El Diablo
Trader Vic’s 1940s Mexican-cocktail entry: tequila, crème de cassis, fresh lime, ginger beer. Bracing and bramble-fruited, and proof that Vic was thinking beyond rum well before most of the exotic-cocktail canon had stabilized.
The History
First published as ‘Mexican El Diablo’ in Trader Vic’s Book of Food and Drink (1946). Vic’s interest in tequila was unusual for the era—most American bartenders considered it a novelty—and El Diablo was his attempt to bring it into the tropical-cocktail vocabulary. The drink predates the modern tequila boom by sixty years and was largely forgotten until the craft-cocktail revival rediscovered it in the 2000s.
Ingredients
- 1.5 oz tequila (blanco or reposado)
- 0.5 oz crème de cassis (Mathilde or Briottet)
- 0.5 oz fresh lime juice
- 4 oz chilled ginger beer
- Lime wheel (garnish)
Directions
Combine tequila, cassis, and lime juice in a shaker with ice.
Shake briefly.
Strain into a highball glass over fresh ice.
Top with chilled ginger beer.
Garnish with a lime wheel.