El Diablo

Tequila, crème de cassis, lime, and ginger ale — Victor Bergeron's 1947 Trader Vic's formula, Burgundy's blackcurrant liqueur adding berry depth and dark-red color.

El Diablo — The Devil — is one of the most distinctive tequila cocktails in the pre-modern bar canon, combining tequila with crème de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur), fresh lime juice, and ginger ale in a formula whose combination of agave spirit with berry liqueur was genuinely unusual for its era. The recipe appears in Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide, published by Victor Bergeron in 1947, which described it as a Mexican creation. The drink's combination of ingredients crosses geographical and flavor traditions in a way that reflects the tiki movement's fundamental creative approach: Trader Vic systematically explored combinations of spirits, citrus, and exotic modifiers from multiple cultural sources, and El Diablo's Mexican tequila base with French crème de cassis and ginger ale represents a characteristically tiki synthesis of disparate elements. Crème de cassis, produced in Burgundy since the 19th century (most commonly associated with Dijon, where it was popularized by mayor Félix Kir), contributes a deep berry sweetness and a vivid dark-red color that mixes with the ginger ale to produce the drink's characteristic reddish-purple hue. The drink has been rediscovered and championed by craft bartenders as an underappreciated precursor to the modern spicy-and-sweet tequila cocktail category.