herself

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Engaging Summary & Conclusions

This episode artfully mixes family storytelling, cocktail history, and the myth-making that occurs over generations. Through the layered accounts of Sayers and Saames, the vibrant culture of mid-century border towns and Acapulco leaps to life. Lockridge, with help from drinks historian Elizabeth Pierce, shows how fact and fiction swirl together behind every family legend.

Was Margarita Sames truly the inventor of the margarita? While there is no definitive “smoking gun,” the episode credibly suggests she was the inspiration, the marketer, and the namesake who took an existing cocktail and made it iconic—thanks to custom-glass chutzpah and the gravitational pull of a woman who knew how to command a room.

In the end, the enduring mystique of Margarita Sames—and the drink that may or may not have been hers—echoes the very premise of Family Lore: legends aren’t just about what’s true, but about how stories shape who we are.

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Best Use: This episode offers wonderful context for anyone curious not only about margarita history but also about how family stories are built, reshaped, and sometimes—just maybe—become bigger than the truth itself.

Transcript

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[Lloyd Lockridge]

I want to tell you a quick story that might be the true origins of this podcast. It was a hot summer afternoon in Texas and I was about 12 years old. I was spending some time at my grandfather's house and at some point he said he wanted to show me something I might find interesting. So he went to his office and he took out a small wooden box, a little bigger than a shoebox. He opened the lid and inside were three pistols. One was the standard issue Colt.45 which he carried in World War II. The second was a German Luger, which he got from someone who wouldn't be needing it anymore. And the third was a Colt.45 1917, a big hefty six shot revolver. I knew the story behind the first two, but I didn't know anything about the revolver. And that's when he told me that I had a great uncle who ran a bank in Kansas. And this uncle was considered a potential target by the famous bank robbing duo Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. So the United States government shipped this revolver to my great uncle in the event he had to defend himself from Bonnie and Clyde. I love hearing stories like these. You know, family lore, and not just lore about my family, anybody's family. You hear it from time to time. I'm related to Pocahontas, or my great uncle invented the yo yo, or my grandmother was almost cast as Dorothy Gale. Those are kind of unusual examples, but I'm interested in the unusual ones. The ones that seem a little Far fetched or just intriguing. In this podcast, I'm going to have people on to tell their family stories and then we're going to find out if there's any truth to these stories. Our investigations will not always be easy or predictable because the stories we hear in this show aren't taken from textbooks or documentary series, they're preserved in a different format. This is family lore and I'm your host, Lloyd Lockridge.

[Martha Sayers]

Hello, Lloyd.

[Hank Saames]

Hi there.

[Martha Sayers]

How are you doing?

[Hank Saames]

I'm good. How are you?

[Martha Sayers]

I'm just, well, been so excited just to talk to you. Not what we're talking about. I'm just glad to talk to you.

[Hank Saames]

I know, I know. It's been a while.

[Martha Sayers]

It's been a long time.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

This is Martha Sayers. Martha is not an easy guest for me to introduce. First of all, I've always called her Ms. Sayers. Two of her five kids, William and Markham, are two of my best friends. I've known them for as long as I can remember. And I've known Ms. Sayers for as long as I can remember. You know the old saying, it takes a village to raise a child. Well, Ms. Sayers is a very important person in the village that raised me. There are many stories Ms. Sayers could tell you that would be very embarrassing for me, frankly. She could stop this podcast right in its tracks, but instead she's agreed to tell us a story about her life. In the past, when I've told people a shortened version of the story you're about to hear, they think I'm kidding, but I'm not. This is real family lore and it centers around Ms. Sayers great aunt, a woman named Margarita Sains.

[Hank Saames]

This is a colorful and romantic country. One of the oldest and yet one of the newest cities on the border is Laredo, Texas, the gateway to Mexico.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

The story begins in the early 1960s in Ms. Sayers hometown of Laredo, Texas, which at the time was a sleepy little border town. Her home life when she was a little girl was pretty normal and down to earth as she puts it. But every once in a while her family would get a visit from Uncle Bill and his wife Margarita. And Bill and Margarita were just different, especially Margarita.

