The Green Soda That Gives Your Margarita A Fizzy, Nostalgic Twist

The margarita is America's top-selling cocktail, per data from NielsenIQ, for a reason: With subtly sweet and silky tequila and bright and acidic lime juice, it's well-balanced, refreshing, delicious, and perfectly simple. However, that very simplicity makes it an ideal canvas for all kinds of fun, tasty riffs. It's why you'll find everything from spicy margs to strawberry margs at a bar or Mexican restaurant. It's easy to pop in a fresh twist of fruit flavor, a different spirit like smoky mezcal, or any manner of spices and botanicals. One of our favorite updates adds flavor as well as fizz, not to mention an engagingly retro-cool kick: It's a margarita with Green River soda.

Of the many different ways to upgrade your margarita, this one has personality from its effervescence to the history of Green River. In 1916, candy store and soda fountain owner Richard C. Jones fulfilled his customers' request for a refreshing non-alcoholic beverage that bubbled like Champagne. He flavored a soda with lime and colored it to match, which really made a splash with locals. In search of a booze-free revenue stream, a few years later, when Prohibition passed, Chicago brewery Schoenhofen Edelweiss bought Jones' recipe, and Green River flowed through the Windy City and soon the entire United States. Schoenhofen Edelweiss went out of business in 1950, and Green River is no longer a national product, but Sprecher Brewing Co., a Wisconsin craft beer and soda producer established in 1985, keeps it bubbling in the Midwest today.

Green River is one of our favorite sodas that the Sprecher Brewing Co. makes. It bursts with sweet, bright, and tart lemon and lime flavors. It also ranked well on our list of 15 popular lemon-lime sodas. It's no wonder that a love for this soda has been passed down through generations, and that it's a source of Midwestern pride. It's even tied to Midwestern history in more ways than the bubbly, fruity, drinkable kind: The same company that made Green River between Schoenhofen Edelweiss and Sprecher, Sethness Greenleaf, also made the vegetable-based dye to green up the Chicago River for St. Patrick's Day in the 1960s. It's even believed Green River might be the reason Midwesterners call soda "pop" — because bottles were once shut tight with marbles to seal in the carbonation, and made a satisfying "pop" when you opened them. 

Green River brings in a lemon-lime profile that's right at home for the margarita, while also providing refreshing and festive carbonation. It just so happens to also provide this unique twist of retro Midwestern lore, a fun element for the iconic marg. Treat your next classic margarita to a bubbling lemon-lime update — we know you can add sweetness to a margarita with 7UP, but this version of that approach has more history. Sweet-and-sour lemon, lime, and fizz would also zing in a fruity mango margarita, and would counter the peppery heat in a spicy margarita.