Mexican Mule

Tequila, ginger beer, and lime — the 1941 Hollywood Mule formula given the assertive agave earthiness that vodka's neutrality was designed to avoid.

The Mexican Mule is a tequila adaptation of the Moscow Mule — the copper-mug ginger beer, lime, and spirit combination created in Hollywood, California in 1941. The Moscow Mule was developed through a commercial partnership between John G. Martin, who had acquired the American distribution rights to Smirnoff vodka and was struggling to sell it in a whiskey-dominated American market, and Jack Morgan, who owned the Cock 'n' Bull pub on Sunset Strip and had a surplus of his house-branded ginger beer. Sophie Berezinski, a Russian immigrant whose father manufactured copper goods, reportedly contributed the copper mugs that became the drink's visual signature, connecting the Russian vodka to an authentically Russian material. The combination of vodka's neutrality with ginger beer's spice and lime's acidity was commercially transformative: it made vodka accessible to American consumers who had not previously engaged with the spirit, and the copper mug's visual impact made it one of the most photographed cocktail vessels in bar history. The Mexican Mule's substitution of tequila for vodka produces a drink whose agave earthiness and herbaceous character engages with ginger beer's heat in a more assertive, flavor-forward way than vodka's neutrality, creating a Mule with significantly more personality.