Cherry Lime Rickey

Fresh lime juice, cherry syrup, and soda — the 1883 D.C. Rickey adapted for the soda fountain, mass culture later reached through Sonic's Cherry Limeade.

The Cherry Lime Rickey is a non-alcoholic soda fountain variation on the Rickey — the unsweetened lime-and-soda cocktail documented at Shoomaker's bar in Washington, D.C. around 1883, originally made with bourbon for Colonel Joe Rickey. The gin Rickey that became more commercially famous through the early 20th century had its non-alcoholic counterpart in the soda fountain culture that flourished across American drugstores and department stores from the 1880s through the mid-20th century. Soda fountains — which reached their commercial peak in the early decades of the 20th century before television advertising and fast food reduced their cultural relevance — were neighborhood institutions that served carbonated drinks, ice cream sodas, phosphates, and Rickeys to customers of all ages. The Cherry Lime Rickey adapted the adult cocktail format for the soda fountain audience: lime juice and carbonated water provided the Rickey's essential structure, while cherry syrup added the sweetness that the unsweetened alcoholic original deliberately lacked. Cherry-flavored sodas had been staples of American soda fountain menus since at least the 1870s, and the combination with lime's tartness in the Rickey format produced a refreshment that balanced sweet and sour in a way that plain sodas did not. The Sonic Drive-In chain's commercial popularization of the Cherry Limeade in the late 20th century brought a version of this combination to mass American fast-food culture.