This Is Each State's Favorite Cocktail

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A few years back, The New York Times trumpeted the return of "cocktail culture" as something we all needed to see us through the dark days of quarantine. Assuming cocktails ever went away, they couldn't have gone too far – the Washington Times touted their revival back in 2009, while the Wall Street Journal heralds the "cocktail renaissance" they say came in with the new millennium. Okay, we get the point – people like cocktails, whether or not the media is on board the bar cart.

As with all things food- and beverage-related, each region has its own particular preferences. Travel-minded website Upgraded Points crunched the Google data from March 19-December 31, 2020, in order to determine the favorite cocktail of each state, plus the District of Columbia. Interestingly enough, the results were more wide-ranging than might have been anticipated. Only 9 cocktails were chosen by more than one state, while 24 cocktails were stand-alones that were beloved by just a single state (or District). Here is each state's favorite cocktail.

The Bay Breeze is one of those classic '80s drinks that revolved around the dynamic duo of cranberry juice and vodka – Liquor.com speculates that a combined effort by the marketing departments of Ocean Spray and the Cranberry Growers Association may have had something to do with this, go figure. The OG vodka/cran drink is the Cape Codder, but its slightly fancier cousins include the Sea Breeze, which adds grapefruit juice, and the Bay Breeze, which brings in a tropical touch with pineapple juice. While we're not sure which "Bay" the drink's name was intended to reference, we're going to guess it wasn't the Chesapeake. Nonetheless, the Bay Breeze is the favorite drink of Washington, D.C., a state whose ocean access comes courtesy of neighboring Maryland.

To mix up a Bay Breeze, you'll take a tall glass and fill it with ice cubes. Pour in one part vodka, one part pineapple juice, and two parts cranberry juice, and stir. If you prefer a more pineapple-forward version, you can go with 2 parts pineapple to 1 or 2 parts cranberry juice. While the traditional garnish is a lime wheel, a pineapple wedge would also work well.

Coquito is another drink that you're not likely to find at your corner dive bar – unless, perhaps, that bar is in Bayamón and it's the holiday season. Culture Trip compares the coquito to a coconutty version of eggnog and says it is traditionally served at Christmas time in its native Puerto Rico. While coquito is less well-known in the U.S., it appears to be gaining ground as it was the top cocktail of one state – but you may be surprised to hear what state it was. No, it wasn't New York or Florida, but rather Connecticut, one of the wealthiest states in the union (and quite probably the preppiest). While Connecticut's Puerto Rican population numbered just 303,027 as of October 2020, it's a fairly small state, so they make up 8.5% of the total population and the Puerto Rican Report says this makes them the state with the highest percentage of Puerto Ricans.

If you'd like to try making your own coquito, you don't have to use raw eggs. Instead, start with a can of coconut milk (the kind that comes in a carton isn't thick enough), then blend it with a can of sweetened condensed milk, a can of evaporated milk, a cup of milk, 4 ounces white rum, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, and ¼ teaspoon nutmeg. Chill, then serve sprinkled with more nutmeg. Want a virgin version? Just leave out the rum and add ½ cup more milk.

The daiquiri is a cocktail of many faces. It takes its name from the Cuban town that is one of its possible birthplaces, although this late-19^th century cocktail was originally made with lemon juice. In later years, the drink gained popularity due to famous fan Ernest Hemingway, although his preferred version made with grapefruit juice never really caught on. While cocktail snobs love to hate on the frozen daiquiri, lumping it in with other horrors of '70s/'80s cocktail culture, Eater says these may actually date to the '20s and were invented by a Cuban bartender. Fruity versions of this frozen drink may have been available as far back as the '40s, too. While we're not sure which version of the daiquiri Louisianians have been searching for – and quite a few of them, at that – it seems that each has some claim to authenticity, so cocktail snobs can go suck on a lime.

To make a basic daiquiri, mix 2 parts white rum with 1 part lime juice and ½ to 1 part sugar syrup. Shake over ice, then strain into a chilled glass. For a frozen daiquiri, add these same ingredients to a blender along with a cup of crushed ice for each ounce of rum. For a fruity version, throw in a handful of fresh or frozen fruit. If you're using berries, you can leave them whole, but for larger fruits, it's better to cut these into chunks before tossing them in the blender.

The Fuzzy Navel would make for a perfectly fine brunch drink – a little bit sweet, but chock full of Vitamin C and relatively low on alcohol (getting trashed in the a.m. is not a good look). Why, then, does it get so little love outside of Iowa, where they've apparently not given up on this once-popular drink? The Fuzzy Navel is, in part, a victim of the times – any drinks once popular in the '80s seemed to fall out of favor once craft cocktails came into fashion. We also suspect, though, that some may be put off by the name, as anything reminiscent of belly-button lint is not too appetizing.

