A spare, bone-dry highball: blanco tequila and fresh lime lengthened with sparkling mineral water over ice, the bubbles bright and the agave left in plain view. It drinks like a Margarita stripped of its orange liqueur and sugar, all minerality and citrus snap with nothing sweet to soften the edges.
Garnish: Lime Wedge
Built · Highball · On the Rocks
build
Fill a highball glass with cubed ice and add the tequila blanco.
add
Add the fresh lime juice.
top
Top with chilled sparkling mineral water (Topo Chico) and give a gentle stir to combine.
garnish
Garnish with a lime wedge.
No single inventor is on record, and the stories pull in different directions. Regional lore says cattle hands in West Texas were already stirring tequila and lime into mineral water by the 1960s, while many give the credit to Kevin Williamson, a restaurateur in Austin who started pouring it in 1998 and is often named as the man behind its modern revival. Topo Chico remains the mineral water most closely tied to the drink, and it is still commonly mixed to the drinker's own taste rather than to a fixed recipe.