Tequila Sunrise
Tequila and orange juice built over ice, with grenadine sinking through to make the sunrise.
CC0 · Cropped, white-balanced, graded and re-encoded to WebP by eXir.
A Tequila Sunrise in a tall glass, showing its sunrise gradient from golden orange juice at the top down to red grenadine settled at the bottom
Serving
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring. Dilution is modelled rather than measured, as a fraction of the poured volume before any ice; dotted figures descend from that estimate.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Ingredients
45 ml blanco tequila
90 ml fresh orange juice
15 ml grenadine
- 45 ml blanco tequila
- 90 ml fresh orange juice
- 15 ml grenadine
Glass
Vessel
150 ml of liquid plus 200 ml of cubed ice occupies about 350 ml, inside the 350 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
2 steps · 45sBuild the 45 ml blanco tequila and the 90 ml fresh orange juice over cubed ice in a highball glass.
Pour the 15 ml grenadine slowly down the inside of the glass and let it settle to the bottom without stirring.
Grenadine is denser than the orange juice above it, so it is poured down the inside of the glass and left alone rather than stirred; it settles to the bottom and rises through the juice in streaks on its own, which is the "sunrise" the name describes.
Common pitfallStirring the drink before it is served mixes the layers into a flat orange and loses the effect entirely; it is meant to be stirred once, by the drinker, at the table.
Keeping and make-ahead
The grenadine's own sinking layer is what the drink is built to show; a pre-mixed batch loses that effect on the first stir.
About
Tequila, orange juice and a sinking pour of grenadine, remade from an earlier cassis-based drink at a Sausalito bar in the early 1970s and carried worldwide by the Rolling Stones' own liking for it.
The name predates the drink served under it today. An earlier Tequila Sunrise, closer to a tequila daisy of tequila, creme de cassis and lime, is placed by spirits historian Dave Wondrich at Agua Caliente, a Prohibition-era resort in Tijuana that drew Hollywood visitors across the border to drink legally 1; a separate account credits the same period's Arizona Biltmore, naming bartender Gene Sulit and adding soda water to the formula 2. Neither claim is treated as settled over the other.
The orange-and-grenadine drink now known by the name was made at the Trident, a Sausalito restaurant and bar frequented by musicians, where bartenders Bobby Lozoff and Billy Rice dropped the cassis for grenadine 2. The bar's own house style favoured improvising drinks loosely rather than following fixed recipes 1. The resulting sunrise-coloured drink reached a wide audience in 1972, when Mick Jagger was served one at a Trident party marking the start of the Rolling Stones' American tour and the band kept drinking them on the road, a tour Keith Richards later nicknamed after it 1. Jose Cuervo printed the recipe on its own bottle labels the following year, and the Eagles' 1973 song of the same name fixed the drink further in the culture of the period 2.
- 1The Rock 'n Roll History of the Tequila Sunrisetalesofthecocktail.org
- 2Tequila sunriseen.wikipedia.org