Though the Margarita gets a lot of the credit, the Paloma may well be the best use of tequila in a cocktail. Typically made with Squirt, a grapefruit soda the United States sent south of the border, the drink has overtaken the Margarita as the preferred agave cocktail in Mexico. While Squirt is traditional, other grapefruit sodas like Fresca or Jarritos are acceptable too.
Besides being the national cocktail of Mexico, the Paloma is also regarded as one of the most refreshing, thirst quenching warm weather drinks. There is, however, one way to make a paloma even more refreshing on a hot day—that’s by throwing it in a blender full of ice and making it a slushy, frozen Paloma.
While it’s slightly sacreligious to substitute anything for grapefruit soda in a Paloma, here we use fresh grapefruit juice and simple syrup to make up for the sweetness lost from the soda. Throwing soda in the blender ends up removing the carbonation, so there’s no point to using it in the frozen version of the drink. But don’t worry, the results are every bit as delicious as the original.