[Martha Sayers]

They would come to Laredo and stay at my grandmother's house. And that's where I got to be around her a few times. She's the person you take a second look at. You know, you don't just walk by and not notice because she was stunning, very attractive, and she was very made up all the time and had fancy Clothing. And Margarita just had this swagger, you know, hand motions all the time. And she smoked and she drank and, you know, I mean, and everybody was just kind of, whoa. She was way ahead of their game.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

I think we all have relatives like this, the ones who roll through town unexpectedly and dazzle us with glimpses of something different. Every family has its culture, and with that, there are usually members of the family who have a counterculture. And the rarity of these characters has a way of burning memories into our minds.

[Martha Sayers]

So one of the first things I really remember, she was putting her makeup on. I was just standing right by her side, just. She was talking to me and telling me stuff, and I was just like taking it all in at 5. And all of a sudden she took out this tool or whatever it was, I didn't know what it was. And she curled her eyelashes, and I can still see her face. I never in my whole life seen somebody curl their eyelashes. I'm not going to say my mother didn't know about curling eyelashes, but she didn't do it, you know, I mean, she wasn't like that. But that's bad. I'm not saying it's bad. She was. She was just over the top on everything. And it was always just a little bit, you know, Margarita and Bill are coming to town, you know, so get ready.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

But when it came to anticipating Bill and Margarita's visits, there was something a little more to it than eyelash curlers. There was something else about Margarita that made her a particularly interesting guest. I think Ms. Sayers, as a five year old girl, could sense that because Margarita was not just her aunt's name, it was the name of the drink she allegedly invented.

[Martha Sayers]

I've heard my whole life that she invented the margarita.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

She invented the margarita. That's quite a claim, isn't it, to invent the margarita. When I first heard this, I found myself thinking, did somebody really invent the margarita? It just seems like something that would naturally come into being. But of course it didn't. Tequila, Cointreau and lime is not going to mix itself. And salt does not magically appear on the rim of your glass. Someone had to have been the first to make it. Ms. Sayers was quick to tell me that she didn't know Margarita super well. She was a very young girl when Margarita would visit, and she left Laredo for Austin when she was a teenager. But she told me I might be able to get more information from her cousin Hank. Hank still lives in Laredo and might have a little more to say So I called him up.

[Hank Saames]

I don't want to take too much of your time. And I figured we could just. I've got the broad strokes of this story, but Martha did say that you might be a little.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

So, Hank Saames has lived in Laredo his whole life, working for the Saams Car dealerships. It's a family business that runs pretty deep. The Same started the first car dealership in Texas in 1910, which is honestly before I thought people were driving cars. So he grew up in close proximity to Same's family stories, like the one about Margarita.

[Hank Saames]

I used to have lunch with my grandmother every Thursday, and she told all kinds of tales of family history. And, you know. And of course, I was young, and I didn't listen all the time, but, you know, I picked up some of it.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And the story that Hank told goes a little something like this. His uncle Bill ran the car dealerships in Laredo. He had a wife and a few kids. Occasionally, Bill would go on the road to nearby places like Miranda City, an old oil boom town that's now a shell of its former self. And on one trip to Miranda City, Bill met a beautiful young woman named Margarita.

[Hank Saames]

Bill had been over there and met her and started an affair with her, unbeknownst to anybody in the family.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And then Bill decided to take Margarita as his date to a Ford Motors exhibition show in Houston.

[Hank Saames]

And while he was in Houston, he had a terrible car wreck, and both he and Margarita ended up in the hospital. Well, that exposed everything, you know. So Bill ended up getting a divorce.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

After the divorce, Bill's parents sort of said, hey, Bill, you seem to be fond of life on the road. Why don't you leave Laredo and take care of the dealerships in other parts of the state? So Bill moved to Alice, Texas, and Margarita went with him. But it may not surprise you that Bill and Margarita weren't happy there. They both had a penchant for adventure, and Alice, Texas, was not really meeting their needs. Plus, the scandal following the divorce was probably a little unpleasant. And they decided they needed a bigger change of scenery.