What the Fuzzy Navel may lack in pubic image, it makes up for in simplicity. All you need to make this drink is two ingredients: peach schnapps and orange juice. While some recipes call for mixing these two ingredients in a 50:50 ratio, this makes for a drink that's a little too syrupy. Instead, just an ounce or two of schnapps in a tall glass of OJ works for us. If you want something boozier, you can always add a shot of vodka, but that would transform the drink into the even more unpleasant-sounding Hairy Navel.

Hot buttered rum is one of those drink names that might sound tasty at first — butter and rum, yum, just like the Life Savers! Then, you start to wonder just how it works. Do you just heat up some rum and mix in a fatty hunk of butter? Maybe not so yum. Well, if you ask any of the numerous Idahoans who Googled this drink, making it their state's top-searched one, they can explain that hot buttered rum is far more than just a glass of greasy grog. After all, this drink has been around since colonial days, and it wouldn't have lasted so long it if wasn't something people actually enjoy drinking.

Hot buttered rum isn't the quickest or easiest of drinks to make, but it's something that's worth doing on a cold winter night when you weren't planning to go anywhere, anyway. You start with butter, and mix this with spices and flavorings to make a batter that serves as the basis for the drink. Recipes vary widely, but to get you started, we suggest mixing a stick of softened butter (you can use the salted kind) with ½ cup brown sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and ½ teaspoon nutmeg. For each drink, put 2 tablespoons of this batter in a mug, then add an ounce or two of dark rum and fill the mug with hot water. Stir until the batter melts, and top with whipped cream if desired.

What is a lemon drop? Ask a kid, and they might tell you it's a kind of candy. Which it is; in fact, it's one that's been around since the 1800s. If you ask the residents of the state of Oregon, though, they might tell you it's a kind of drink, which is also true. The Lemon Drop, or Lemon Drop Martini, to call it by the longer version of its name (and one bound to bring up boozy results in a google search rather than directing you to ads for Lemonheads), has also been around for a good long while, dating back to the 1970s. Chilled notes that it's bound to have received a popularity boost in the early '00s when Oprah claimed it as her favorite drink.

To make a Lemon Drop Martini, you'll need fresh lemon juice, so start by squeezing a lemon. Mix 1 part of triple sec, 1 part of simple syrup, 2 parts of lemon juice, and 4 parts of vodka in a shaker full of ice. Let it sit a sec while you take another slice of lemon and run it around the rim of a martini glass. Dip the glass in sugar, then strain the cocktail into the glass. Stick that lemon slice on the rim for a garnish, and you'll have one very adult Lemon Drop to suck on.

The Mai Tai is perhaps the most classic of all tiki cocktails, if for no other reason than that it was invented by the Tiki Daddy himself, "Trader" Vic Bergeron. According to Bergeron's own story, he says he came up with the drink and served it to some Tahitian friends of his. They greeted it with the words that (in shortened form) soon became its new name: "Maita'i roa a'e!" As to what those words mean, cocktail lore says they're Tahitian for "Out of this world! The best!" Google Translate apparently doesn't run to a Tahitian dictionary, but it helpfully supplies the info that the phrase is also Maori for "best of luck." This has an entirely different connotation, but one that may still be appropriate should you overindulge.

Appropriately enough, the Mai Tai drink is the favorite of Hawaii, our one and only tropical island state. To make one, you'll start by squeezing a lime – and save those shells! Pour 4 ½ teaspoons of lime juice into an ice-filled shaker, then add a tablespoon of orange curacao, 1 ½ teaspoons orgeat, 1 ½ teaspoons simple syrup, and 2 ounces dark rum. Shake, strain, then – this bit is crucial – garnish the drink with one of the lime shells, turned so the outside faces up, plus a sprig of mint. The reason behind this very specific garnish is that the lime shell symbolizes a beautiful green island and the mint makes a mini palm tree.

The margarita, like the daiquiri, is a drink that exists in two basic forms: frozen and un. In its simplest form, it dates back to the 1930s or '40s and may have been created in Mexico. While we may never know who first decided to toss this drink into a blender with some ice, the machine that allowed margarita slushies to be mass-produced was invented in Dallas in the '70s and now resides in the Smithsonian. With so august an institution proclaiming the margarita to be of historical value, it is any wonder that this drink would be the favorite of three states? It's not only tops in Texas, which might be expected, but also polled highest in Missouri and New Hampshire, as well.

