The version of this recipe that sat on this page from 2016 used four parts orange juice to one part tequila. The International Bartenders Association specification uses two. That single ratio is the difference between a Tequila Sunrise and a glass of orange juice with a rumour of tequila in it, and it is why so many home versions of this drink taste like nothing. There is also a second problem worth knowing about before you pour: the drink invented in Arizona in the 1930s and the drink everyone makes today share a name and almost nothing else.
Key Takeaways
- The IBA specification is 45 ml tequila, 90 ml fresh orange juice and 15 ml grenadine over ice cubes, not stirred. That is a 1:2 spirit-to-juice ratio.
- The old version of this recipe ran 1:4. At 40% spirit that works out to roughly 1 standard drink and 7.7% ABV in the glass, against 1.4 standard drinks and 12% for an IBA serve.
- The 1930s original contained no orange juice and no grenadine. It was tequila, crème de cassis, lime juice and soda water, which is a different drink wearing the same name.
- Grenadine sinks because it is a heavy sugar syrup, around 1.3 g/ml against orange juice at roughly 1.05. If yours will not sink, it is not dense enough, which means it is mostly water and colour.
- Use ice cubes, not crushed ice. Crushed ice melts fast, dilutes a drink that is already mostly juice, and breaks up the gradient the drink exists for.
The recipe
One Tequila Sunrise is 45 ml of tequila, 90 ml of fresh orange juice and 15 ml of grenadine, built directly in a highball glass over ice cubes and served without stirring, which is the IBA official specification. It takes about three minutes and needs no shaker. The only technique in it is the grenadine pour.
For one glass:
- Ice cubes, enough to fill a highball glass
- 45 ml tequila
- 90 ml chilled fresh orange juice, pulp-free if you want a clean gradient
- 15 ml grenadine
- Half an orange slice, and a maraschino cherry if you like
Method:
- Fill a highball glass with ice cubes. Not crushed.
- Pour in the tequila.
- Add the orange juice and give it one gentle stir to combine, before the grenadine goes anywhere near it.
- Pour the grenadine slowly into the centre of the glass, or down the back of a bar spoon held against the inside wall. It will sink and settle into a red layer at the base.
- Do not stir again. Garnish and serve with a straw so whoever is drinking it can mix it themselves.
For a jug of four: 180 ml tequila, 360 ml orange juice, 60 ml grenadine. Build the tequila and juice in the jug, pour into four ice-filled glasses, then add 15 ml of grenadine to each glass individually. Grenadine added to the jug just makes a pink jug.
What was wrong with the old version of this recipe
Three things, and they compound. The ratio was 1:4 rather than 1:2. The serving count was missing entirely, so "divide among serving glasses" gave no way to know whether the ingredients made two drinks or six. And it called for crushed ice in a drink whose entire appeal is a stable density gradient.
| Old version, read as 4 serves | IBA specification | |
|---|---|---|
| Tequila per glass | 31 ml | 45 ml |
| Orange juice per glass | 125 ml | 90 ml |
| Grenadine per glass | 5.6 ml | 15 ml |
| Spirit to juice | 1:4 | 1:2 |
| ABV in the glass at 40% spirit | 7.7% | 12.0% |
| Standard drinks at 40% spirit | 1.0 | 1.4 |
| Ice | Crushed | Cubed |
The serving count is the interesting omission. Read the old quantities as four serves and the ratios suddenly make internal sense, which is a decent clue that the recipe was lifted from a four-serve source and the yield line was dropped somewhere along the way. The measurement style, cups and tablespoons alongside millilitres, points the same direction.
On the grenadine, less is not a safe simplification either. At 5.6 ml per glass there is barely enough volume to form a visible layer at the bottom of a highball, so the drink the recipe describes could not have produced the effect it is named after.
Why the grenadine sinks, and what to do when it does not
Grenadine sinks because it is denser than orange juice. A proper grenadine is a concentrated sugar syrup sitting somewhere around 1.3 g/ml, while orange juice is roughly 1.05. Drop the heavier liquid into the lighter one gently enough and it falls through rather than mixing, which is the whole trick. Nothing about it requires skill, only patience and a syrup with enough sugar in it.
