Pa-Low-Ma

The joke in the name is the whole brief: a Paloma with the alcohol turned down. Jean-Félix Desfossés built the Pa-Low-Ma as one of his first low-ABV drinks and still makes it a decade later, which is a better recommendation than most. Dry vermouth does the work the tequila used to do, a half ounce of mezcal supplies the agave and the smoke, and a house grapefruit-and-coriander cordial replaces the soda. It comes in somewhere around eight percent, and it does not taste like a compromise.

How to Lose Two Thirds of the Alcohol

The Paloma is two ounces of tequila and a top of grapefruit soda. Take the tequila out and the drink collapses, because in a highball that simple the spirit is most of the body as well as most of the flavour. The move here is to replace it with two things rather than one: an ounce and a half of dry vermouth, which is aromatised wine at around 18% and brings herbal weight without the proof, and a half ounce of mezcal, which brings the agave and the smoke at a fifth of the original spirit volume.

The other half of the problem is the mixer. Grapefruit soda is sweet and thin, and against a low-proof base it just tastes like sweet. The grapefruit and coriander cordial solves it by concentrating grapefruit peel oil rather than juice and re-acidifying it hard, so two ounces of cordial carry more grapefruit than a whole can of Squirt and arrive with citrus-strength acidity instead of soda-strength sugar.

The Spec

Two ounces of cordial, an ounce and a half of dry vermouth, half an ounce of mezcal, and two and a half ounces of sparkling water, built in a salted Collins glass over ice. The sparkling water is the only thing here doing the same job it does in the original.

Dry vermouth is a base spirit here

Treat it like one. That means a fresh bottle, refrigerated, opened within the past month — an ounce and a half of oxidised vermouth will taste of wet cardboard and there is nothing in this drink to hide behind. Dolin Dry is the reference and the cheapest reliable option; Noilly Prat is richer and slightly nuttier and works if you want more body. This is also the ingredient most people get wrong, because they think of vermouth as a modifier and store it accordingly.

Half an ounce of mezcal does a lot

Smoke is one of the few flavours that reads at very low concentration, which is why a half ounce is enough to make the whole glass taste of agave. Use an espadín — a Vida or a Del Maguey village bottling — rather than something extremely smoky, because at this ratio the mezcal is standing in for the tequila as well as adding smoke, and you want the roasted-agave sweetness underneath, not just the campfire.

Salt and smoked paprika on the rim

Not a decoration. The salt does what salt does in a Paloma — it suppresses bitterness and makes the grapefruit read sweeter and rounder — and the smoked paprika doubles the mezcal's smoke on the nose so a half ounce punches above its volume. Rim half the glass rather than all of it, so a drinker can choose. Ice spheres, if you have them, melt slower and keep the drink from thinning out over the twenty minutes it will take to finish.

Bottom Line

Most low-ABV drinks are built by subtraction and taste like it. This one is built by substitution — two ingredients replacing one, a cordial replacing a soda — and it ends up with more going on than the drink it is imitating, not less. It is also the rare aperitif you can have two of on a Tuesday. That is the entire argument for the category, and this makes it well.

The Paloma Family