Battle Testing the Paloma
Side-by-siding all the grapefruit sodas to find the best Paloma possible.
Note: There’s been disproportionate amount of tequila content so far, but in my defense, it’s because tequila is delicious. I’m adding to it because today is Cinco de Mayo, and thought you might like a suggestion that isn’t a Margarita. Salud.
Paloma means “dove” in Spanish, and for the cocktail, that’s pretty right — the Paloma is a beautiful drink, an occasion for joy, and almost poignant in its simplicity.
On the other hand, paloma also means “pigeon” in Spanish, and honestly, that’s pretty right too, because the Paloma is also a common drink, an everyday drink, fussed over in Mexico City cocktail bars, sure, but also pre-mixed and canned and sold all over the country in terrific quantities, one at a time, to sweaty workers at the end of their shift.
This is the Paloma’s gift, the reason for its meteoric success. It’s great dressed up or dressed down, great after dinner or before breakfast, great for old salty tequila pros or for timid first timers. It’s just great. It’s always great.
At a glance:
Year Created: 1955. Or possibly the 1950. Maybe the 70s. Definitely before 2000.
Inventor: Let’s say Don Javier Delgado Corona, which is as true as anything (more below)
Ingredients: tequila, lime, grapefruit soda, salt
Cocktail Family: Highball or Collins
The Story:
In a way, you don’t need to be told how to make a Paloma. You would’ve figured it out eventually.
A Paloma is tequila and grapefruit soda, with a squeeze of lime. Maybe some salt. As far as structural complexity is concerned, the Paloma is on par with a Gin & Tonic or a Vodka & Soda, the things you mix when you don’t know how to mix anything. And what’s remarkable about the Paloma — one of the things, anyway — is that despite this, and despite that it only popped into wide consciousness somewhere around 25 years ago, it has already, through sheer deliciousness, earned its way into the uppermost choir of absolutely indispensable global cocktails.
I was always told that the Paloma was invented by Don Javier Delgado Corona at his bar La Capilla, in Tequila, Mexico, in the late 90s. Before he died in 2020 (at the age of 96) I had the opportunity to go to La Capilla and have one of them, which is made like so: under Don Javier’s seated, watchful gaze, an apprentice prepares a tall glass with a few glugs of mixto tequila, a hand squeeze of lime, a topper of Squirt and a sprinkle of salt. The apprentice then slides the glass across the bar to where Don Javier is sitting, where he applies his signature finishing touch, which is to stir it a bit with a large knife.
Don Javier was a warm and hospitable man and La Capilla is dripping with the kind of yellowing authenticity you hope to find in a place like Tequila, and this would’ve been a nice place to leave it. Sadly, I don’t think we can. Apparently, according to Meehan’s Bartender Manual, Don Javier himself “has denied authorship” of the Paloma (see trivia, at bottom)
This is where things get complicated, and honestly pretty tedious. Cocktail writer Camper English (and his dedicated commenters) have produced several thousand words on the topic, which I invite you to go read if you have a mind to. These are briefly summarized, below:
Squirt Grapefruit Soda is invented in Arizona in 1938
As early as 1950, advertisements in the US are inviting you to mix it with tequila, among other spirits
Squirt is exported to Mexico in 1955
By the early 70s, tequila and Squirt is enthusiastically marketed in the US, but it doesn’t have a name. Impossible though it seems, the tagline “Tequila has appeala with Squirt,” is unleashed upon the public.
David Suro reports that tequila, grapefruit juice, and a splash of Squirt was being served at parties in Guadalajara in the 1980s, occasionally under the name “Palomas” or “Frescas.”
A trade publication called Beverage Media (vol 75) includes La Paloma as tequila, lemon, and a splash of grapefruit soda in 1999, but gets the proportions very wrong.
In 2000 comes the hilariously named Cowboy Cocktails: Boot-Scootin’ Beverages and Tasty Vittles from the Wild West, which includes a recipe for a Virgin La Paloma with the correct citrus and mostly correct proportions, noting that the non-virgin La Paloma, the one with tequila, is “virtually the national drink of Guadalajara.”
