Searches in Britain for the Spicy Margarita rose by almost a quarter over the past year, while interest in several of the sweeter drinks that defined the last decade of British cocktail culture fell away, according to search volume estimates from Ahrefs. The spicy tequila serve drew 168,482 UK searches in the twelve months to August 2026, up 24.6 per cent on the 135,172 recorded in the twelve months before.
The figures, which Boozy compiled across around thirty classic and contemporary cocktails, point in a fairly consistent direction. Searches for the Paloma, tequila lengthened with grapefruit, rose 11.2 per cent, the Negroni 8.1 per cent, the Old Fashioned 5 per cent and the classic Margarita 4.2 per cent. At the other end of the table the French Martini fell 21.5 per cent, the Pornstar Martini 19.4 per cent, the Baby Guinness 18.1 per cent and the Long Island Iced Tea 14.4 per cent, with the Piña Colada down 9.4 per cent and the Cosmopolitan 7 per cent.
It is not a perfectly tidy split, and it is worth saying so. The Amaretto Sour, about as sweet as the classics get, edged up 1.6 per cent, and the Espresso Martini slipped only 2.6 per cent, broadly flat for a drink that still draws more than 640,000 searches a year. Search volume also measures curiosity rather than sales. A drink people already know well can be searched less while they carry on ordering it.
The Pornstar Martini numbers add a third view to a question this blog raised earlier this week. The Drinks International 2026 survey of the world's best bars dropped it fifteen places to twenty sixth, while CGA's UK on-trade tracking has long placed it at or near the top of the average British order. The search data sits somewhere between the two. Interest here has cooled noticeably, but at more than 313,000 searches over the year the Pornstar Martini is still looked up almost twice as often as the Spicy Margarita. A drink losing ground is not the same as a drink disappearing.
The Spicy Margarita is younger than most people assume. Its template is the Tommy's Margarita, created by Julio Bermejo at his family's restaurant in San Francisco in the early 1990s, which swapped orange liqueur for agave syrup and put the tequila itself at the centre of the drink. The best known spicy version, the Picante, was developed within the Soho House group in 2011, first at its Miami club, and was pared back to chilli, coriander and lime before rolling out across its houses the following year, according to an account in the drinks magazine Punch. It took until around 2015 to catch on in Britain, and has since found its way onto bar menus a long way from any members' club.
Tequila's wider rise helps explain it. Mexico's tequila council recorded exports of close to 408 million litres in 2025, as covered here earlier this month, and Bacardi's 2026 Cocktail Trends Report forecast that the Margarita would be the most called for cocktail in bars this year. Bartenders have spent a decade nudging British drinkers towards drier, sharper and more bitter flavours, and the search figures suggest that shift has now reached home kitchens as well as cocktail bars.
David Baddeley, founder of Boozy, said: "Palates move slowly and then all at once. Ten years ago the sweetest thing on the menu was the safe order. Now people want a bit of heat or a bit of bitterness, something with an edge to it. Sweet drinks aren't going anywhere, plenty of people love them, but the curiosity has clearly moved towards the sharper end."
Boozy's own Margarita sticks to the classic build of tequila, orange liqueur and fresh lime at 12 per cent ABV. The full method is on the Margarita recipe page, and a slice or two of fresh chilli in the shaker is all it takes to push it towards the spicy version. The longer grapefruit serve is set out in the Paloma recipe. Anyone mixing either from scratch can check the finished strength and units in the Cocktail ABV Calculator, which covers more than 100 recipes and adjusts for serving size.
Boozy asks everyone to drink responsibly. Guidance on units, weekly limits and lower risk drinking is available at drinkaware.co.uk.
