What is the difference between a Margarita vs Daiquiri?
The main difference is the alcohol in each cocktail.
Margaritas are made with tequila and sweetened with triple sec, while daiquiris are made with white rum and simple syrup for sweetener.
Their common ingredients are lime juice, lots of ice and sometimes fruit juices.
Margarita vs Daiquiri Cocktail Variations
You can add just about any fruit flavour you like to either of these drinks to create delicious cocktail variations. These cocktail variations are options you can offer to delight regular customers with something new. Or you can use them to help brand the happy hour experience on the summer patio of your restaurant.
Frozen slush vs lots of ice
Lots of ice is the traditional way of serving margaritas and daiquiris. Only recently have bars started offering frozen slush drinks. Some people have come to expect frozen slush drinks nowadays, so you may have to explain this to people if your bar doesn’t have the right machinery.
Study tip for bartending students
While studying languages, I learned about “false friends” which are words that sound similar in different languages but do not have the same etymology or meaning. For example, the word “bunt” in German means colourful, while in English it is a play in baseball.
I use the same idea to think about cocktails with similar taste profiles. So when I think about a drink with lime juice and sweetener on ice, I ask myself if this drink is Mexican or Cuban. If the cocktail is Mexican, it is a Margarita and calls for tequila. If it is Cuban, it calls for white rum.
There are a lot of “false friends” in cocktails, which may be a little confusing when you are first memorizing your drinks. Some are a bit more obvious, like a Moscow Mule vs Mexican Mule. Others are not, like a Margarita vs Daiquiri.
