Why Jimmy Buffett Eventually Quit Drinking His Beloved Margaritas

Few things are quite as synonymous as Jimmy Buffett and margaritas. The singer of "Margaritaville" and founder of the Margaritaville restaurant chain — one of the best celebrity-owned restaurants around — learned a thing or two about margaritas during the course of his long and illustrious life. However, by the time Buffett reached the age of 72 in 2018, he came to the unfortunate realization that he could no longer indulge in the alcoholic beverage as its contents had become too sweet for him to enjoy.

Buffett first revealed this factoid in 2018 but went on to elaborate on exactly why he chose to stop drinking margaritas, and what he drank instead, in a 2020 interview with USA Today. In the interview, Buffett said, "Margaritas have gotten very sweet. I like real lime juice; I don't like a lot of sugar." He also noted that, at that time, his preferred drink was tequila on the rocks with lime juice. This was his way of getting the margarita taste he loved without having to endure that cloyingly sweet kick.

Jimmy Buffett was definitely right in saying that many margaritas are noticeably sweet. These days, most standard margaritas contain at least 13 grams of sugar. Even low-calorie versions typically contain 8 grams of sugar. Of course, there are also many margaritas that contain much more sugar than this. For example, Texas Roadhouse's 18-ounce, frozen strawberry margarita contains a whopping 77 grams of sugar. 

Despite giving up margaritas later on in his life, Buffett never stopped being a margarita purist, and we doubt he ever tried the cult classic Dr. Pepper margarita. In fact, Buffett almost confirmed as much in the USA Today interview, saying, "The other day I was watching Queer Eye and they were doing a makeover, and the guy had [...] just bad tequila and Mountain Dew. And I went, 'That's way too far, I'd never do that.'"

Now, this isn't the only polarizing beverage drink from the history of "Queer Eye" — looking at you, tomato juice lemonade — but it was one that stands most at odds with Buffett's go-to margarita recipe. Instead of drowning his tequila in Mountain Dew, Buffett liked to mix 2 ounces of gold tequila with a ½ ounce of white tequila, 1 ¼ ounces of lime juice, a ½ ounce of triple sec, and a splash of orange curaçao. Given this classy recipe, it's no wonder Buffett hated sweet margaritas.