The drink is like its story, it’s about simplicity and not the Rio Grande.
In a Glass
Ingredients: Tequila, Lime Juice, Grapefruit Soda, Salt
Taste: Refreshing, Sour, Tart
Alc. Strength: approx 10%
Garnish: Lime and Salt
Ice: Cubes
Glass: Highball
The Recipe
5cl Tequila Blanco
1cl Lime juice
12cl Grapefruit Soda
pinch of Salt
Glass: Highball
Ice: Cubes
Garnish: Lime and Salt
Method:
Add ice into a chilled highball glass, pour the tequila and lime juice and a pinch of salt into the glass, stir the ingredients together and fill up with grapefruit soda. Garnish with Lime, if you like you can also put a salt rim on half way of the glass.
The Taste
How does this drink taste? The combination of Tequila with its peppery and earthy notes, Grapefruit with its tart and fruity, the lime is sour and brings in some fresh notes and with the carbonation the drink brings even more refreshment. What about the salt? The salt balances everything out, brings out more sweetness and softens the bitterness. So all together the drink is a refreshing tart-sour drink, perfect for hot summer days.
The History
Like many cocktail histories, the story of the paloma is a bit hazy, many sources assume that it originated sometime around 1950. An important point in this story is Squirt, a Grapefruit-Lemonade created in 1938 in Phoenix, Arizona. It didn’t take a long time till people started to combine this soft drink with spirits. The market entry in Mexico for Squirt is dated to the year 1955.
The story sounds plausible, back then, it wasn’t unusual to mix Squirt with alcohol, and why not with tequila, lime, and a little salt? But even though it sounds plausible there’s no concrete evidence about that.
Another story starts in the Bar La Capilla in Tequila, Jalisco, the bar of the Legendary Bartender Don Javier Delgado Corona, who is famous for creating a drink called “Batanga”. If we look at the recipes of the Paloma and Batanga, then we see strong parallels, the main difference is cola instead of grapefruit lemonade. The problem with this story is that Don Javier Delgado Corona has denied creating the Paloma his entire life. So it’s more about a popular legend than real history.
The first written records of the Paloma appeared relatively late, the earliest date back to the second half of the 1990s. However, the question arises, after all, it is and was Mexico’s national drink,so why spend so much time writing about it when you could simply enjoy the moment together while drinking a Paloma?
My Take
5cl Tequila Blanco
2cl Lime juice
12cl salted Grapefruit Soda
Glass: Highball
Ice: Cubes
Garnish: Lime and Salt
It is not without reason that this drink is enjoying such great popularity. It’s like a no-brainer combination of Tequila, Lime, Grapefruit and Salt. The earthy and peppery taste of Tequila shines just in that drink, that’s why I think the Paloma needs a good Blanco, with a Reposado or an Anejo the drink gets too heavy and loses its refreshing and thirst-quenching quality. Talking about the salt, salt is an important ingredient in La Paloma and I think it needs to be put directly in the Paloma or even better is the use of a salted Grapefruit Soda.
Variants and realtives
Batanga
Tequila · Lime · Salt · Cola
If you like the Paloma, than maybe you have to try:
Margarita:
Tequila · Triple Sec · Lime
Ranch Water:
Tequila · Lime · Soda
El Diablo:
Tequila · Cassis · Lime · Ginger Beer
Some Facts just for fun
For a long time, the history of the Paloma was distorted by an online story. In the 2010s, a Wikipedia entry appeared claiming that the Paloma was first described in the cocktail book “Popular Cocktails of the Rio Grande” by Evan Harrison. However, people noticed that the book appeared for the first time in that Wikipedia article and that there were no prior traces of its existence. The story was ultimately exposed as a hoax, though unfortunately too late, as the tale had already spread.
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