[Hank Saames]

So Bill sold all his dealerships, and with the money he got from that, he and Margarita moved to Acapulco.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Acapulco, Mexico. If you've been to Acapulco recently, you've seen the high rises on the beach, the cliff diver reenactments, and markets selling nostalgic arts and crafts from a bygone era. Well, Bill and Margarita moved there at the onset of that bygone era. It was the late 1940s, and Acapulco was cool. And if you came with American dollars, it was really cool. You could live like a king.

[Hank Saames]

And they bought a house up along the Caleta, which is where the cliff drivers are, you know, and at that point, that was where it was happening. And Acapulco was starting to take off.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

So Bill and Margarita showed up in Acapulco and fell into this vibrant expat community. And Margarita got to do the thing that she apparently loved most. Host parties.

[Hank Saames]

I think the scene down there was party all the time. You know, these are people that had already retired or, you know, quit the whole American scene and went down and lived. I don't want to call it decadent, but you know what I mean? It was not working. And you could do it. You could do it because it was so inexpensive.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

But hosting parties inevitably comes with challenges. And one of the challenges with hosting parties in Acapulco was that the most available liquor was tequila. And if you think 21st century tequila

[Hank Saames]

is harsh, the old tequila was horrible. And nobody drank it. It was rotgut. You know, nobody drank tequila.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

But there must have been a solution to this problem. And Margarita Sains was going to find that solution. She was going to find a way to make the tequila a little more palatable for her esteemed guests. So she took the tequila and added some lime and Cointreau for sweetness. But the drink was at risk of becoming too sweet and at odds with the earthiness of the tequila. So she added a creative touch. A little bit of salt on the rim, but it still wasn't quite finished, because every signature cocktail has to have a signature cocktail glass. A martini goes in a martini glass. A Moscow Mule goes in a copper Moscow Mule mug. So what would Margarita's cocktail go in?

[Hank Saames]

Well, her husband Bill, decided to make her some. They were almost like champagne glasses. Not a flute, but a champagne glass. And he had her name inscribed on the glass. Margarita, you know, so she had these glasses with the name Margarita on them.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

The drink was complete. Now it was time to throw a party and have some people over to try it. So Bill and Margarita sent up the bat signal, and guests from the neighborhood started trickling in.

[Hank Saames]

Well, one of the people that also had a house up there was Nikki Hilton from Los Angeles.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

That's Nikki Hilton, as in the oldest son of Conrad Hilton, an heir to the Hilton hotel empire. And if that doesn't impress you, he is also the great uncle of Paris Hilton.

[Hank Saames]

Nikki Hilton was the one who took the recipe back to one of his hotels in Los Angeles and started serving it there. And it, you know, it spread from there.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And thus the margarita was born. It's a good story, but is it true? Let's try to find out. Predator Badlands now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

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[Lloyd Lockridge]

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[Elizabeth Pierce]

Many have come here, none have survived.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

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[Lloyd Lockridge]

So how does one figure out who invented a cocktail? Well, if you poke around online, you see all kinds of different theories. And for what it's worth, the Margarita Sains theory always makes an appearance. But as is often the case, the theories you find online are pretty light on the facts. So let's see what we can find in the way of facts. The first thing I wanted to do is figure out when people started talking about margaritas. So I searched the newspaper archives. Margarita Saames threw her parties featuring the Margarita starting in the late 1940s, so any mentions of the Margarita before then would be a little inconvenient. But the earliest newspaper mention of the margarita that I can find appears in a 1955 issue of the Los Angeles Times. There was a column called LA Incidental in which the author writes almost stream of conscious observations of things seen in and around la. He talks about a new shoe store in the Valley and then says he was recently introduced to a cocktail called the Margarita. He describes it as Tequila's answer to the Martini. He says in the article that he was served the cocktail at the Tail of the Cock Lounge in Studio City. The bartender who served him the margarita claimed to have invented the drink. The bartender's name was Johnny Durlesser. This is not Only the first mention of the margarita. This is the first mention of someone claiming they'd invented the margarita. I wasn't sure what to make of it, so I sort of stuck it in my back pocket and carried on with the research. But the solitary research was beginning to raise more questions than answers. I needed to speak to a person, someone who knows a little bit about the history of cocktails. But who? What's your name? Tell me your name.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

Elizabeth Pierce.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And you have a unique job.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

Yeah.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

What do you do?

