Paloma

The Paloma is Mexico's everyday tequila highball: a blanco lengthened with tart-sweet grapefruit soda over a squeeze of lime and a pinch of salt, built right in the glass. Long, bright, and faintly saline, it reads as a more refreshing cousin to the Margarita. Its origins are folkloric rather than fixed — rooted in the mid-century Mexican habit of cutting tequila with soda and popularized after grapefruit Squirt reached Mexico in the 1950s, with the oft-repeated La Capilla creation story denied by the bar's own owner.