Ranch Water: The Cocktail You Need When Margaritas Are Too Much Effort

Margaritas are a summer cocktail staple, but they can on occasion be cloyingly sweet, especially if it's a subpar variety that uses a premade sweet and sour mix. And sometimes even the perfect margarita recipe can just be too much of a hassle to make, especially if it's for a crowd. That's why you should think about pivoting to another delicious tequila drink that also incorporates lime (and sometimes orange liqueur) but is much less sweet, easier to make, and arguably much more refreshing than a margarita.

The cocktail is called ranch water, and it's been my go-to summertime drink for so long, the name hadn't yet caught on when I first started drinking it during sweltering New Orleans summers. I simply knew it as tequila and soda with a splash of lime. Like most drinks, especially uncomplicated ones, there's a bit of controversy about who exactly invented ranch water.

At its simplest, a ranch water only has three ingredients — good tequila, lime juice, and sparkling water (the standard is Topo Chico, a delicious sparkling mineral water from Mexico). Still, and here's where things get kind of sticky, the Austin, Texas restaurant, Ranch 616, that lays claim to inventing the drink back in 1998, also includes Patron Citrónge, an orange liqueur, in its recipe. Another pretender to the ranch water throne, the Gage Hotel, in Marathon, Texas, also uses orange liqueur.

With that said, the most common version today forgoes the orange liqueur for the simpler three ingredient drink. So compared to a margarita it's way easier to throw together, especially for a group of guests. Another advantage to this simple drink is the ability to easily adjust the ingredients to suit your personal tastes, whether that means making it more lime forward, or stronger, or weaker via the amount of soda. You also have the option of either stirring your drink to mix it or shaking it (Ranch 616 stirs, the Gage Hotel shakes). One vital key to making a great ranch water is choosing the right tequila.

Because the ranch water is a more alcohol-forward drink than a margarita, it's important to choose a good tequila with a flavor profile you enjoy. There are several types of tequila, from unaged blanco (also known as silver) to ultra-aged Extra Añejo. Many of the individual distilleries also have unique approaches to this spirit, so there's plenty of options to suit individual tastes. This is in contrast to celebrity cook and cookbook author Ina Garten's use of cheap tequila for margaritas, because she believes the less complex flavors of an inexpensive blanco tequila pair better with the drink's other ingredients.

You're going to find a lot of recipes for ranch water online that call for blanco tequila, and while the Gage Hotel uses blanco, Ranch 616 uses a more complex reposado in its version. Because I love the subtleties of aged tequila, I personally tend towards using a reposado as well. If you do go the route of a blanco tequila, if at all possible, go for a better bottle, since, unlike Garten's margarita, your ranch water is going to suffer from using cheap tequila.