There’s still a lot wrong with their version — the sugar rim, that they’re shaking something carbonated, that they refer to Guadalajara (a city) as being in possession of a “national drink,” I mean, it’s not great. But they’re right about the important bits. By 2000, the Paloma was so popular in Mexico that it had begun to spill its borders.
Unsatisfying though this may be, this is where I intend to leave it. Let’s be real — when drinks are this simple, their creation was inevitable. A mixture of grapefruit soda and tequila was I’m sure invented spontaneously 50,000 times before anyone thought to name it. As cocktail historian David Wondrich reportedly put it, "From what I can see, Squirt was introduced to Mexico in the 1950s. Probably mixed with tequila from 1950s +1 day."
La Paloma
At its best, the Paloma is refreshing four times over — the icy bubbles cool you off, the lime cuts through the sweetness, the grapefruit’s textured half-bitterness of invites you to take another sip, and the tequila, well, the tequila is what lowers your shoulders and relaxes your jaw.
As for how to make one — as mentioned, everyone knows the Paloma is a mixture of tequila, lime, and grapefruit soda. But odds are good this is not what you’ll get if you were to order one in a cocktail bar. Why?
Because Squirt is precisely the type of mass market, high-fructose, “less than one percent juice” horseshit for which the whole cocktail revolution was a direct repudiation. Every now and then we in the bar world get ourselves in a little Catch-22 like this, stuck between authenticity and integrity. So what to do? Some people use more “craft” grapefruit soda, some people use Squirt from Mexico (which is made with cane sugar instead of HFCS), but most bars will just make a fresh “grapefruit soda” to order, in a way, with simple syrup, grapefruit juice, lime, and soda water.
That said, there is some ineffable magic to grapefruit soda that the fresh juice Paloma lacks, a species of zestiness that is persistent and irrepressibly delicious. Can we get it back with the fresh approach? And if we’re being more traditional, what’s the best grapefruit soda to use?
This, friends, is why we’re here.
A Brief Science-y Note:
Test Methods: identical measurements (used a graduated cylinder), blind side-by-sides by the sticker-under-the-glass strategy, which works well. I knew what sodas were participating, but not which was which. We (wife and I) did one battle royale round of all-against-all, then a Finals round of five: three sodas + two shaken fresh versions (one shaken with GF peel, one without) to pick the winner.
Sodas Tested:
Q Grapefruit
Fever Tree Grapefruit
Jarritos Grapefruit
Betty Buzz Sparkling Grapefruit
Whole Foods Pink Grapefruit Italian Soda
San Pellegrino Pompelmo
Ting
Squirt (Hecho in Mexico)
Housemade
Measurements: 20ml tequila (Cimarron Blanco), 5ml lime juice, 45ml grapefruit soda
Perfecting the Paloma
Notes on ingredients, one at a time:
Grapefruit Soda: It was pretty easy, tasting blind, to remove half the sodas as no where near as good as they should be. Betty Buzz, Q Grapefruit, and Fever Tree were absolutely untakeable, too weak, too weird, and too weak and weird, respectively. Hard nos.
Whole Foods and San Pellegrino were better, but each went a little sideways with their take on the grapefruit — Whole Foods was too juicy and tasted like health food (pasteurized citrus always tastes like vitamins to me), and San Pellegrino was good but tasted a little like feet, which can happen to chemical grapefruit essence (see Bubly Grapefruit Soda Water for a particularly terrible example of this).
In the winners circle, surprising no one, were Jarritos, Squirt, and Ting.
3rd Place: Jarritos. “Platonically perfect,” I wrote, “if a bit plain.” No peaks, no valleys, just good and solid all the way through.
2nd Place: Squirt. “Good effervescence, good roundness. Great all arounder. Not the most grapefruit forward but delicious. Exactly the right shape in the mouth.” Co-taster (wife) agreed: “tastes like Sprite,” she said, “great though.”
