Rebujito

Andalusia's beloved festival cocktail combining fino sherry with lemon-lime soda and fresh mint, the essential drink of Seville's Feria de Abril.

The Rebujito is inseparable from the Feria de Abril — the April Fair of Seville, Andalusia — one of the most spectacular and deeply rooted popular festivals in Spain. The fair was established in 1847 as a livestock market by two city councillors, José María Ybarra and Narciso Bonaplata, and by the late 19th century had evolved into the week-long celebration of food, flamenco, horse riding, and communal socializing that it remains today. The city erects a temporary neighborhood of decorated canvas tents called casetas along the banks of the Guadalquivir, and within those casetas the Rebujito flows from morning through the small hours. The drink is built on manzanilla or fino sherry — both very dry, bone-pale fortified wines from the bodegas of the Andalusian triangle between Jerez, El Puerto de Santa María, and Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where the Palomino grape has been grown and vinified for centuries. Manzanilla, with its characteristic saline tang produced by the sea air of Sanlúcar, is the preferred sherry for the Rebujito. The sweet lemon-lime soda — Sprite, 7-Up, or a Spanish equivalent — provides the sweetness and effervescence that tempers the sherry's austere dryness, making the combination more approachable in the heat of an Andalusian spring afternoon. The name derives from the Spanish verb rebujar, meaning to mix or jumble together. The drink formalized its current recipe and name in the late 20th century, though sherry-and-soda combinations had been common in southern Spain long before.