Puns have been called the lowest form of humor (wrongly, I insist), but I nominate this cocktail for “highest form of libation,” punnish name and all.

Watermelon is in season as we speak, and there’s no shortage of great watermelon cocktails out there on the internet. If you love watermelon as much as I do, go get some cocktail recipes while it’s in season, starting with this one. It’s full of spice, sweet, and heat, and it’s a hard drink to throw off balance, as each ingredient holds its own even with adjustments. I like a touch of extra heat and tequila in mine, so I used two slices of jalapeño and an extra half-ounce of tequila. It was heavenly, with the sweet watermelon up front and a very pleasing back-of-the-throat heat on the finish.

Of note, there is a fun cocktail book out there with the title of “Tequila Mockingbird,” and it includes a recipe for a different cocktail of the same name—but this one is far better.

TEQUILA MOCKINGBIRD
1 or 2 slices Jalapeño (seeds removed)
3 cubes Watermelon (about one inch on all sides)
2 oz Silver/blanco/plata tequila (I used my go-to El Tesoro blanco)
¾ oz Freshly squeezed lime juice
¾ oz Agave syrup

Muddle the jalapeño slice(s) and watermelon in the base of a shaker, until the jalapeño is crushed and the watermelon is mostly liquified. Add the tequila, lime juice, and agave syrup to the shaker, add plenty of ice, and shake until well chilled. Fine-strain the mix into an ice-filled rocks glass—ideally just one big, cubic rock (here’s one way to get one). Garnish is optional, but an extra slice of jalapeño looks pretty sharp sitting on that perfect cube!

This is so easy to make, too, and no exotic, hard-to-find ingredients. Just be sure your lime juice is freshly squeezed (well, at least within the past day or so). If you don’t have agave syrup in the house, just use plain simple syrup. Of note, Wegmans and other major grocery outlets care the “Master of Mixes” brand of agave syrup and simple syrup. On top of saving you the trouble of making your syrup, the bonus is that these syrups are treated to avoid mold growth. (If you’ve tried to store homemade simple syrup for more than a month, you know what kind of biology experiment that can become.)