Four things decide whether you get a clean gradient:
- The syrup. If your grenadine will not sink, it is too dilute. Supermarket bottles that lead with water and colouring rather than sugar behave like cordial and disperse on contact. A thick, dark, slow-pouring syrup is what you want.
- The pour. Slowly, into the centre, or down the back of a bar spoon resting against the glass wall. Fast pouring drags juice down with it and you get pink.
- The juice. Pulp-free gives a sharper boundary. Pulp creates turbulence and the layers blur into each other.
- Temperature. Cold juice is denser and more viscous than warm, so it resists mixing better. Chill the juice, do not just pour it over ice and hope.
And once the grenadine is in, leave it. The gradient survives about as long as it takes someone to stir it, which is why a straw and a hands-off approach beats a bar spoon and good intentions.
Making the tequila: Top Shelf and the alternatives
An essence-based tequila is neutral spirit, diluted to 40% ABV, with a tequila essence mixed through it. Top Shelf Tequila Essence is $15 and makes three 750 ml bottles, which is 2.25 litres, so about $5 of essence per bottle. That is the product the original version of this page named, and it is still the sensible default for a cocktail that buries the spirit under juice.
Cost per litre of finished spirit varies more than you would expect across the range, by a factor of 5.4:
| Essence | Price | Makes | Cost per litre |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original Tequila Essence | $14 | 5 L | $2.80 |
| Spirits Unlimited Traditional Tequila Agave | $15 | 5 L | $3.00 |
| Pure Distilling Tequila Silver | $12 | 2.25 L | $5.33 |
| Top Shelf Tequila Essence | $15 | 2.25 L | $6.67 |
| Top Shelf Tequila Silver | $15 | 2.25 L | $6.67 |
| Gold Medal Collection Tequila Mexican | $19 | 2.25 L | $8.44 |
| Gold Medal Collection Tequila Anejo | $17 | 1.125 L | $15.11 |
Which one to pick depends on what the spirit is for. For a Tequila Sunrise, where 45 ml sits under 90 ml of orange juice, the Original at $2.80 a litre is honestly hard to argue against. The Top Shelf and Gold Medal essences earn their premium in drinks where you can taste the spirit: a Margarita, a Paloma, or tequila served plain with salt and lime. The Anejo at $15.11 a litre is an aged style and completely wasted behind juice.
The neutral spirit underneath comes off a reflux still, because you want no character of its own competing with the essence. Our T500 reflux still range is the usual answer, the method is in making a pure spirit with the Turbo 500, and if you have not chosen a still yet, start with which still should you buy. Distilling spirits in Australia requires an ATO excise manufacturer licence, which we cover in whether it is illegal to distil alcohol in Australia.
The full range sits in Top Shelf spirit and liqueur essences and the wider other spirit essences collection.
There are two Tequila Sunrises, and this is the newer one
The drink invented in Arizona in the 1930s contained tequila, crème de cassis, lime juice and soda water. No orange juice, no grenadine, no gradient. It is credited to bartender Gene Sulit at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, in the late 1930s or early 1940s, and structurally it is a sling rather than the layered drink we make now. It never caught on.
The drink you are actually making was invented around 1970 at the Trident restaurant in Sausalito, California, by Bobby Lozoff and Billy Rice. They built a tequila, orange juice and grenadine drink and gave it the older name. It went global after the Trident hosted the launch party for the Rolling Stones' 1972 American tour, and the Eagles put the phrase on the radio with the title track of Desperado in 1973. Lozoff has confirmed the account in interview, and notably there is no mention of a Tequila Sunrise in any major cocktail guide from the 1940s, 50s or 60s.
So the old version of this page had it back to front. Grenadine was not "introduced" to an existing drink in the 1970s to make it popular. A different drink was invented in the 1970s and inherited the name. If anything the timeline runs the other way: an early 1930s recipe from the Agua Caliente resort in Tijuana already used grenadine alongside cassis and lime, four decades before the Trident.
