5-Minute Bubbly Champagne Margarita Recipe

The combination of tart lime, sweet orange, peppery silver tequila, and a sprinkle of salt makes a pretty good cocktail, there's no arguing with that. But what in life isn't made better by a splash of champagne? Filling out the margarita pitcher with a cup and a half of chilled sparkling wine alters that classic cocktail in a few wonderful ways.

By adding sparkling wine, we mellow out the margarita into a refreshing, lower-alcohol sipper. With both tequila and sparkling wine, the drinks still pack plenty of punch, but the alcohol content drops to something more akin to a boozy sangria (about 15% ABV) rather than a classic margarita (which comes in closer to 25-30% ABV). So you can enjoy twice as many.

But the mellower cocktails do more than just open the door for us to enjoy them without getting sauced. They also invite these drinks into different settings. While a classic margarita might seem like a bit too much for brunch, a champagne margarita is a perfect fit. Pair a pitcher of these margaritas with some sheet pan chilaquiles rojos, and you have yourself a beautiful summer brunch. But the occasions don't stop there. These sparkling margaritas are also a perfect refreshment for an afternoon by the water, a happy hour with friends, or a Mexican-themed dinner party. However you choose to serve these margaritas, they are likely to be a hit.

For this recipe, you will need tequila, orange liqueur, lime juice, salt, and sparkling wine (champagne or otherwise). You may wish to have additional salt and limes to rim the glasses and garnish the cocktails. On top of these ingredients, you will want plenty of ice to keep the drinks nice and cool. Once you have these ingredients together, you're only five minutes away from a pitcher of delicious, refreshing champagne margaritas.

Stir together the tequila, orange liqueur, salt, and lime juice in a pitcher.

Pour in the sparkling wine.

Fill the rest of the pitcher with ice.

If rimming the glasses with salt, rub a cut lime around the edge and press them into a plate covered in flaky salt.

Pour the margaritas into the glasses and garnish with a lime wheel, if desired. Serve immediately.

While the title of this recipe is "champagne margaritas," you are certainly not limited to only sparkling wines from that vaunted region of France. You can think of it as more of a blanket term — sparkling wine margaritas just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

Now, none of that is to say that you can't use champagne in these margaritas. There are certainly champagnes that would be excellent in this recipe. But you needn't feel restricted to the heavily regulated world of champagnes. Sparkling wines differ from champagne in that they can be made with any grape, anywhere in the world, and, as a result, they boast significant variation in flavor as well as cost (and are often much more affordable).

As far as the best sparkling wine for this recipe, it is largely a matter of personal preference. If you like your cocktails on the sweeter side, you could opt for a prosecco, which tends to be a bit more sugary than champagne. If you are more inclined to a drink on the drier side of the spectrum, consider using a brut cava. With all the sparkling wines produced all over the world, we could give endless suggestions, but in the end you'll always have to rely on your own palate. With a recipe as quick and easy as this, you can consider it an invitation to experimentation.

According to some folks, the margarita is the number one most popular cocktail in the world, and no one will argue that it boasts global renown and fairly universal popularity. As a cocktail that has delighted tipplers on every continent (someone must've mixed a margarita in Antarctica, right?), there are many fun, one-of-a-kind margarita recipes out there. When it comes to customizing your champagne margaritas, this is where to start.

One of the most tried and true methods for customizing a margarita is to introduce another fruit into the mix. This could mean something as simple as adding pineapple, mango, or passionfruit juice, or it could mean something more complex, like spiking the pitcher with a hit of sweet and tangy pineapple syrup, as in this pineapple shrub margarita recipe. The other direction margaritas often go is the blender, for the many wonderful frozen variants. Carbonated beverages and blenders don't mix particularly well, but there's no reason you couldn't blend the drinks and mix in the wine afterward. Check out these recipes for frozen watermelon-ginger margaritas and sweet and spicy magonadas for some inspiration.

The one margarita variant we'll warn you against is the spicy margarita. When mixing spicy ingredients into carbonated drinks there's an unfortunate tendency for the effervescence to aerosolize those spicy oils, leaving you coughing each time you try to take a sip. If you do choose to add heat to this recipe, consider yourself warned.