Mezcal Sunrise

All the drama of a Tequila Sunrise with a smokier sunrise. Grenadine sinks to the bottom while mezcal and orange juice glow above, making a cocktail as striking to look at as it is to drink.

The Mezcal Sunrise adapts the Tequila Sunrise — the layered orange-and-grenadine cocktail whose visual resemblance to a desert dawn made it one of the most recognizable drinks of the 1970s — to mezcal, adding the spirit's earthiness and smoke to a format whose appeal was originally primarily visual. The modern Tequila Sunrise was created by Bobby Lazoff and Billy Rice at the Trident restaurant in Sausalito, California in 1972, reinterpreting an older tequila-citrus-grenadine formula into the tall, layered presentation that became iconic. The Rolling Stones encountered the drink during their North American tour that year, reportedly adopting it as their unofficial tour cocktail and contributing to its spread through the rock concert circuit and eventually into mainstream American bar culture. The Eagles' 1973 song Tequila Sunrise from the Desperado album further embedded the drink in popular culture. The mezcal adaptation follows naturally from the craft movement's systematic exploration of mezcal as a tequila substitute: the layered grenadine-OJ structure is simple enough that the spirit swap immediately demonstrates mezcal's different character, the smoke and agave earthiness adding depth to a visual cocktail whose original appeal was primarily aesthetic.