Ask any bartender in Mexico City what they're drinking after a long shift, and the answer almost certainly isn't a margarita. It's a Paloma. Long, salty, and faintly pink, served in a tumbler so cold it sweats against your palm. The margarita got the marketing budget. The Paloma got the locals.

For all the Tequila cocktail noise, the Paloma is the one most worth knowing. It's simpler than a margarita, more refreshing than a spicy margarita recipe could ever pretend to be, and it does something a cocktail should rarely manage: it tastes like the place it's from. Grapefruit, lime, salt, and good tequila. That's the whole machine.

What's actually in a Paloma

At its bones, the Paloma is tequila and grapefruit soda over ice with a salted rim. Two ounces of blanco tequila, a squeeze of fresh lime, four ounces of grapefruit soda (Squirt or Jarritos if you're being authentic, Three Cents or Fever-Tree if you're being civilised) and a pinch of sea salt across the top. Stir, don't shake. Serve in a highball or a tumbler. Garnish with a wedge of pink grapefruit and a wider grin than you bring to most cocktails.

The genius is the bitterness. Grapefruit, unlike lime, has weight to it: that gentle quinine bite that pulls the sweetness back into balance and makes the tequila taste like itself instead of fighting through a wall of triple sec. There's no orange liqueur here. No syrup. Nothing performative. Just the agave doing its best work in good company.

The right tequila (and the wrong one)

Use a blanco. Reposados can work in a pinch, but their oak-rounded edges blunt the brightness the drink wants. Anything aged longer than that, añejo, extra añejo, the bottles you'd sip from a snifter, would be a small crime against agave. Save those for after dinner.

A clean, vegetal tequila is what you're after. The kind that smells faintly of green pepper and grass when you pour it. If your tequila smells of vanilla, it's been in a barrel and is too well-dressed for this party.

The grapefruit question

Mexico drinks Squirt. England, where Squirt is harder to find than a Tequila Regulatory Council inspector, makes do with a small ritual: half-fresh-squeezed pink grapefruit juice, half soda water, a dab of agave syrup if your fruit is sharp. The result is closer to what you'd get in Guadalajara than what most British bars hand you.

Pink grapefruit, ideally. The colour matters as much as the flavour. A Paloma that arrives at the table the colour of a Provence rosé is doing something right.

On the salt

Salt the rim, but only half of it. The whole-rim school is a margarita habit; the Paloma is more relaxed. Run a wedge of grapefruit around one half so the drinker can choose which side they sip from. The salted side punctuates the bitterness, the bare side lets the agave through. That little asymmetry is part of the drink's quiet confidence.

A flake salt is better than table salt. Maldon, if you're showing off. Smoked salt edges into mezcal territory, which is its own pleasure but a different cocktail.

Spicy, frozen, and other variations

Anyone who has ever ordered a spicy margarita recipe at a London restaurant will already understand the appeal of a Paloma with a chilli kick. Slice a single ring of fresh jalapeño and let it sit in the drink while you stir. That's all it takes. Muddle it if you want a more aggressive heat. Substitute serrano if you mean it.

The frozen Paloma is real, and it's good, but only when it's hot enough outside to justify it. Blend everything with crushed ice and you get something between a granita and a slushie: the cocktail equivalent of taking a swim with your clothes on.

When to drink one

The Paloma is a drink for daylight. For long lunches that spill into the afternoon. For the second drink of a Sunday, when the first one was a beer and the third one will be wine. It's what you order when the menu has a margarita section as long as a CV and you want to reset your palate. It's what you make at home when the kitchen is too warm and the bottle of tequila on the counter is asking to be useful.

It's also, quietly, one of the more food-friendly cocktails in the canon. The grapefruit's bitterness clears the way for whatever comes next: tacos al pastor, ceviche, anything chargrilled and citrusy. A spicy margarita recipe will fight the food. A Paloma steps aside and lets it speak.

The recipe, properly

50ml blanco tequila. 15ml fresh lime juice. 100ml pink grapefruit soda, or a 50/50 mix of fresh pink grapefruit juice and soda water, with a half-teaspoon of agave syrup if needed. A pinch of flake salt. Build it in a highball over big, slow ice. Stir twice. Garnish with a wedge of pink grapefruit and, if you're feeling generous, a half-rim of salt. Drink it where the light is good.

That's the whole thing. No one will hand you an award for it. The reward is just the drink itself, doing exactly what it was always going to do. Quietly, beautifully, and without any of the noise.