Cocktail · Medium strength
Ranch Water
Tequila, lime, and salty sparkling water: West Texas's answer to a hundred-degree afternoon.
How to order it: Tall glass, lots of ice, and the saltiest mineral water you can find. Squeeze the lime hard.
Flavor profile
The recipe
- 2 oz blanco tequila
- ¾ oz lime juice
- Top with 4 oz salty sparkling mineral water
- Build over ice in a Collins glass
- Lime wedge
The story
Ranch Water is West Texas in a glass, and like most Texas legends its paper trail is thin. The name suggests ranch hands cooling off at the end of a long day, and that may be exactly how it began: informally, and unrecorded. The most cited origin points to Kevin Williamson, an Austin restaurateur who says he drank something like it on hunting trips with his father and is said to have served it at the restaurant he opened in 1998. The Gage Hotel in Marathon, out in the Trans-Pecos, helped make it a regional ritual. The formula is barely a recipe: tequila, fresh lime, and a very salty sparkling mineral water, poured tall. It endures because a hundred-degree afternoon demands it.
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