Inside Mexico City’s Despacho Margarita
Oscar Valle, co-founder of Licorería Limantour, talks us through his latest venue in Mexico City: Despacho Margarita.
Last October, the team behind Mexico City’s Licorería Limantour opened a new bar in Mexico’s capital called Despacho Margarita.
As its name suggests, the cocktail plays a key role in the bar’s setup.
“So much of the Margarita’s story has been shaped outside of Mexico,” co-founder Oscar Valle noted when the bar first launched. “For us, Despacho Margarita was a way to bring the conversation home by celebrating Mexican spirits, sharing knowledge in an accessible way, and creating a space that reflects how people actually want to drink and gather.”
The bar is located in Mexico City’s Roma neighbourhood, the same district as Licorería Limantour, which Valle says is the “centre of tourism right now”.
“Even if we’re not on the list [of The World’s 50 Best Bars, on which Licorería Limantour placed 52nd in 2025), or something like that, people will pass through the area and find us,” Valle tells The Spirits Business.
While Licorería Limantour and Baltra – the team’s other venues in Mexico City – are more focused on building menus around cocktail trends, this time round they wanted to channel their energy into one consistent theme.
“We thought to focus all of our efforts into one drink: the Margarita. We decided to open it as a bar that could be replicated anywhere, respecting the quality of just one drink. And at the time, we weren’t aware that it was going to top Bacardi’s Trend Report for 2026,” he laughs.
Valle notes that while people in Mexico drink Margaritas, its consumption is mostly outside of the capital. “In Cancun and Los Cabo, they’re super popular,” he says. “As a drink, it might be massive in the US, but it’s also helped the Tequila category to grow as wide as it is right now.”
Cocktails
In championing the concept around one cocktail, Valle explains the team naturally had to get it right.
“Basically, we like to think that if you respect the ingredients, the cocktail is gonna respect you back. That’s our philosophy at Despacho,” Valle says.
Using this as a guiding point, he outlines the approach for the bar’s classic style: “When we started doing trials for how our regular Margarita would turn out, we first looked at the base: lime, orange liqueur, and Tequila.
“Then we thought of what limes are available in Mexico. We tried different combinations of limes, without seeds and with seeds, which are the limes you find in taquerías and are very acidic. We did a blend of two different kinds of limes to have the most complexity in the citrusy aspect. After this, we looked for two kinds of orange liqueurs, and then the special salt we brought from the south of Mexico.”
Alongside the classic, there’s also the Spicy Margarita, which Despacho ‘takes up a few notches’, as Valle explains. “We use at least nine different chillies, but in different ways. Our Spicy Margarita is Tequila-based and uses cucumber cordial, but we don’t sell it as a cucumber Margarita – it was in order to have a base for the chillies.
“We use serrano chilli with cucumber for the cordial, then we infuse habanero into agave nectar. For the salt rum, we use five kinds of dried chilli that we get from Oaxaca, which we blend with volcanic salt, some citric acid, and sugar.
“We wanted lots of different layers of chilli flavour – from smoky to fresh and of course spicy – and we use different measurements for balance, so it doesn’t overwhelm the palate.”
There is also a frozen option, which Valle says is becoming the most popular of the three. “At first, we started with promoting the classic one, but this has caught on,” he says.
The Frozen Margarita changes monthly. December’s version was based on the Ponche Navideño, a Mexican fruit punch traditionally served hot and made with hibiscus, apple and cinnamon. Despacho went the other way, putting the drink – made here with mezcal and Tajín – through the blender to serve it in frozen form.
For February, the team has opted for a Strawberry Rhubarb Margarita in honour of Valentine’s Day. “We use dehydrated strawberries with Tajín as a rim, and a heart emoji as the garnish,” Valle says.
Valle notes that the use of mezcal in Margaritas, as seen in the bar’s frozen expression, is ‘a bit of a trend’, but while the category’s numbers keep growing, he’ll always be a Tequila guy. “I used to drink mezcal 15 years ago at Limantour when it sort of became a trend, but we used to drink it as a shot, so perhaps I didn’t really respect the product at the time. Now I don’t drink mezcal anymore.”
Valle also notes that despite the Margarita being the face and name of the bar, the team hasn’t backed itself into a corner, with the menu also featuring a Mezcal Negroni, a Gimlet, a Naked and Famous, and a Oaxaca Old Fashioned made with Tequila and mezcal.
Bar and shop
Alongside its bar function, Despacho also acts as a Tequila and mezcal shop. Valle says a Mexican spirits store was the original idea for Despacho, along with a Tequila bar. “The idea changed a lot as we travelled around distilleries in Oaxaca, visiting palenques, maestro mescaleros and tequileros.”
The space stocks around 120 different bottles of Tequila, covering blanco, reposado, añejo and extra añejo, plus some made using the tahona method. However, one style you won’t find at Despacho for now is the cristalino.
“The maestro Tequileros, or the people who really respect Tequila, don’t really like cristalino, so we try to avoid those,” Valle explains.
The bar has a capacity for around 40 people, “but it’s really adaptable,” Valle says. “We have the bar, which can seat 12 people, and then the rest is between inside and out. If you grab some seats, sometimes we can add more people.
“We don’t really have servers – it’s just three people working each shift, and that’s it. It’s very casual, and the idea originally was a place where people could come to start their bar hop around the neighbourhood.”
In terms of Mexico City’s stature as a global cocktail capital, where many of the city’s bars now feature on ‘best of’ lists, Valle says notice has really picked up in the last four years.
“There have been many openings, but also many closures. We’ve definitely become a cocktail city, and Mexico City is getting famous because of its cocktail bars, but I’m not sure how long that’s gonna work because the operating cost is so high for bars here right now.”
Nevertheless, Valle is sure of Despacho’s staying power: “It feels like a timeless project because we’re not following a trend. We have a structure that has already worked and has been working for many years.”
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