[Elizabeth Pierce]

I'm a drinks historian.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Elizabeth Pierce, drinks historian. She seemed like the person for the job. And the cool thing about Elizabeth is she's not one of these drinks historians who had everything handed to her on a silver platter. Elizabeth came by her profession honestly.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

Everybody wants to know how you get to be a drinks historian. I helped to create and open the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. I was the founding curator there. Despite having no academic background in museums or history, a strong liberal arts education prepares you to do anything. So I learned how to make something out of nothing, and that mattered. But because the museum opened in early 2008, and of course, that year ended in a great financial apocalypse, funding dried up. Everybody got laid off. I went on unemployment, drank heavily, and dated a musician, which is the holy trinity in New Orleans, if you just need to shift your professional path. 2009 is the year I learned both unemployment and musicians run out after six months. And while the museum stayed open through volunteers, I needed a job. So I became a speaker on the history of New Orleans through food and drink.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And that's what she's been doing ever since. But she doesn't just do New Orleans drinks. She does all drinks. In fact, she recently gave a series of talks on the history of tequila. And that's why I wanted to talk to her. I feel like if we're going to figure out when the margarita was born and. And who brought it into existence, we're going to need to trace the activity of tequila. And with Elizabeth, we hit the jackpot. This woman knows her tequila.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

So in the early mid 19th century, tequila is marketed to Mexicans or other Spanish speakers living in states near the border. And there is no explanation of what it is. They're just like, tequila for sale. Everything.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Here's the gist. In the early to mid-1800s, tequila wasn't a thing in the US unless you live near the border.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

But people visit Mexico and come back.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And towards the end of the 1800s, the Americans who had migrated to Texas are starting to acquire a taste for this stuff. And that became abundantly clear when, in 1899, the city of El Paso contemplated seceding from Texas and rejoining Mexico. Here's what a Waco newspaper had to say about that.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

Think of the spectacle of a Democratic convention in the Lone Star State without the gentleman from El Paso who would care to go to a big Democratic gathering, which he was not sure, to meet one heart with a special sample of the best brand of tequila and a little pinch of salt to give it a relish.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

In other words, Waco said, el Paso, you can't leave Texas. Who's going to bring tequila to the next legislative session? So Texans had clearly grown to like it.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

But then, as Prohibition in the US Approaches, the language will become more hostile. It's called bottled dynamite. It's mighty degrading stuff, and a good thing to steer clear of Prohibition.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

A complete ban of all liquor production, distribution, and consumption in the United States. Just as tequila was gaining some mainstream traction, it was taken off the shelves along with everything else. But as we all know, people were going to find a way to drink. And for people who lived near the Mexican border, that was not a hard problem to solve.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

I have a really great fact. From July 1918 to July 1919, 14,130 tourists crossed the border into Mexico. July 1919 to July 1920, 418,735 tourists.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

So from 1919 to 1920, which is the period of time that Prohibition went into effect, there was a 3,000% uptick in Americans traveling to Mexico. And at first, the Americans were just going over to drink the same stuff they were used to drinking at home.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

Almost all the beer and liquor sold to Juarez saloons was manufactured by American firms that relocated south of the border. So going for the drinks that they are familiar with, like getting a Manhattan or an Old Fashioned, you know, they're getting their whiskey, they're getting gin or brandy, and they're at American bars with American bartenders who are making American cocktails. And a very popular cocktail in the late 19th century was called the Daisy.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

The Daisy. I'd never heard of this drink, and I live in New Orleans, but apparently it was quite popular back in the 20s. It's a simple drink, and it leaves room for interpretation.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

