Can Ranch Water Be Everywhere and Still Hang on to Its Texas Roots?

Ricky Cobia first encountered Ranch Water in its purest form. During his high school years in central Texas, Cobia worked summer jobs baling hay on ranches. There, at the end of a sweat-filled day under a blazing sun, fellow ranch hands sought refuge in the shade and introduced him to the drink they called Ranch Water: a bottle of Topo Chico mineral water, to which they added a glug or two of their preferred tequila, and a squeeze of lime juice. “That was all those guys drank,” Cobia says. “Working at ranches, what can you get your hands on? We can’t make a Margarita, but we can make this. And it’s super refreshing and easy.”

Cobia went on to become a celebrated cocktail bartender in Austin and then creative director for Big Country Foods, where he oversaw the development of hard seltzers and sparkling cocktails. In the roughly two decades since Ranch Water became a part of Cobia’s life, the drink has busted out of its barbed-wire confines to become a national phenomenon.

Cobia watched as the cocktail first made its way onto bar menus in the Lone Star State. While bartending during his college years, he felt like the only orders he ever got were for beer, whiskey, tequila shots, Margaritas, and Ranch Water. Then the drink was even more swiftly translated into Ranch Water–flavored hard seltzers and tequila-based canned cocktails.

In almost any U.S. state, a shopper today can find several canned Ranch Waters from the likes of big producers like Dos Equis and Modelo on grocery store shelves, as well as canned cocktail mash-ups, like Ranch Water Palomas and Ranch Water Margaritas. Even Topo Chico Hard Seltzer, a partnership with Molson Coors Beverage Co., launched its own take in January.

“To someone who loves the culture of tequila, mezcal, and sotol, and the hands that make it, seeing it be put in a can—that was so weird.” —Ricky Cobia

This proliferation leaves Cobia feeling—at best—uncomfortable. “To someone who loves the culture of tequila, mezcal, and sotol, and the hands that make it, seeing it be put in a can—that was so weird,” Cobia says. “It’s like people watching Yellowstone and then saying, ‘I’m a cowboy.’” (In fact, leading Ranch Water brand Lone River has a partnership with the Paramount Network’s Yellowstone star Ryan Bingham, coupled with advertising during weekly airings of new episodes each season.)

Cobia doesn’t begrudge drinkers loving Ranch Water. After all, it’s delicious and refreshing, a cocktail that Cobia still frequently makes for himself at home. But he worries that the emphasis on quality tequila that was integral to its origins is at risk of dilution. “How those ranchers would make Ranch Water was very specific. That’s something that gets lost in translation,” he says. “It was your tequila, with fresh lime and Topo Chico. It could be añejo or blanco, sometimes reposado, but it was specific to each person.”

Most of the canned Ranch Waters that label themselves as “hard seltzers” don’t contain tequila—which would put them in a different legal and tax category—but instead are flavored with agave nectar. Because hard seltzers can, in most states, be sold in a wider range of stores than spirits-based canned cocktails, a large portion of American drinkers are encountering Ranch Water first as a seltzer, rather than as a tequila-based cocktail.

When Phoenix-based Huss Brewing Company launched its malt-based Arizona Ranch Water last year, the company labeled it an “agave hard seltzer.” Most Arizonans don’t totally understand what the drink is yet, according to Huss’ director of sales and marketing Chip Mulala, but they know—and like—hard seltzers. He sees Huss’ Ranch Water connecting with drinkers who want something less sweet than seltzers’ typical fruit flavors. “If you meet someone here and ask them, ‘What’s a ranch water?’ they’ll tell you: ‘Isn’t that one of those types of seltzers?’” Mulala says.

The brewery hadn’t made a hard seltzer until it launched Ranch Water because, Mulala says, it couldn’t find a way to do so that felt “true.” When the Huss team began to see the drink hitting local cocktail menus and shelves, the similarities between the desert climate and drinkers’ affinity for agave in Texas and Arizona began to gel in their minds. Huss’ Ranch Water is made with lime purée and tangerine juice, and brewers dial the carbonation way up to mimic the extra fizz level associated with Topo Chico. “Our tagline cheekily says: invented in Texas, perfected in Arizona,” Mulala says.

It remains to be seen how well Ranch Water can hold on to its Texas roots as it reaches more drinkers across the country and permutates into new flavors. For Katie Beal Brown, founder and CEO of Lone River Beverage Co., preserving the drink’s Texas bona fides is paramount. But she believes that a Texas origin story and attitude can travel “beyond its small place on the map,” she says. “What Lone River represents is a set of values that is emblematic of the pioneering spirit that built the American West.

Cobia knows he can’t stop the national march of Ranch Water RTDs and seltzers—nor does he want to. He credits them for bringing Ranch Water to a broader audience, but he hopes that the history of Texas ranchers and the craftsmanship of tequila palenques travels with it, too. “If anything, it’s telling that story to a larger market that would have never experienced it,” he says. “I hope people will taste it and think, ‘I’m going to try to make a real one.’”