Vintage American Cocktails

The History Of The Paloma.

It isn’t easy to pin the Paloma down to any singular creation, and the truth is it most likely started as a simple, ubiquitous everyman’s drink. It is very uncommon to see tequila cocktails before the 1970s, except that being the margarita and a few other tiki drinks. Scanning through many Spanish, Mexican, American, and British cocktail books from 1909 to 1972, I could not find the Paloma or grapefruit and tequila cocktail. David Wondrich points out in an article he wrote for the Daily Beast that some of the first mentions of this drink appear in the 1997 Mexican cookbook “A Cook’s Tour of Mexico” by Nancy Zaslavsky, where it is called a lazy man’s margarita and common in the town’s plaza.

The exciting takeaway from this is the drink didn’t seem to have a solid name yet (At least from what we know). This implies that this cocktail is still relatively new and, while popular with locals, has flown under the radar of those who write about Mexican food and drinks. I don’t want to assume this was the locals’ attempt at creating an easy margarita. I believe they invented something unique with what was available. Structurally, the Paloma is a rickey that is nothing like a margarita that is structurally a sour, so I wills is entirely a new drink assuming that the. Assumptions have to be made with such limited information, but from what I can tell, it seems the local population was using cheap Squirt soda and limes to make cheap tequila taste better. If that history is somewhat correct, then I like that. That is the true cocktail creation story. Just a bunch of locals trying to find ways to make some bottom-shelf booze taste better, which is the origin of most of the famous old cocktails.

Dave Wondrich mentions in the article that one of the earliest places selling this cocktail with the name “Paloma” (Which means dove in Spanish) was the Tlaquepaque Restaurant in Orange County, California. Located about 20 minutes north of Disneyland (with no traffic of course), this traditional Mexican restaurant, along with the local Mexican immigrant population, helped bring this wonderful cocktail to California. The Paloma has since spread to the rest of the United States, but it is most popular in the southwest. Personally, as a resident of the southwest and someone who has been drinking since the early 2000s, I definitely noticed the Paloma start to appear on Mexican menus around the mid to late 2000s. Now every Mexican bar or restaurant in the city I live in has a Paloma.

Should The Paloma Be Made With Fresh Grapefruit Or Grapefruit Soda?

Traditionally the Paloma is made with Squirt grapefruit soda, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use other grapefruit sodas or fresh grapefruit juice. A very popular Mexican soda is the Jarritos brand. They make tons of different flavored sodas (tamarind is the best, I remember buying these and all the fun chamoy candies from the ice cream man as a kid.), but Jarritos makes a delicious grapefruit soda that you may want to try. Also, if you can, buy Mexican Squirt or just Mexican soda in general. Almost all sodas made in Mexico are made with natural cane sugar and taste noticeably better than American-made sodas. The reason for this, and why the most added sweetener in the US is corn syrup, is America has a high import tax on sugar to protect grain farmers. It is financially challenging to use natural sugar in conjunction with grain subsidies. Today, most local supermarkets have a “boutique” soda section that stocks Mexican-made sodas, so buy one of those if you can.

The second option for making a Paloma is to use fresh grapefruit juice. Using this method, you would substitute the 4 or 5 oz of grapefruit soda with a 1 oz grapefruit juice (Usually, white grapefruit juice is too tart in cocktails, but since there is a bit of syrup added, then white, pink, or red grapefruit works well), 1/2 oz simple syrup, and 3-4 oz soda water. Both ways are reasonable; it depends on your taste which you prefer. The soda version is sweeter, appeals more to the rum and coke crowd and the fresh grapefruit juice is much less sweet and appeals more to the sour cocktail crowd. Try both and see which you prefer. Also, keep in mind that this changes the structure of the cocktail. The soda version is structurally a rickey, and the fresh juice version is a collins. Rickey’s are a soda (sweetness is not a variable for the soda), citrus juice, and base spirit. Collins is soda (sweetness is not a variable for the soda), citrus juice, syrup, and sweetener. Ultimately, the final products of these two versions of the Paloma are similar enough, but if the structure is essential, that is something to keep in mind.

Tools Used: