When the US embraced Prohibition, the country’s drinking culture radically changed. Speakeasies popped up, illegal alcohol smuggling routes were established, and new drinks exploded in popularity. Among them: The Tomato Cocktail, a hangover cure described in one recipe from the 1929 cookbook Here’s How Again! as “a very simple concoction” that was “guaranteed to pick you up no matter how low you have fallen.” This (admittedly dramatic sounding) drink is the progenitor of the Bloody Mary we know today.
Though the exact origins of the drink are somewhat murky, most cocktail historians credit the drink to actor George Jessel, who ordered it in 1927 to cure a hangover. Others claim the drink was invented by bartender Fernand Petiot at New York Bar in Paris sometime around 1921 to 1924. Though it’s hard to know its precise origins, Bloody Marys are now a phenomenon with more spin-offs and variations than you can imagine; a Red Snapper replaces vodka with gin. A Bloody Bull adds beef broth into the mix, the Canadian Bloody Caesar replaces tomato juice with Clamato.
If you’re especially particular about your Bloody Marys, you may want to make your own—may we suggest Bon Appétit’s New-New Bloody Mary?—but for many people, a mix is the way to go. Premade mixes cut down on prep time and simplify the batched Bloody Mary–making process. (Looking for a great vodka for your next Bloody Mary? We found the absolute best.)
In the wide world of Bloody Mary mixes, which is the best? We put 11 brands through a blind taste test to determine our three favorites.
How we picked the products
We started by compiling a list of nationally available Bloody Mary mixes. To complement that long list we combed through reddit threads, and researched the brands that imbibers and bartenders really used.
We also took into account data from Amazon’s Best Sellers page for the category. If a mix sold well on one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, we reasoned, it likely meant that a lot of people enjoyed it, and it was worth evaluating. That data pushed us, for example, to include V8’s Grillo’s Pickles Dill Pickle Bloody Mary mix, the No. 1 bestseller in the category, which we may have otherwise skipped. Besides V8’s Grillo’s Pickles mix, we stuck to each brand’s classic formulation, passing on any spicy or otherwise specially flavored versions. (Preferences for spicy are relative, after all.)
How we set up our blind taste test
We poured a portion of each mix into labeled glasses that we anonymized to ensure none of our tasters would know which brand they were tasting. Tasters took multiple sips of each contender in order to taste its full range of flavors. From our 11 brands, we first narrowed down to five favorites before furthering winnowing down to our three standouts.
How we evaluated
The balance of flavors and textures in a Bloody Mary mix are a delicate thing. Some people prefer a big hit of nose-clearing horseradish, while others want a mix that lets pure tomato flavor shine through. Our tasters were after a Bloody Mary mix that checked all the boxes—spicy, savory, slightly salty, with a pure tomato flavor—without over-indexing on any single facet.
Texture was an important factor too. No one wants to sip tomato chunks through a straw, so a Bloody mix with too much texture was a polite no-thank-you. Tasters also said they didn’t want to taste a raw tomato flavor—acrid or acidic. Instead, they wanted a mix that foregrounded a more even tomato flavor, one that held on to that acidity, but positioned it against some sweet, savory, and spicy notes.
