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Ranch Water

It all started with this article…..from July of 2026……..(and a disclaimer that I am not being funded or sponsored by any of the companies/products in this Post. I do it for my own interest – much as everything else I post – and I like pretty pictures)

To elaborate…… (text in BOLD were links in the article that took me elsewhere. I have added these links/images for your entertainment pleasure)

ICYMI, Topo Chico mineral water is really hard to find right now. It’s still available at select restaurants, but it’s becoming increasingly rare for me, an East Coaster, to find at both grocery stores and bodegas. (When I asked my bodega guy, he told me that he also asked his bodega network, and that “nobody has a Topo source” right now.) It’s a plight shared by my West Coast Eater colleague, Rebecca Roland, who bookmarked Tehuacan mineral water as a Topo alternative, per the suggestion of Martin Riese, the TikTok water sommelier.

The Tehuacan Mineral Water link was broken (?)

So I just searched for it on the Gualmar homepage and found…..

For references sake

Back to the article……

Sadly, we knew this day might come. In February 2026, a spokesperson for the mineral water brand told CNN………

………. that it would be slowing production in light of its attending to “facility upgrades at the water source and production facilities in Mexico,” and that the brand’s plain mineral water likely wouldn’t return until the third quarter — so, between July and September (you can still find, say, the way less good Topo Chico Twist of Grapefruit flavor).

This is hard news to swallow during peak ranch water season, so here’s hoping for its return in time for summer barbecues. In the meantime, I’ll be happy with Mineragua and Vichy Catalan.

Which brings me back to the subject of this talk….agua de rancho. ¿Qué es?

Ranch Water, this unofficial drink of West Texas dive bars and house parties has long been beloved in its native Texas although the exact birthplace of the tequila-based refresher is unknown

In its simplest form, it’s a thirst-quenching combination of tequila, lime juice and Topo Chico—for Ranch Water devotees, no other brand will do. By some accounts, when made with any other sparkling water, the drink is simply a tequila rickey, undeserving of the Ranch Water name. There’s a deep love for that drink west of the Pecos River

Me drinking Topo Chico in Mexico City November 2025

At Dallas mezcalería Las Almas Rotas, the house Ranch Water can be made with tequila, mezcal or sotol. Owner Shad Kvetko says the best versions of the drink feature solely the spirit, fresh-squeezed lime juice and carbonated mineral water.

A selection of sotol (sotols? sotoles?). Just in case

Topo, a Mexican mineral water that has amassed a cult following,

Topo Chico Tattoo : Tattoos You’ll Cherish

The bottle sometimes serves as the drink’s vessel, too, as the cocktail is often constructed directly into the bottle.

Ranch water is a refreshing, low-sugar Texas-style highball made with just three simple ingredients: tequila (typically blanco), fresh lime juice, and sparkling mineral water. 

Traditional Recipe

The classic build combines: 

  • 2 oz Tequila Blanco (or Reposado)
  • 1 to 2 oz Fresh Lime Juice
  • 4 to 6 oz Sparkling Mineral Water (preferably Topo Chico)
  • Ice and a lime wedge for garnish 

Common Twists

Many drinkers add their own flair by incorporating a splash of orange liqueur (like Cointreau), a dash of agave or simple syrup for sweetness, or a salted rim.

The article (you know, the original one from the start of the Post, then linked to several well known bars and mixologists. Here are a few of their suggestions…..

Espita’s Ranch Water

James Simpson | Washington, D.C. photos by Lizzie Munro

At the Washington, D.C., restaurant Espita, beverage director James Simpson adds a grapefruit liqueur and fresh grapefruit juice to Ranch Water, the West Texas staple. At the restaurant, a mini Topo Chico bottle accompanies the drink, so that guests can add the mineral water à la minute.

Ingredients

Serving: 1

  • 1 1/2 ounces tequila, preferably Cascahuín Plata
  • 1/2 ounce Combier Pamplemousse Rose liqueur
  • 1 ounce fresh grapefruit juice
  • 1/4 ounce fresh lime juice
  • 1 bar spoon cane sugar
  • 3 ounces Topo Chico, to top

Directions

  1. Add the first five ingredients to a tall Collins glass.
  2. Stir to combine, and add ice.
  3. Top with Topo Chico.
Cascahuín Plata
Combier Pamplemousse Rose liqueur

Leyenda’s Ranch Water

Leanne Favre | Brooklyn, New York

At Leyenda in Brooklyn, the house Ranch Water gets an herbal upgrade, thanks to a housemade sage and lime oleo saccharum. The addition of fino sherry complements the salinity of the drink’s Topo Chico topper.

