How to Make a Hot Lips, the Stellar Spicy Margarita That Breaks the Rules
“You must learn the rules like a pro,” Pablo Picasso is reported to have said, “so you can break them like an artist.”
That Picasso almost certainly never said this is immaterial; the line endures. The quote itself is sometimes attributed (usually in dubious email forwards and extended family’s Facebook posts) to the Dalai Lama, presumably to underscore its wisdom, but the broader sentiment pops up again and again in fields as diverse as fashion design to haute cuisine. Consider a 1921 essay on the orchestral music of the composer Edward German: “You must learn the rules before you break them.”
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There are rules in cocktails, too. Good ones. Anyone can make great drinks by following a few very simple principles, and by and large, the reason most of your collegiate mixological fumblings ended up terribly isn’t from bad liquor, it’s from bad technique. The mid-90s to the mid-00s were an exciting time in the cocktail world because we were rediscovering and codifying what those rules are, like the syntax of a forgotten language. When to shake and when to stir, for example, is a foundational one, and for this I’ll quote no less of an authority than Dale DeGroff, writing in his foundational 2002 The Craft of the Cocktail: “Drinks that contain spirits only—such as Martinis, Manhattans, and Rob Roys—should be stirred. Drinks that also contain fruit or citrus juice should be shaken.”
As written, so it is law. More than two decades later, ask any cocktail bartender and they’ll affirm it by axiom: You shake refreshing drinks, you stir spirituous drinks. But then—what to make of a bartender like Jessica Gonzalez, who, having worked at some of the best bars in the world, knows the rules intimately, and who nonetheless says something down the lines of “ok, but what happens if I don’t?”
Meet the Hot Lips. Gonzalez created it in 2010, when she was at Death & Co. in NYC, and took it with her when she moved uptown to the dearly missed NoMad Bar, where the drink really took off. It is a combination of spicy tequila and mezcal, pineapple, lime, and vanilla, and is, crucially, not shaken but stirred. As reported in the excellent new cocktail book A Quick Drink, Gonzalez says that she wanted to “[help] to open young bartender’ minds to the technique of stirring citrus in a cocktail.” She was inspired by a slightly earlier stirred citrus drink at Death & Co., Joaquin Simo’s Faithful Scotsman, though the Faithful Scotsman’s popularity was hampered slightly by the fact that it contained both expensive scotch and cumin. Apply the technique to a spicy Margarita, though, and it’s dynamite.
The magic here is the combination of pineapple, vanilla, and spice. You have to “add enough fat to get the texture right,” she says in the Death & Co Cocktail Book, “fat” being cocktail jargon for richness, which the vanilla and pineapple combine to handle beautifully. Further, in a non-spicy cocktail you might miss the lower temperature, increased dilution, and commensurate decreased sensation of sweetness that shaking it would provide, but spice (in this case, from jalapeños) not only excuses but embraces all those factors.
Just for kicks, I made two identical versions and tried them side by side—one shaken like you’re “supposed” to, and one stirred according to her specs—and results were clear as day. The shaken one is colder and brighter and very good, but the stirred one is a whole new level, leaps and bounds better. It’s irresistibly charming, richer, more intense in flavor, with silky luxuriousness from the pineapple and the vanilla. It’s extraordinary, and it makes you wonder if you should ever shake a cocktail again.
Hot Lips
0.75 oz. Jalapeño-Infused Rial Del Valle Blanco Tequila
0.75 oz. Del Maguey Vida Mezcal
0.5 oz. lemon juice
0.75 oz. pineapple juice
0.75 oz. vanilla syrup
0.25 oz. cane syrup (optional)
Add all ingredients to a mixing glass and stir on ice for 15 to 20 seconds. Strain over a large cube into a salt-rimmed rocks glass. No garnish.
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS
Jalapeno-infused blanco tequila: This is among the easiest infusions you can do: Buy jalapeños, slice them, and put them in tequila. As for what kind of tequila, make sure it’s blanco and something you like, but it’s not too terribly important—a solid, not too expensive blanco that 100 percent agave would be perfect, like Real del Valle, Olmeca Altos, or Cimarron.
As for the infusion itself, I like to use two or three jalapeños per two cups of tequila, and let it sit for about 24 hours. It’s too precious or fragile, you can eyeball it. Some people only infuse for 15 minutes, others for a week. I wouldn’t let it go longer than a day or so, but shorter is fine. Infuse to your heat preference.
Mezcal: It’s important for the flavor that the mezcal be smoky, which happily, nearly all mezcal is. Beyond that, it’s only used less than an ounce at a time, and there’s so much else going on here, this is not the time to use your expensive and rare wild agave mezcal. Easy and affordable mixing brands are great, like Del Maguey Vida, El Silencio, Siete Misterios Doba-Yaj, and many others.
Vanilla: If you’re making more than one or two of these, I really do advise making a vanilla syrup. To do so, take a vanilla bean, split it lengthwise, and simmer it with a cup of simple syrup (6 oz. water and 6 oz. white sugar, stirring to dissolve) over medium low heat for about five minutes.
If that all sounds prohibitively difficult to you, you can try to titrate vanilla extract into simple syrup if you want to but mind you it’ll be extremely difficult to get it just right. We’re talking about drops, or possibly up to 0.25 tsp. The other option would be to use Licor 43 or some other vanilla liqueur—if so, substitute 0.75 oz. vanilla syrup for 0.5 oz. simple syrup and 0.5 oz. vanilla liqueur.
Cane syrup: The original recipe called for an extra teaspoon of simple or cane syrup. I personally don’t feel like it needs the extra sweetness—she likely added it for texture, the aforementioned “fat”—feel free to do it if you want to, but I didn’t find it necessary.
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