Before you make your margarita, there's one optional-but-not-really-optional step (unless you need to watch your sodium intake): run a lime wedge around the rim of your serving glass and dip that rim in salt. If you're making a non-frozen margarita, you then take your trusty ice-filled shaker and pour in 1 ½ ounce silver tequila, 1 ounce orange liqueur, and 4 teaspoons lime juice. Shake, then strain the drink into the salt-rimmed glass, adding a few ice cubes. For a frozen version, add those same ingredients to a blender, ice and all. As with the daiquiri, feel free to throw in a handful of fruit if you wish.

What is it with these "M"-named drinks? Of all the drinks that came out tops in three or more states, fully half of them begin with that letter. The third of our trio of top M-drinks is the Cuban classic known as mojito. This drink, which first became popular with Americans doing a little offshore drinking during Prohibition, may have kicked off its current wave of trendiness in the early '00s when James Bond was seen drinking one in "Die Another Day." Nearly two decades later, it was still the most-searched drink in Arkansas, Virginia, and Washington state.

To make a mojito, muddle fresh mint leaves (about 5 to 10 of these) in a tall glass with a few lime wedges. Add the juice from the rest of the lime, along with a teaspoon of sugar, (powdered sugar works best), then fill the glass with crushed ice. Pour an ounce or two of white rum over the ice, then fill the glass with club soda.

The Old Fashioned, as its name indicates, pretty much is your grandfather's drink. And your great-grandfather's, great-great-grandfather's, etc. This drink dates back to the 19^thcentury, and in its classic form, it may hold some claim to be the original cocktail. According to an 1806 recipe printed in the long-defunct publication "The Balance and Columbian Repository" (and reprinted in Vinepair), a cocktail is meant to be "a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters." That may well be the formula for the kind of Old Fashioned folks in Mississippi are looking for, but we can pretty much guarantee that's not what they want in Wisconsin. Wisconsin was into Old Fashioneds long before they became retro-cool, but the state has a very specific spin on the drink.

To make a traditional Old Fashioned, redundant as that may sound, mix a teaspoon of simple syrup (or muddle a sugar cube) with a few dashes of Angostura bitters in a rocks glass, then add some ice cube "rocks" and pour in a couple of ounces of whiskey, preferably bourbon or rye. Stir the drink for 30 seconds or so in order to melt the ice a bit. For a Wisconsin-style brandy Old Fashioned, skip the whiskey and use, duh, brandy. Muddle an orange slice and a maraschino cherry along with the sugar and bitters, add the ice, add the brandy, then finish off with a splash of lemon-lime or club soda. Garnish with another orange slice and cherry.

In California, where the weather is always warm and sunny (or at least appears to be so on TV), it's no surprise to find that the favorite cocktail would be a drink that is typically described as "summery." After all, you wouldn't really be expecting them to be drinking hot toddies or Irish coffees while lounging by the side of those pools that everyone in the Golden State seems to own (at least, the ones who live on Hollywood studio lots). As no one wants to waste any fun in the sun performing elaborate experiments in molecular mixology, it also stands to reason that Californians would pick a super-simple sipper: the Paloma, a concoction that Daily Beast dubs Mexico's "national drink," although there appears to have been no governmental declaration of such.

The Paloma is your basic 2-ingredient booze + soda mixture. To make one, pour an ounce or two of tequila (reposado, for preference) over ice, then fill the glass with Squirt or another grapefruit soda. If you like, you can add a squeeze of lime juice, and you can even serve the drink in a glass with a salted rim and/or a grapefruit slice garnish, but none of these steps are strictly necessary.

Oh rickey, you're so fine, you're so fine, you blow our minds ... Sorry about that, we're kind of on an oldies roll here. A rick(ey) roll, as it were. Badum-tss! Believe it or not, though, the rickey – which is Utah's top drink – is even older than our bad dad jokes. It may date back to the 1880s, and according to news accounts of the time, was a great hit at the 1894 Democratic convention.

The original rickey, the one named for a 19th-century lobbyist, was apparently made with rye, but in more recent years such drinks are more typically made with gin. To make one, pour 1 ½ ounces gin and 4 teaspoons lime juice into a tall glass, add ice cubes, and fill the glass with club soda. Of course, it's possible that more abstemious Utahans may have been searching for the lime rickey, which is typically a mocktail. To make one of these, use 3 to 4 tablespoons lime juice and anywhere from 0 to 2 tablespoons of simple syrup, depending on how sweet you like your drinks. Pour these ingredients into a glass, add ice, then fill with club soda. For both the boozy and booze-free rickeys, a lime wedge is the obvious garnish.

