VinePair's May 4 Ground Signal map covered 262,262 margaritas across 66,583 bars, restaurants, and hotels nationwide. New York prices a margarita at $14.01 — the only state above $14. Hawaii at $13.89, D.C. at $13.67, Massachusetts at $13.47. Kansas anchors the cheap end at $10.09, Oklahoma at $10.23, Texas at $11.26. [1] Yesterday's paper carried the morning-after register pivoting from margin to cultural appropriation. Today's read is the retail curve behind the cocktail.

The map is a snapshot. The curve is the news. Mike Moreno Jr., owner of Moreno's Liquors in Chicago's Little Village, told the Spirits Business that his Q2 tequila sales are up about 20 percent off Q1, with mezcal and additive-free expressions leading. [2] New Hampshire's state-controlled NHLC reports tequila category sales up 4.8 percent year-to-date through April against a 3.1 percent decline through the same period in 2025 — an 8-percentage-point swing in a controlled-distribution market. The category that absorbed the worst of the post-pandemic premium-spirits correction is recovering through the same retail channels that recorded the decline.

The reads do not contradict each other. National margarita prices vary by $4 across states and were largely stable Tuesday into Wednesday. The bottle category — additive-free, RTD, and craft mezcal — is what is moving. RTD margaritas grew through 2025 against the cocktail-bar slowdown; the consumer who pulled back on a $14 New York margarita is buying a $24 bottle of additive-free tequila and a $9 lime juice. The cultural register the paper named yesterday lands in the same economy that prices the drink. The pricing data is the surface; the retail mix is the structure. Drinkers are still drinking. They are buying differently.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago