You Shouldn't Try To Drink All 150 Margaritas Featured At A Cancun Bar

Margarita lovers, take note: You'd better pack your self-control if you take a vacation down to Mexico and stay at the JW Marriott Cancun. The luxury hotel's lobby bar aims to be a tequila enthusiast's dream, offering 150 different margaritas ranging from the traditional to the outlandish.

You might think margaritas are pretty simple. And they were, at least when the cocktail first came into being in Mexico in the late 1930s or early 1940s. But the straightforward tequila, orange liqueur, and lime combination was just the starting point for JW Marriott Cancun food and beverage head Guillermo Canto. He told Food & Wine that for the hotel's 2019 lobby renovations, he and his team set a goal to create 100 different margaritas, each showcasing a different tequila, flavor combination, rim style, preparation method, and other differentiators.

With the help of mixologists and a dedicated staff trying as many as 40 cocktails per week, Canto blew past his initial estimate. Eventually, they narrowed things down to the current 150-drink offering, split into the categories of "Classic, Fusion, Modern, and Exotic." The classic margaritas include more recognizable flavors, while the fusion ones combine margaritas with the flavors of other beloved cocktails. Modern and exotic varieties, meanwhile, allow the bar's staff to show off their mixology chops with inventive takes on the cocktail.

It should be noted that it would take quite a while to drink each of the JW Marriott Cancun's 150 margarita styles with any semblance of safety. The CDC considers it binge drinking when men consume five or more drinks or when women consume four or more drinks in a single sitting. By this metric, it would take at least a month-long stay to try them all — and realistically much longer, considering the impact that multiple five-drink days have on most people.

Canto hasn't personally witnessed anyone drink every variety during their stay, though he noted that some have certainly tried. The menu is also constantly evolving, with Canto explaining that the challenging process of keeping all the required ingredients in stock sometimes necessitates tweaks to the recipes. This means that trying the entire menu over time may be impossible as new margaritas enter the scene and old ones depart.

While a trip to Cancun may not be in your future, that shouldn't stop you from experimenting with creative tequila cocktails of your own, like 20 fun recipes for one-of-a-kind margaritas that you can make at home.