Ever wondered how the screwdriver got its name? Well, one possibly apocryphal but nevertheless colorful origin story has this drink being invented by oil workers in the Persian Gulf, most likely in the 1930s. According to cocktail lore, they took to dosing their breakfast beverage with a little something extra and then stirring it with the only implement close to hand which was, you guessed, it, not a bar spoon. While the screwdriver contains just as much vitamin C as a mimosa, it hasn't really caught on as a brunch cocktail, except, perhaps, in South Dakota where it's still a favorite. We'll hazard a guess the screwdriver's non-brunchworthiness has to do with ABV, vodka being much more potent than sparkling wine. While the vodka-based Bloody Mary is generally regarded as acceptable to drink in the a.m., in that case at least you've got all those garnishes (bacon, cheese, pickled vegetables, an entire fried chicken) to line your stomach.

The screwdriver, on the other hand, is pretty plain. To make a screwdriver the grown-up way, fill a tall glass with ice, add 1 to 1 ½ ounce vodka, fill with orange juice (fresh-squeezed, for preference), then stir. To make a more youthful variant, use a plastic cup, skip the ice. Grab a handle of cheap vodka, glug some into the cup, then add as much straight-from-the-carton OJ or SunnyD as it takes to make the drink at least semi-palatable. Squinch your eyes, then chug.

If you've been seeing more shandies on the shelves at your local liquor store and are wondering if this is some new beer trend, well, you're only off by a few centuries. Shandies, and their German counterpart, radlers, date back at least to the 1800s, and may have roots even older than that. At its heart, a shandy, or shandygaff, to give it its original, Dickensian-sounding moniker, is beer mixed with any non-alcoholic beverage, although the earliest shandies may have been made of beer and ginger beer. Radlers, on the other hand, were originally made with beer and lemon soda. There seems to be no one accepted Shandy recipe, so we're not entirely sure exactly what the people of Ohio were searching for when their googling elevated this beverage to their state's top drink. Perhaps they wanted a selection of options, though, and that's just what we're going to provide.

Take a pint glass, fill it half full of beer (a lighter lager works best), then top up the glass with ginger beer, ginger ale, lemon-lime soda, grapefruit soda, or lemonade, with the final option being more of an American-type shandy. Try making the drink with beer and Green River, then you'll have a St. Patrick's Shamrock Shandy! We just made that up, but who knows, maybe it'll catch on -– are you with us, Ohio?

"It's another tequila sunrise..." If you remember the lyrics to this 1973 Eagles hit, there's also a chance that this may have been one of the first mixed drinks you ever ordered. Tales of the Cocktail reveals that the drink itself, unlike the song, is not a product of the Disco Decade, but actually predates it by perhaps half a century or so. It was made popular by the Rolling Stones, a band that turned everything they touched to platinum back in the day. Well, the Stones are still rolling right along as they cruise into their 7^th decade as a band, and their one-time favorite drink is also still alive and well in Indiana.

To make a Tequila Sunrise, fill a tall glass with ice. Pour 1 to 1 ½ ounces silver tequila over the ice, then fill the glass with orange juice and stir. As a final touch – the sunrise effect – pour 2 teaspoons of grenadine over the top of the drink. As this syrup is fairly heavy, it will sink to the bottom. Don't stir it in, though, as you want that layered look. Garnish the drink with a cherry and a slice of orange, preferably held together cut a cute plastic sword.

The white Russian is an enduringly popular drink, one that came out on top in three different states: Alaska, Minnesota, and West Virginia. Even though this drink seems like something that might have been dreamed up by a mid-century marketing department, it was actually created by a Belgian bartender who also dreamed up its fraternal twin, the Black Russian. As might be expected, the "Russian" in both names refers to vodka, which was still somewhat of a novelty in the 1940s outside of its native Eastern Europe. The black/white dichotomy comes down to one single ingredient which is present in the white Russian but absent in the black: cream or milk.

To make a white Russian, fill a short cocktail glass – like a rocks glass – with ice, then pour in 1 part vodka and 1 part coffee liqueur. Stir, then swirl in 1 part half and half. (Milk is too thin, heavy cream too rich, but light cream will work, too, should you live in an area of the country where this product is still available.) Drink carefully! This is a super-sweet drink, after all, and sugar + alcohol can lead to some pretty vicious after effects.