LiquidZERO Brings Roasted Hatch Chile Margaritas to Dallas

Jalapeño gets the headlines. Hatch chile does the quieter work, the kind that shows up in August and disappears by fall, and Dallas drinkers who’ve had a jalapeño margarita from LiquidZERO now have a second version worth tracking down. Friday, August 7, the Dallas-based zero sugar cocktail brand is sampling a roasted Hatch chile margarita at Central Market’s Dallas flagship store as part of the store’s annual Hatch Chile Festival, running August 5 through 18 this year under the theme Hit the Hatch Jackpot.

The build starts where every LiquidZERO margarita starts, with the brand’s zero sugar frozen mix, sweetened with allulose instead of the stevia or monk fruit that tends to leave a synthetic aftertaste. Into that goes a small amount of juice pulled from Hatch chiles roasted on-site, the same fire-blistered peppers Central Market has been bringing in from New Mexico’s Hatch Valley for more than three decades. The result is built around three things working together: bright lime up front, a slow gentle heat behind it, and the smoke that Hatch chile carries and jalapeño simply doesn’t.

It’s a logical extension for a brand that’s spent the better part of a year proving zero sugar doesn’t have to mean a compromised drink. LiquidZERO mixers are already behind the OTR Margaritas at AT&T Stadium and at the bar at Mesero, where the zero sugar margarita has become close to a house standard across the group’s Dallas locations. The Hatch chile version isn’t a permanent addition to the lineup. It’s a seasonal one, tied to the roughly two weeks a year when fresh Hatch chile is actually available, which is part of what makes showing up for it worthwhile.