Ingredients

Serving: 1

  • 1 1/2 ounces tequila, preferably El Velo
  • 3/4 ounce fino sherry, preferably Lustau Fino Jarana
  • 1/4 ounce sage and lime oleo saccharum (see Editor’s Note)
  • Topo Chico, to top

Garnish: long lime twist, sage bouquet, metal straw

Directions

  1. Add the first three ingredients to a highball glass.
  2. Stir to combine, and add ice.
  3. Top with Topo Chico.
  4. Garnish with a long lime twist, sage bouquet and metal straw.

Editor’s Note

Sage and Lime Oleo Saccharum
Muddle 1 cup lime peels, stripped with a peeler, and 8 sage leaves with 3/4 cup granulated sugar. Let sit for 5 to 24 hours, pressing on occasion. When sugar is completely dissolved, strain and bottle.

Lustau Fino Jarana

Ocho

Sid Chi | Portland, Oregon

The Ocho is Portland bar Holy Ghost’s spring addition to its Ranch Water menu. Swapping the typical tequila for a mezcal infused with hibiscus-raspberry tea, the rest of the cocktail’s build is fairly straightforward, using fresh lime juice and soda water for a refreshing, floral take.

Ingredients

Serving: 1

  • 2 ounces hibiscus-raspberry mezcal (see Editor’s Note. This was the Editor of the original articles Note. Also read the Editors Editors Note which contains my input)
  • 1/2 ounce lime juice
  • soda water, to top

Garnish: salt rim, lime wheel

Directions

  1. Salt the rim of a Collins glass.
  2. Add all ingredients with ice.
  3. Top with soda water, and stir to incorporate.
  4. Garnish with a lime wheel.

Editor’s Note

Hibiscus-Raspberry Mezcal

  • 750 ml bottle of mezcal, preferably Banhez
  • 5 hibiscus-raspberry tea bags
  1. In a large container, combine mezcal with tea bags. Let sit for 30 minutes.
  2. Squeeze and then remove tea bags.
  3. Mix to incorporate all flavors, then funnel back into the original bottle.

Editors Editors Note

Hibiscus. One of my pet peeves (1). The reference being made here is to Hibiscus sabdariffa which is commonly known in Mejico as “flor de jamaica” and is used to make a drink called agua de jamaica”(2). It is a sour/tart liquid made from the calyxes of the plant (3) (although they can also be eaten) (4) and can even be used as a medicine (5)

  1. Flor de Jamaica : A Confusion of Hibisci*
  2. Flor de Jamaica (Hibiscus sabdariffa)
  3. Recipe : Agua de Jamaica
  4. Flor de Jamaica : Tacos dorados con Crema de Aguacate
  5. Flor de Jamaica : The C-Bomb

Siete

Sid Chi | Portland, Oregon

As Ranch Water has grown beyond its native West Texas, bars across the country continue to make their own spins on the drink. At Holy Ghost in Portland, Oregon, the Siete is the most popular of nine Ranch Water riffs on the menu. “We think of the Siete as a tequila Piña Colada soda,” says bar manager Sid Chi.

Ingredients

Serving: 1

  • 2 ounces coconut-washed tequila (see Editor’s Note)
  • 1/2 ounce pineapple juice
  • 1/2 ounce lime juice
  • soda water, to top

Garnish: salt rim, lime wheel

Directions

  1. Salt the rim of a Collins glass.
  2. Add all ingredients with ice.
  3. Top with soda water, and stir to incorporate.
  4. Garnish with a lime wheel.

Editor’s Note

Coconut-Washed Tequila
1/4 cup unrefined coconut oil
750 milliliters tequila

1. Melt coconut oil in a microwave or a double boiler. Let cool.
2. Add oil and tequila to a large container with a lid. Stir to incorporate.
3. Set in the refrigerator or freezer for 24 hours. After 24 hours, the oil will rise to the top of the container.
4. Using a coffee filter, strain the coconut oil out of the tequila, and funnel the infusion back into the original bottle

Porchlight’s Ranch Water

Zach Masminster | New York City

At Porchlight in Manhattan, the house Ranch Water is typically served in a large format, but this version is scaled-down for one serving. Using a “Kitchen Sink Cordial” made from lemon and lime wedges left over from the night before, this version of the West Texas classic has a more layered brightness.    