And the Daisy is a category. So you could make a gin daisy or a cognac daisy or brandy daisy or whiskey daisy or whatever. A Daisy consists of liquor of some kind, and you got to decide lemon juice and some kind of liquid sweetener, which could be alcoholic or not.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

But while Many Americans were sticking with what they knew, like the Daisy. Some were broadening their alcohol horizons.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

I think there's a lot more Americans that are trying tequila during Prohibition. And it is because they have gotten themselves to Mexico and it's there, and it's like, hmm, let's try this out.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

So you have Americans drinking the same cocktails they were drinking in America, but they're also acquiring a taste for tequila, and those habits begin to mix.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

So what then happens is the Tequila Daisy starts to pop up.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

So based on what Elizabeth is telling us about the Daisy cocktail, a Tequila Daisy would be tequila with lemon juice and a sweetener or liqueur of some kind. Sounds a little bit like a margarita, doesn't it? And does anyone know what the Spanish word is for Daisy? It's Margarita. Okay, so let's quickly recap. The Daisy was a popular drink at the time of prohibition. Americans crossed the border to Mexico so they could drink, and they still wanted to drink daisies. One theory is that the Tequila Daisy was born, and it was called the Margarita, which is the Spanish word for Daisy. This honestly kind of seems like the answer, doesn't it, that the Margarita was the name given to a Tequila Daisy. How could it not be? But before we steal Margarita Sams thunder, let's think this through. If the Margarita is just a Tequila Daisy, then when does it go from being called the Tequila Daisy to a Margarita? If they're the same drink, when does one name supplant the other? Because as it turns out, people had no problem with the name Tequila Daisy.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

An early mention that I found for Tequila Daisy, that was the name of a racehorse in Dayton, Ohio. 1930, El Paso had a baseball name contest. Here are a few names submitted. The Tequila Daisies, 1935 in El Paso, a couple celebrates their engagement with a Mexican themed party. And there is a Tequila Daisy in its cocktail course.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

So again, if a Margarita is just a name for a Tequila Daisy, then why do people keep calling it a Tequila Daisy? One potential answer is that it just took a few decades for the name to evolve from Tequila Daisy to Margarita. But there's a problem with that answer. We know that the Margarita was a known drink by the mid-50s and certainly into the 60s. And yet in the 50s and 60s, people are still talking about the Tequila Daisy. Why are people talking about both drinks if they are one and the same?

[Elizabeth Pierce]

Okay, so this was the thing that was, like, kind of key for me. An El Paso column lists recipes for both the Tequila Daisy and Margarita. The Margarita contains Tequila cointreau lime, sugar blended with a salt rim. The Tequila Daisy is tequila, lime, sugar, grenadine, and no salt rim.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

So clearly, the Tequila Daisy and the Margarita are not the same drink. They are two distinct drinks. But then what's the connection between the Margarita and the Daisy?

[Elizabeth Pierce]

And I'm also wondering now if there might have been some, like, miscommunication or something. If somebody's like, I want a Tequila Daisy, you know, while they're in, I don't know, Cancun or something. And then. Then the guy's like, oh, Margarita. Like, they know because they know these two words go together. But then the Tequila Daisy would be a margarita, and it's not. They're two different drinks.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Right? So prior to my interview with Elizabeth, I didn't tell her the theory I was researching, and she didn't ask. And wait, until.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

What year is this?

[Lloyd Lockridge]

46, 7, 8. But after we went through the history of Tequila, the Tequila Daisy and the Margarita, I told her about margarita sains. Margarita sains would throw. Throw these parties. And as I told her the story, I could see Elizabeth's gears turning. And then she interjected, okay, so first

[Elizabeth Pierce]

of all, the unsinkable Molly Brown, like that lady who didn't die in the Titanic, Kathy Bates, okay, she is in Paris during prohibition, okay, and starts drinking the Bee's Knees. And when one is researching the history of the Bee's knees, there are some alleged. And one of them is that Molly Brown invented this drink. While I believe that Molly Brown was very talented in many ways, like, she's not making drinks. Like, she's not inventing drinks. Like, socialite women don't do that. They have servants.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Right?

