The Tequila Sunrise is not one drink but two, which share a common name and two common ingredients but little else. The earliest one, a variation on the Daisy combining tequila, lime juice, crème de cassis, grenadine, and soda water, was created around 1930 at the Agua Caliente racetrack, hotel, spa, and casino complex in Tijuana, Mexico, where it was promoted as a hangover cure. See also Daisy. The drink made it into the more comprehensive cocktail books and, while not quite popular, was nonetheless one of the better-known tequila drinks.
In 1970, however, Bobby Lozoff, bartender at the wildly popular Trident restaurant in Sausalito, California, did not stick to any of those books when he made his first Tequila Sunrise. As was the custom of the house, he simply created his own version. It shared tequila and grenadine with the Mexican version but rounded them out with (according to the earliest published recipe) a splash of gin and a good deal of orange juice, with the grenadine sunk in the orange-colored drink to create a sunrise effect. In 1972, he served this to Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, who liked it. The band adopted it, minus the gin, as semi-official drink for their American tour, then just beginning. By the end of the year, the drink was famous, and indeed became one of the linchpins of 1970s American mixology.
Recipe (Agua Caliente version): Combine 60 ml reposado tequila, juice and shell of ½ lime, 15 ml grenadine, and 5 ml crème de cassis in highball glass.
Recipe (Trident version): Shake with ice 45 ml reposado tequila, 22 ml London dry gin (optional), and 75 ml fresh-squeezed orange juice. Pour into highball glass and add 5–10 ml grenadine, letting it sink to the bottom of the glass.
Bottoms up-y como!, 3rd ed. [Tijuana]: Agua Caliente, n. d.
Greenfield, Robert. S.T.P.: A Journey through America with the Rolling Stones. 1974; repr., New York: Da Capo, 2002.
“People, etc.” Philadelphia Daily News, September 8, 1972, 44.
By: David Wondrich