Mexican Firing Squad

Blanco tequila, lime, grenadine, and bitters — Baker's 1939 Gentleman's Companion documenting one of the earliest crafted tequila cocktails from a Mexico City bar.

The Mexican Firing Squad is a pre-World War II tequila cocktail documented by American travel writer and food enthusiast Charles Henry Baker Jr. in his 1939 volume The Gentleman's Companion, Being an Exotic Drinking Book, Or Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask — one of the most evocative and personally written cocktail books in the genre, recording Baker's encounters with drinking culture across dozens of countries during his travels in the 1920s and 1930s. Baker attributed the drink to a well-known Mexico City establishment he encountered during his Mexican travels, and the formula — blanco tequila, fresh lime juice, grenadine, and a dash of Angostura bitters — is notable as an early documented example of a crafted tequila cocktail rather than the neat or simply mixed tequila service that dominated Mexican drinking culture of the era. The name's dramatic reference to execution by firing squad reflects both the vivid red color that the grenadine imparts and Baker's characteristic enthusiasm for colorful nomenclature throughout his book. The drink's combination of tequila's agave dryness, lime's citric acid, grenadine's pomegranate sweetness, and bitters' aromatic complexity anticipates the balanced, multi-element tequila cocktail style that the craft cocktail revival would champion seventy years later.