Tequila Sunrise

The Tequila Sunrise most bars know today—tequila, orange juice, and grenadine, layered rather than stirred—was popularized in the early 1970s by Bobby Lozoff and Billy Rice, young bartenders at the Trident restaurant in Sausalito, California. In the summer of 1972, concert promoter Bill Graham brought the Rolling Stones to the Trident during their U.S. tour; Mick Jagger tried the drink, and the band adopted it, later giving the tour its informal nickname. Jose Cuervo capitalized on the association in 1973, printing the recipe on its bottles, and the Eagles' same-year song of the same title cemented its fame.

That orange-and-grenadine version was itself a reworking of an earlier drink. Most accounts trace the name to bartender Gene Sulit at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix in the 1930s or 1940s, whose original used tequila, crème de cassis, lime juice, and soda water rather than orange juice. Cocktail historian David Wondrich instead places the drink's true birth at Agua Caliente, a Prohibition-era resort in Tijuana, describing it as a tequila daisy given a splash of crème de cassis, while the Biltmore still claims the drink as its own. In both the Biltmore and the Wondrich tellings, the Trident bartenders are credited with dropping the cassis in favor of grenadine and orange juice, arriving at the layered version that later became an IBA official cocktail.

This Tequila Sunrise recipe adds a little crème de cassis to the grenadine at the bottom, as in the earlier versions, and shakes orange curaçao and lime juice with the tequila and orange juice.