[Elizabeth Pierce]

And so I believe that Molly Brown popularized the Bee's Knees because she had it in Paris. And then she came back to the US after prohibition, was like, I had this drink, and it's really good. And everybody's like, oh, yeah, it's Molly Brown's drink. So I'm choosing to believe that this lady Margarita had this drink with her name on it, which I absolutely believe that she decided that she was gonna feature her name on this glass. And then people were like, what's that drink? Oh, it's a margarita, you know, so she might have named it. I think that that's. I believe she labeled it.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

So here's what I think. I think people have it backwards. The main contending theory, as you now know, is that someone made a version of a daisy with tequila, so they gave it the Spanish name for Daisy Margarita. I think a Person named Margarita wanted to make a signature cocktail. So because of her name, she went with a Mexican version of the daisy. Was Margarita Sains the first to mix these ingredients? Who knows? Maybe. Probably not. But I think she might be the reason that mixture of ingredients is called a margarita, which is what made it the marketable cocktail we all drink today. So if anyone can lay claim to this cocktail, why not Margarita Sam's? But I'm hung up on something. That article in the LA Times from 1955 about the bartender in Los Angeles, Johnny Der Lesser. We have a random columnist with no dog in the fight long before anyone was arguing over who invented the margarita, saying that this bartender, Johnny Derlesser, served him a margarita at the Tail of the Cock Lounge in Studio City and that he claimed to be the inventor. How do you make sense of that? So I thought back to what Hank Sams had told me about the guests at Margarita's parties in Acapulco.

[Hank Saames]

Well, one of the people that also had a house up there was Nicky Hilton from Los Angeles.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Did Nicky Hilton hang out at this lounge in la? Did he return from one of Margarita Sains parties and then tell this bartender how to make the drink? Maybe, but I couldn't find any proof of that. However, I found something else. I was looking through old newspaper clippings about Margarita Sains and found one from 1994 which featured an interview with Margarita. In the interview, she talks about the exact party where she unveiled her signature cocktail. And she mentioned some of the guests who were in attendance. There's Nicky Hilton. We all knew about him. And there's Joseph Drown, who owned the Hotel Bel Air, also in Los Angeles. No big surprise, but a third guest is mentioned in this article. A guy named Shelton McHenry. Unlike the other two, Shelton did not own hotels. He owned a bar. It was a celebrity hangout in Studio City called the Tale of the Cock. Its head bartender, Johnny Derlesser. It seems the margarita has a certain allure to it, similar to the magnetic pull of Margarita Sains that Ms. Sayers described in the beginning of this episode. The stunning woman who commanded a room curled her eyelashes and absconded to Acapulco after a scandalous affair. Now, have we proven that Margarita Sains invented the Margarita? No. There's still room for reasonable doubt. But in my interview with Elizabeth Pierce, she read an excerpt from a magazine. Because, as it turns out, while the first newspaper mention of the Margarita was in 1955, it was not the first time the drink appeared in print. Two years prior to that LA Times article, the Margarita Cocktail was mentioned in Esquire magazine.

[Elizabeth Pierce]

In the December 1953 issue of Esquire magazine it states, the margarita she's from Mexico, senores, and she is lovely to look at, exciting and provocative.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Now who does that remind you of? Thank you for listening to Family Lore and please check in every Wednesday morning for new episodes. If you have stories you'd like to share about your family, please email [e-mail] that's familylorepodmail.com family lore is an Odyssey Original podcast. It is written and narrated by me, Lloyd Lockridge. Our Executive producers are Leah Rees, Dennis and I. Our Lead Producer and Sound Editor is Zach Clark. Our story editors are Maddy Sprung Keyser and Katie Mingle. Additional sound editing, mixing and mastering by Chris Basel and production support by Sean Cherry. Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hilary Schuff and Laura Berman. Thanks again for listening to Family Lore and if you have time, we'd love for you to rate and review the.

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