First Place : Ting. “Lots of grapefruit essence. Mouth filling, broad on the palate. Fantastic. Grapefruit all the way through,” I wrote. After comparing it to Squirt side-by-side, “very similar to Squirt but like someone took a highlighter to the grapefruit notes.”
Ting is a Jamaican grapefruit soda, which you can find sometimes in specialty markets but I just found on Amazon. It’s what I’ll use in my Palomas for now on. Really spectacular.
Tequila: Some recipes call for reposado (aged 2-12mo) tequila, but most call for blanco (unaged). Blanco is better. Repo really isn’t bad, but what that brief bit of age does is file some of the sharp edges off the raw bright agave flavor, and replace it with barrel notes like cinnamon, vanilla, and oak. For me, the vanilla in particular on the finish of an Paloma is a little cloying, especially when directly compared to a blanco. You want a zippy finish for the refreshment, and vanilla / cinnamon, delicious though it is, is not zippy.
For brands, I actually prefer the budget side of the 100% agave spectrum for exactly the same reason — the expensive sipping blancos have a ton of earthy and vegetal complexity, which is amazing, but not here. I prefer my Paloma tequilas to be a touch less expressive, still made with integrity, just a little cleaner. Brands I love for this are Cimarron and Real de Valle. Also great (and more widely available) is Olmeca Altos.
Lime: You can see some early recipes equivocating on lime vs. lemon, and it honestly doesn’t matter much. Lime is better, but if you want Palomas and all you have is lemon juice, you can still make the Palomas.
Salt: As far as I’m concerned, salt is an ingredient, which tempers what is already a pretty mild bitterness from the grapefruit, and helps the flavors pop.
As for how to get it in — you can rim the glass, but generally people don’t. You could add 3-4 drops of a 1:4 salt to water saline tincture, which is what we do in bars. Or you could embrace the spirit of the drink and just Salt Bae some flakes on top, and let them land where they land.
Garnish: Most people garnish with a lime wedge or grapefruit half wheel, but I feel pretty strongly that a grapefruit peel is the best way to finish this drink, particularly the fresh juice version. It brings that zestiness that you’re missing from the soda. Honestly even if you’re using a good zesty soda, it can still use some more.
Recipe:
Paloma
2oz Blanco Tequila
0.5oz Lime Juice
4oz Ting Grapefruit Soda
Add liquids to a collins glass with ice. Garnish with a grapefruit peel and a sprinkle of salt on top.
OR, if you’re making the fresh version, there’s a couple more variables to consider:
Simple Syrup: Equal parts sugar and water, and stir until the sugar dissolves. Here, use white sugar. You don’t want any rustic molasses notes getting in the way of the brightness of the citrus.
Zest: The only way to get the necessary grapefruit zesty oil to permeate the entire drink is to “regal” shake it, which is to say, add a grapefruit peel to the shaker tin and shake it with the liquid and ice, and then garnish with another one on top. This is the best possible way to make a fresh Paloma:
Paloma (Fresh)
2oz Blanco Tequila
0.5oz Lime Juice
1oz Grapefruit Juice
0.5oz Simple Syrup (1:1)
1 grapefruit peel
Put all liquids and grapefruit peel in a shaker with ice, and shake good and hard for 6-8 seconds. Strain over fresh ice into a collins glass, top with 2-3oz soda water, and stir briefly (with a big knife) to combine. Garnish with another grapefruit peel, and sprinkle some salt on top.
Trivia:
Don Javier demurs on inventing the Paloma, which is big of him. You might think that he declined this honor because the Paloma felt so pre-destined, who could’ve really “invented” it?… but no, because he did claim to have invented the Batanga (Tequila and Coke) which is the only thing more obvious and inevitable than the Paloma. It also tastes worse.
Ting is also the sweetest Grapefruit Soda of the lot. I don’t feel like I was responding to sugar content, though the rankings to suggest an interesting through line… but still, would a dash of simple syrup have saved Fever Tree? It strongly suspect not.
Squirt from America, like American Coca-cola, uses high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener. The Mexican version uses cane sugar, and is preferable, even if it does sometimes compel the unfortunate combination of words that is “Mexican Squirt.”