All Things Pink Grapefruit and the Perfect Paloma

Fanfare please! We’re stepping into summer with one of our most flamboyant flavours - Pink Grapefruit. It’s an intensely optimistic mixer, opening with rich grapefruit, sliding into the lushness of Persian lime and buddying up like a summer crush with all the white spirits.

The sunny taste of this mixer works perfectly alone but if you want to make it more grown up, we’ve got the perfect cocktail to partner Pink Grapefruit … and it comes with its own mysterious past - The Paloma!

How to make the perfect Paloma

• Dip the rim of a highball glass into lime juice, then pink Himalayan salt
• Pour 50ml tequila, into your glass with ice. Squeeze in your fresh lime and agave syrup for those that like their Paloma a little sweeter.
• Top with our Pink Grapefruit Soda and garnish with a grapefruit slice.
• Drink, sigh, relax.

The mystery of the Paloma

When people think about tequila, their first thought is usually the Margarita, but for us, the Paloma has it all. It’s simple but well-rounded, fresh but sophisticated, in fact, it’s just like our Pink Grapefruit. It’s a classic cocktail. But is it?

We tried to find out. We really did.

The history of the Paloma (which means dove) begins in the 1940s, when there’s a range of drinks in Mexico called changuirongo. Today, that means a specific cocktail: silver tequila, ginger ale and a lime wedge, but back then, it meant any kind of tequila mixed with any kind of soda - ginger ale, cola, or something called Squirt. Yes, Squirt - aka grapefruit soda.

There are problems with this scenario though, such as Squirt being invented in Phoenix Arizona in 1938. Maybe there’s a Mexican version of this soda that harmonised well with tequila and led to this wonderful flavour pairing and Squirt, like other brand names, just ended up dominating the market. In which case, the Paloma dates back to the 1940s then, right?

Not really...

Camper English have been digging deep to get to the definitive first mention of a Paloma, producing evidence that destroys the 1940s origin - because Squirt wasn’t exported to Mexico until 1955 and there’s no history of an equivalent grapefruit mixer existing in Mexico before then. So the Paloma was ‘invented’ in the late 1950s?

Nope.

In fact, the earliest reference anybody has found so far to a tequila-based cocktail called a Paloma (there’s one with the same name, based on Cointreau) is in a book called Cowboy Cocktails published in 2000.

Believe it or not, the Paloma appears to be a millennial cocktail! And that’s okay too. Like our new Pink Grapefruit mixer, it’s possible to discover and celebrate new things, from the sharing economy to great flavour pairings. The Paloma might not be traditional but there is such a thing as an instant classic - and we invite you to make your own Paloma and experience it for yourselves.