Spicy Pineapple-Cucumber Sangrita

"You're making sangria?"

I've heard that several times this past week. What I'd actually said was that I was making sangrita, referring to the traditional Mexican accompaniment to good tequila. But even in today's cocktail-enlightened world, it's clearly still not all that well known. Then again, there's a lot of confusion about sangrita among people who have heard of it, too.

The most widespread version of sangrita is a blend of tomato juice, orange juice, grenadine, and chile pepper, among other things, though it turns out that's a bastardization of the original. Exactly what was in the original sangrita is hard to pin down, but we know tomato wasn't part of it.

The bartender and writer Jeffrey Morgenthaler explained on his blog several years ago that sangrita was first made from sour orange juice, pomegranate, and chile pepper. Meanwhile, in Diana Kennedy's great Essential Cuisines of Mexico, she writes that, according to her friends in Jalisco, sangrita started out as just sour pomegranate juice with chile and no orange, although she notes that sour Seville oranges were often substituted, since they were easier to find than sour pomegranates.

Further confounding things, the Wikipedia article on sangrita puts forth a story about how it began as the leftover juices of fruit salad, which is often seasoned with chile powder in Mexico—but there's no source for this claim.

Regardless, at some point tomato juice got thrown into the mix, eventually leading to the most common version; if the recipes I found on Mexican websites are any indication, the tomato-based sangrita has become exceedingly common there, too. Even my copy of Pequeño Larousse de la Gastronomía Mexicana, which I bought in Mexico, includes tomato in its definition of the drink.

Honestly, though, beyond the academic fun of trying to get to the bottom of a small culinary mystery, I'm not that interested in nailing down the most "authentic" sangrita. More important is understanding its purpose. Similar to the lime and salt chaser most folks pair with their shots of tequila, sangrita is meant to cut some of tequila's intensity. But, unlike that bracing blast of pure lime and salt, sangrita is intended to complement the tequila, not just erase it.

More than a heavy-handed way of making the spirit go down easier, sangrita enhances a quality sipping tequila—usually a silver (un-aged) one, though some folks serve it with gently aged reposados as well. The idea is to take a nip of one, then the other, back and forth, without shooting it all down at once.

The hallmark of successful sangrita, no matter the exact recipe, is that it balances the potency of the tequila. That means a good dose of acidity (hence sour oranges in those earlier incarnations) and enough sweetness to keep that acidity in check, all while delivering flavors that pair well with the tequila itself. As for the spicy chile? Instead of intensifying the tequila burn in an unpleasant way, it manages to act as a bridge between the strong alcohol and fruity chaser.

My idea here was to bend the sangrita in a more tropical direction, while using a small amount of cucumber juice for its cooling effect, which plays beautifully with the hot alcohol and chile spice. It works really well. Once again, lime juice helps raise the tartness to a more intense level, while Pequin chile powder adds heat. It's a combo that's proven to work—pineapple is one of several fruits dusted in chile powder and sold from Mexican street carts.