Ingredients

Serving: 1

  • 2 ounces blanco tequila, preferably Espolón
  • 3/4 ounce Kitchen Sink cordial (see Editor’s Note)
  • Topo Chico, to top

Garnish: lime wedge

Directions

  1. Add tequila and cordial to a highball glass with ice.
  2. Top with Topo Chico, and stir to incorporate ingredients.
  3. Garnish with a lime wedge.

Editor’s Note

Kitchen Sink Cordial

  • 1000 grams lemon and/or lime wedges
  • 500 grams sugar
  • 500 grams water
  • 1% lactic acid
  1. Combine all ingredients into a Cambro or other large container with a lid, and muddle the fruit for 1 minute.
  2. Stir until the sugar is fully incorporated.
  3. Strain through a chinois, and weigh the contents.
  4. Calculate 1% of the final weight of the mixture (multiply the mixture’s weight in grams by 0.01) and add that amount (in grams) of lactic acid.
  5. Stir to combine, then bottle.

A “Cambro” is a brand name—derived from Cambro Manufacturing—that has become the industry standard term in commercial kitchens for durable, heavy-duty plastic food storage containers and insulated food transport boxes. Because Cambro dominates the foodservice equipment industry, culinary professionals and home cooks alike use the word “Cambro” to describe several of their popular products.

Topo Chico. Una historia (of sorts)

Topo-Chico is a brand of sparkling mineral water from Mexico. Topo-Chico is both naturally carbonated at the source and artificially carbonated (1). It is considered to be “aggressively carbonated” and is the preferred cocktail sparkling water for many bartenders, particularly for tequila and mezcal as its carbonation holds up better after mixing (and its mineral salinity is said to amplify flavour complexity)

  1. From naturally higher dissolved CO2 in the source spring water, supplemented by added CO2 for consistency through packaging and distribution. This combination creates sharper, longer-lasting bubbles than brands using only added carbonation in purified still water.

The drink takes its name from the mountain Cerro del Topo Chico in Monterrey. The cerro owes its name to a rock formation that, according to popular tradition, resembles the figure of a small mole, hence the name “Topo Chico”

Cerro del Topo Chico

The source legend goes a little further back….

The daughter (1) of Moctezuma I (Ilhuicamina, circa 1440 – not to be confused with Xocoyotl or Moctezuma II, king when Cortes arrived in 1521), had a disease that all the most renowned healers in the land could not cure. The emperor turned to older priests for help. They recalled a legend of a miraculous spring in a faraway northern land. It cured nearly everything. The emperor’s daughter and her retinue set off. They found a mole-shaped hill from which flowed a spring. They camped there, bathed and drank the waters that flowed from the mountain springs (for an unspecified time) and Moctezumas daughter was cured. (2)

  1. she remains as yet un-named. Most often the term “Aztec princess” is used
  2. and is not the only place this happened. Mesoamericans like mineral baths. See more mineral baths at Peñón de los Baños

Its launch into modern history is a bit more cloudy (I might be missing something fundamental though). During researh into its first “commercial” usage I came across two names. Dr Julio (Jules) Randle and Vitaliano Paez

Dr Julio

In 1886, the same year in which the concessions were approved for the rail line to Cerro Topo, Julio (Jules) Randle and A.C. Schryer, both American businessman, purchased a forty-year contract of water use from the community of San Bernabe de Topo Chico and renovated the baths (Saldaña 1945) (Walsh 2015) (Vizcaya 1969).

In 1895, Julio Randle, the American entrepreneur who renovated the baths, began to bottle the water from the hot springs, contracting water rights from the community of Topo Chico and founding the Fábrica de Aguas Minerales de Topo Chico (Garza Guajardo 2015) (Walsh 2015).

1895 Launch: Dr. Julio Randel officially started bottling the mineral water at the base of the “Little Mole Hill” (Cerro del Topo Chico) in Monterrey. (Brandon De Hoyos)

In 1893-4, Don Julio Randle built a hotel and began bottling the water. The hotel/spa flourished until 1914 when Revolutionary hostilities closed it. It reopened afterward and functioned until the 1930s. (Visiting Mexico .com)

Not everyone agrees though………(?)

Vitaliano Paez

The year was 1895 when entrepreneur In 1895, Vitaliano Paez recognized the spring’s potential and established a bottling plant at the site. This marked the official birth of Topo Chico as a commercial mineral water brand.set his sights on a remote hill outside Monterrey, Mexico. (History Oasis .com)

In 1895, Vitaliano Paez recognized the spring’s potential and established a bottling plant at the site. This marked the official birth of Topo Chico as a commercial mineral water brand. (Texas Real Food .com)

The spring had been known locally for its mineral properties before commercial bottling began in 1895, when Vitaliano Paez built the first bottling plant at the site. (The Water Dictionary)

Julio or Vtaliano? ¿Quién sabe?