If you want to try Sulit's version, it goes roughly: 45 ml silver tequila, 20 ml crème de cassis, 20 ml lime juice, built over ice in a tall glass and topped with soda water. It is lighter, drier and much less sweet than the modern drink, and it looks nothing like a sunrise.
Standard drinks, because you set the ABV
With an essence-based spirit you choose the strength, so the same recipe is a different number of standard drinks depending on what you diluted to. In Australia one standard drink is 10 g of alcohol, which is 12.7 ml of pure ethanol. A 45 ml pour works out as follows.
| Spirit strength | Standard drinks in a 45 ml pour | ABV in the finished glass |
|---|---|---|
| 37% | 1.3 | 11.1% |
| 40% | 1.4 | 12.0% |
| 45% | 1.6 | 13.5% |
A jug of four made to spec holds 180 ml of tequila, which is about 5.7 standard drinks at 40%.
Worth knowing rather than worrying about: a Tequila Sunrise made properly tastes considerably weaker than it is. Orange juice and grenadine cover the spirit almost completely, and at 12% ABV the glass is about as strong as a large glass of wine. That is a fact about the drink's construction rather than a warning, but it explains why this particular cocktail has a reputation.
Both Top Shelf tequila essences specify diluting the neutral spirit to 40% before mixing the essence in, so 40% is the number to work from unless you deliberately went elsewhere.
Variations worth making
- Blood orange. Swap the orange juice for blood orange when it is in season. Deeper colour, slightly more bitter, and the gradient reads better because the juice is darker.
- Split the juice. 45 ml orange and 45 ml pineapple instead of 90 ml orange. Fuller body, and the pineapple sweetness means you can cut the grenadine to 10 ml.
- Add lime. 10 ml of fresh lime juice pulls the sweetness back and makes the drink taste more of tequila. This is also the ingredient that links the modern drink back to Sulit's original.
- Salt the rim. Half a rim only, so whoever drinks it can choose. Salt does for tequila what it does for a Margarita.
- Sparkling. Drop the orange juice to 60 ml and top with 30 ml of chilled soda water before the grenadine. Lighter, and closer in spirit to the 1930s version.
Frequently asked questions
What is the correct tequila to orange juice ratio for a Tequila Sunrise? One part tequila to two parts orange juice, which the IBA specifies as 45 ml tequila to 90 ml orange juice, plus 15 ml of grenadine. Recipes running 1:3 or 1:4 produce a drink at around 7 to 8% ABV where you cannot taste the spirit at all.
Why won't my grenadine sink? Because it is not dense enough. Grenadine layers by density, so it needs to be a proper concentrated sugar syrup at roughly 1.3 g/ml. Bottles that are mostly water and colouring disperse instead of sinking. Pouring too fast has the same effect, as does warm orange juice.
Should I use crushed ice or cubes? Cubes. The IBA specification calls for ice cubes, and there are two good reasons. Crushed ice melts much faster and waters down a drink that is already three quarters juice, and it breaks up the density gradient that gives the drink its name.
Which tequila essence should I use for cocktails? For a Tequila Sunrise, the cheapest one that tastes acceptable, because 90 ml of orange juice will cover most of the difference. Original Tequila Essence works out at $2.80 per litre of finished spirit. Save the Top Shelf and Gold Medal essences for drinks where the tequila is exposed, like a Margarita or a straight pour.
How many standard drinks is a Tequila Sunrise? About 1.4 at 40% spirit, using the IBA 45 ml pour. At 37% it is 1.3 and at 45% it is 1.6. Because you set the strength of an essence-based spirit yourself, the answer depends on what you diluted to before mixing.
What to make next
Fix the ratio first. Everything else about this drink is easy, and 1:2 instead of 1:4 is the change that turns it from a novelty into something you would actually order. Cold juice, cubed ice, a slow grenadine pour, and leave it alone once it is built.
If you are working through the range, the two nearest neighbours to this one are a proper Mojito with Classic White Rum and a Whisky Sour with Classic Finest Reserve Scotch Whiskey. And if you have not made the spirit yet, the essence range is in all spirit flavours and essences, which is where most people find the flavour they were actually after.
