Tequila Sunrise

A visually stunning layered drink with tequila and orange juice featuring a grenadine sunrise effect

The Tequila Sunrise exists in two documented versions separated by four decades and fundamentally different formulas. The original Tequila Sunrise was created at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix in the mid-1930s, attributed to bartender Gene Sulit, and combined tequila with crème de cassis, fresh lime juice, and soda water — a cocktail quite different in both flavor and appearance from the version that bears the name today. The modern Tequila Sunrise — tequila, fresh orange juice, and grenadine layered to create a color gradient resembling a dawn sky — was created by Bobby Lozoff and Billy Rice at the Trident restaurant in Sausalito, California in 1972. The Trident was a beloved Marin County restaurant and bar whose proximity to the Sausalito houseboat community and the San Francisco Bay music scene brought it into contact with the Rolling Stones during their 1972 North American tour; the band adopted the drink as their tour cocktail, and its rapid media spread from that association launched it globally. The Eagles' 1973 song Tequila Sunrise from the Desperado album further embedded the cocktail in American popular culture. The drink's visual gradient — grenadine sinking through orange juice to pool at the bottom before slowly diffusing upward — became one of the most replicated cocktail presentations of the 1970s.