In 2017, the Coca-Cola Company purchased Topo-Chico for $220 million

According to the Water Dictionary

Topo Chico is a hard, calcium-dominant sparkling water with notable sulphate.

Calcium is 120 mg/L; sulphate is 180 mg/L; bicarbonate is 140 mg/L; sodium is 41 mg/L; chloride is 63 mg/L; magnesium is 11 mg/L.

Total hardness is 345 mg/L as CaCO₃; alkalinity is 115 mg/L as CaCO₃. TDS is approximately 555 mg/L.

The hardness-to-alkalinity ratio (345:115) reflects a sulphate-and-calcium driven profile in which permanent hardness substantially exceeds temporary hardness.

The sulphate-to-chloride ratio of approximately 2.9:1 is moderately sulphate-weighted.

Mineral Content of Other Brands (This will come up again in a bit with regards to PFAS contamination and a comparison of the same Brands)

(Jessica Miller 2026)

The pretenders

A 2020 article (Consumer reports .org) (and in an article by Andrew Huberman) it was advised that consumers halt the consumption of topo chico because it was found to contain “9 parts per trillion” of PFAs (1), which is nearly 10x the amount of other sparkling waters.

  1. PFAS stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a large group of man-made synthetic chemicals (that include perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) known as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down easily in the environment or the human body. PFAS are used in the aerospace, automotive, construction, and electronics industries. Over time, PFAS may leak into the soil, water, and air. People are most likely exposed to these chemicals by consuming PFAS-contaminated water or food, using products made with PFAS, or breathing air containing PFAS. Australia has banned three specific “forever chemicals” in the PFAS group: PFOS, PFOA, and PFHxS. found in legacy aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF). Firefighters absorbed, inhaled, or ingested PFOS and PFOA from using heat-resistant firefighting foams introduced in the 1970s. Key issues for the firefighters include occupational exposure risks, union advocacy for health monitoring, and massive ongoing legal battles against manufacturers.

Back to the math

Someone did the math so lets look at it

9 parts per trillion (1) literally means that topo chico is 9 parts PFAs for every 1 trillion parts water and other ingredients. So how much PFA material is that exactly? This means that for every 50 olympic-sized swimming pools (2) worth of topo chico, there is about 1ml of PFAs (about 1/20th of a tablespoon.)

  1. Parts per trillion is a unit of measure. It is a very tiny amount. One part per trillion is equal to one drop of food colouring in 18 million gallons of water (that’s over 27 Olympic size swimming pools). Or one part per trillion in time is the equivalent of one second out of nearly 32,000 years. (Northampton, Bucks County
  2. Municipal Authority
  3. An Olympic-size swimming pool holds about 2.5 million litres, 660,000 US gallons, and 2,500 cubic meters of water. So 50 pools is around 125 million litres.

To put that into perspective, a human consumes roughly 1/10th of an olympic swimming pool of water in their entire life time (1). So even if the only fluid you drank for your entire life was topo chico, and nothing else, then after 85 years of drinking you would consume about .00012ml of PFAs. An amount so small it’s probably not visible to the naked eye.

  1. 50,000 to 87,000 litres (13,000 to 23,000 gallons) of water directly over an 80-year lifetime.

It was reported that in 2021 (Felton 2021) (Dykstra 2021) PFAS levels in Topo Chico have dropped to about 3.9 ppt following plant and filtration upgrades by brand owner Coca-Cola.

References

  • Garza Guajardo, Juan Ramón. (2015) “Las aguas termales del Topo Chico.” Shared with author, Turtletaub, Nancy Ann
  • Saldaña, José P. (1945). Casos y Cosas de Monterrey. Monterrey: Impresora Monterrey, S.A.
  • Turtletaub, Nancy Ann (2018) Myth-Making and Mineral Water: Identity, Industry, and Indigeneity in Monterrey, Mexico (A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Latin American Studies) – https://escholarship.org/content/qt4mq7s1qv/qt4mq7s1qv_noSplash_219983f43732c41728788924a1a39b8c.pdf
  • Vizcaya, Isidro (1969). Los orígenes de la industrialización de Monterrey: Una historia económica y social de la caída del segunda imperio hasta el fin de la revolución, 1867-1920. Monterrey: Fondo Editorial Nuevo León, ITESM.
  • Walsh, Casey (2015). Mineral springs, primitive accumulation, and the “new water” in Mexico. Regions & Cohesion 5(1): 1-25.

Websites

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