Sangrita

Sangrita ("little blood") is the classical red companion of the tequila bandera and the most famous tequila chaser. It is, in its classical form, not a tomato-based drink.

The traditional sangrita of the Lake Chapala region of Jalisco emerged in the 1920s, reportedly from the leftover citrus juices of a popular pico de gallo-style fruit salad served at local cantinas. The recipe is built on Seville bitter orange juice, pomegranate juice, fresh lime juice, and powdered chile (often piquín), with a small amount of salt; the red color comes from the pomegranate and the chile, not from tomato. The classical recipe is documented at length by Lucinda Hutson in ¡Viva Tequila! (2013) and is independently confirmed by Jeffrey Morgenthaler in The Bar Book and in widely-cited blog posts. Older Jalisco residents have confirmed the no-tomato position in the trade press.

The tomato-based version is a mid-twentieth-century invention, popularized in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s and now near-universal in American Mexican restaurants. The plausible explanation: mainland-Mexican and US bartenders without access to fresh pomegranate added tomato to "recreate" the red color, and the substitution stuck. Both versions are now culturally entrenched. There is nothing wrong with tomato sangrita as a drink; it is just not what sangrita historically was.

Sangrita is served alongside a sipped blanco tequila, not as a shot chaser. The full classical-versus-adaptation case is in the cocktails chapter; the bandera ritual context is in the culture chapter.