Summery, spicy and fruit forward: Smoky Raspberry Margarita

Raspberries, orange juice and lime juice bring the fruit, mezcal, the smoke and jalapeño, the heat to this summer cocktail. Recipe below.

ANYONE WHO’S BEEN FOLLOWING US A WHILE KNOWS WE LOVE MEZCAL. We love the smoke, we love the variations—every mezcal is essentially an artisanal product, so every label is its own adventure. We love just sipping it slowly on its own, but that is more of a winter thing. 

When it comes to summer, there’s just something perfect and perfectly appropriate about a citrusy, fruit-forward mezcal cocktail, probably with a lovely pastel tint and a pretty garnish, invitingly waiting for you in a glass heaped with ice. Add a chair set outside and the evening’s hush and a few fireflies flashing here and there, and you are in the zone.

The level of spiciness in this cocktail is, to us, pretty modest—an interesting, non-yelling presence. You can certainly dial it back by using just one or two jalapeño slices (or dial it up with more). If you really don’t like pepperiness or heat at all, then you might prefer some of our other mezcal cocktails, like our Garnet and Smoke, Nectarine Campfire or Smoky Paloma.

Or you may like to dabble yourself. Lately we’ve been seeing quite a few interesting updates to the great classic cocktails, like Old Fashioneds and Negronis, swapping in mezcal, and we’ve been loving that. Here at Blue Kitchen, we encourage experimentation.

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Smoky Raspberry Margarita

Raspberries, orange juice and lime juice bring the fruit, mezcal, the smoke and jalapeño, the heat to this summer cocktail.

Servings 1 cocktail

Ingredients

• 10 raspberries
• 3 thin slices jalapeno, plus one more for garnish
• 4 ounces fresh orange juice
• 1-1/2 ounces fresh lime juice
• 1 ounce simple syrup
• 2 ounces mezcal

Instructions

• Put the three slices of jalapeño in a cocktail shaker along with one or two of the raspberries. Muddle them well—really crush the pepper slices. When the peppers are pretty well worked over, add the rest of the raspberries and muddle everything together a bit more. (If you put all of this in the shaker all at once, the peppers won't be sufficiently crushed—gradualism is key here.)
• Add the simple syrup, orange and lime juice, and mezcal, and a few ice cubes. Cap tightly and shake for at least a minute to marry everything together and get it nice and cold.
• Pour over a few handsome big ice cubes, or any ice cubes you have really, in a glass, garnish with the fourth slice of jalapeño, and that's it. You're done. Please enjoy.