Name: Ranch Water Recipe
Prep time: 3 min
Total time: 3 min
Cuisine: Cocktails
Ingredients: 3 ounces (6 tablespoons) tequila; 1 1/2 ounces (3 tablespoons) fresh lime juice; 4 ounces (1/2 cup) Topo Chico or other sparkling mineral water; For the garnish: lime wedge; Ice, for serving (try clear ice!)

Ranch water is a Texas-style tequila highball cocktail made with lime and Topo Chico! This drink is all about cooling off on hot days.

Here’s a simple cocktail that’s bubbly, zingy and perfect for summer: Ranch Water! It’s the unofficial drink of West Texas: a tequila highball made with lime juice and sparkling Topo Chico. One of our dearest friends, a native Texan, suggested we try this drink. After one sip, we were sold! It’s like a bubbly, lighter spin on the classic margarita, with all the tangy citrus but less sweetness and booze. Could there be anything more refreshing?

What’s Ranch Water?

Ranch Water is a tequila highball cocktail that hails from West Texas. No one knows exactly how it came to be, or even how it got the name. Some people say a Texas rancher invented it in the 1960’s, but there’s no documentation of how it came to be. It was a word-of-mouth drink until around 2010, when bartenders in Texas started adding it to their menus. The ingredients in Ranch Water are:

Tequila
Lime juice
Topo Chico mineral water or other sparkling water

Die-hard fans of this drink claim that it’s not Ranch Water unless it’s made with Topo Chico, the Mexican mineral water brand sold in distinctive bottles. You can make it with other brands of sparkling water, but Topo Chico seals the deal for us.

How to make Ranch Water

There’s no exact science behind Ranch Water! Because it was a word-of-mouth cocktail for so long, it’s more about vibe than precise quantities. You can use as much lime, tequila, and soda water as you’d like, but this is the approximate formula. Keep those bubbles on hand to refresh your drink when you need it. Here’s how to make Ranch Water:

Place 3 ounces tequila in a glass (2 shots).
Mix in 1 ½ ounces fresh lime juice (the juice of about 1 medium lime).
Fill the glass with ice.
Top it off with 4 ounces Topo Chico (about ½ cup).

What tequila to use

The better the tequila, the better the drink! Ranch Water isn’t the most sophisticated of cocktails, so it doesn’t require pulling out a top shelf liquor. Find a mid-priced tequila for Ranch Water: typically this correlates to the quality of the alcohol. You can use either tequila blanco (“new” or un-aged tequila) or tequila reposado (aged). The aged tequila has more nuance in flavor and makes for a more interesting drink.

Look for 750 ml bottles in the range of $22 to $35 (anything cheaper isn’t worth buying). A few tequila brands that we recommend are:

Espolon Blanco: inexpensive tequila blanco
El Tesoro Blanco: mid-priced tequila blanco
Patrón Silver: mid-priced tequila blanco
Milagro Reposado: mid-priced tequila reposado
Suerte Reposado: mid-priced tequila reposado

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Try a Simple Margarita, or pick from 21 Best Margarita Recipes
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Try a Tequila Sunrise, a vibrant cocktail layering the colors of a summer sunrise
Go for a Mexican Mule, a tequila-based spin on the classic Moscow mule

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