The classic Texas cocktail ranch water has taken on a new life in the form of canned, ready-to-drink beverages.
Paul Stephen/Staff
It all started on the dusty plains of West Texas. A swaggering buckaroo kicks open the saloon doors andOr maybe it was in the big city — Austinites from college students to congressmen bellying up for a refreshing spritzer made from bubbly water and hard spirits. Whatever its exact origin, which remains hotly debated, nobody is arguing about this point: The ranch water is truly the most Texan of cocktails. Author and cocktail historian Nico Martini dubbed the amalgam of mineral water , lime juice and tequila as one of the state's few native adult beverages in his 2018 book"Texas Cocktails."
And for years, the ranch water enjoyed a quiet and humble existence in the Lone Star State. But that was before the hard-seltzer craze kicked off a few years ago. Along with the rise of White Claw, Truly and the countless other purveyors of boozy and bubbly water, the ranch water cocktail has experienced a surge in popularity and evolution of its very DNA.
Today, numerous beverage manufacturers have canned, ready-to-drink takes on ranch water stocked on San Antonio-area shelves. A recent trip to Total Wine & More yielded no less than 16 varieties of the drink, and that's not counting the many varieties featuring flavors such as prickly pear, jalapeño and mango thrown into the mix.To make sense of this ranch water glut, this week we've sampled as many cans of the beverage we could find in area stores.
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