A wire headline crediting tequila advice to the man behind the world's best margarita points to Jonathan Stanyard, a Seattle bartender who won Cointreau's international Margarita Challenge in 2022. Tequila Watch could not locate or confirm the specific Food & Wine article the headline references, so the account below relies on Stanyard's verified competition record and on a separate, on-record interview in which he named his everyday tequila.
That record holds up on its own. Stanyard's title and the surrounding reporting are corroborated across several outlets, which matters more than the missing article: it establishes who he is and gives us an attributable, checkable answer about what he actually pours, even if the exact Food & Wine framing remains unverified.
The competition behind the claim
Cointreau's Margarita Challenge that year drew more than 500 entries from 47 countries, according to the company's own announcement. Stanyard, then bartending in Seattle, won the global final with a riff on the classic recipe built around rhubarb, strawberry and rosemary, earning the Margarita King title, a trophy and a trip to Paris. His biography also lists finalist placements in USBG World Class and other national competitions the same year, and he later joined the judging panel for the Bartender Spirits Awards.
The tequila he actually reaches for
Asked directly about his go-to bottle in a 2024 VinePair survey of working bartenders, Stanyard named Don Fulano Blanco, a highland tequila made by the Fonseca family in Atotonilco. He described it as offering wet soil and mineral notes that open into tropical fruit, pepper and baked agave, with a long finish, and he flagged its price as strong relative to less distinctive bottles that cost more. That is a specific, sourced answer, distinct from whatever bottle may or may not appear in the Food & Wine piece the wire headline cites.
Tequila Watch has blind scored Don Fulano Blanco at 90 and classified it Verified Pure. The house's Añejo scores 91 under the same status. Neither bottle is among the most heavily marketed names in the category, which is part of why a working competition bartender naming it carries more weight than a celebrity endorsement would.
Why this fits a broader pattern
Bartender surveys on margarita tequila have converged on a similar profile for several years now: 100 percent agave, blanco or occasionally reposado, and made without the flavoring and coloring additives that were common in mixto-era tequila. Punch's own blind tasting of competition margaritas found that the drink's overall quality had risen in step with that shift toward cleaner spirit, with the large majority of entries built on tequila made from just agave, yeast and water. Stanyard's pick sits squarely inside that trend rather than outside it.
For buyers, the practical takeaway is narrower than the headline suggests. A single bartender's personal bottle, however credentialed, is not a verdict on the category. But it is one more data point suggesting that trade professionals asked to put their name on a specific recommendation keep landing on smaller, additive-conscious houses rather than the largest global brands.
What we are watching
Whether the original Food & Wine piece surfaces with a bottle recommendation that matches or contradicts the Don Fulano pick Stanyard gave VinePair. Whether Don Fulano sees any retail movement tied to this round of press. Whether Stanyard's judging role at the Bartender Spirits Awards produces any conflict-of-interest disclosures if Don Fulano or comparable houses enter that competition. And whether Cointreau's Margarita Challenge, now in its later editions, continues to produce winners whose personal tequila preferences get reported on by outlets beyond the trade press.