It’s been less than a day since outrage erupted over Ted Cruz’s Cancun vacation amid the sprawling blackouts and frigid cold in his home state of Texas. But already, the fiasco has inspired a themed cocktail. (This is DC, after all.) Anxo Cider is bottling up a tropical beverage dubbed “Cruz in Cancun.” The label features an image of the senator wearing a sombrero and holding a pineapple drink with the hashtag “#ResignTedCruz” and “No Power? No Water? There’s always Cancun!” The $12 mix of coconut rum, tequila, banana liqueur, lime, and cinnamon is best served over… ice.
“I’m on Twitter a lot following a lot of the stuff going on in the political world, and I have been for the past four years, and just immediately saw Cruz was going to Cancun. It just seemed like the worst thing he could possibly do right then,” says Anxo co-founder Cooper Sheehan. “I started texting one of my friends about it and knew it had to be made into a cocktail. It had to be tequila too.”
As soon as he arrived at work at 10 AM, Sheehan asked bar manager Jade Aldrighette for a tropical, fruity, tequila recipe. Sheehan, who does all of the cidery’s graphic design, whipped up a label. The drink was ready to promote on social media by afternoon. Within a couple hours, they’d sold around a dozen and were frantically batching up more. (UPDATE: Based on the volume of orders and limited staffing, Cruz in Cancun is currently only available for pre-order with pick-up and delivery beginning tomorrow, Feb. 19.)
The cocktail is just the latest a series of no-holds-barred politically themed concoctions from Anxo that started around the presidential election. Sheehan’s past creations have poked fun at Rudy Giuliani’s Borat encounter (“Giuliani Juice”), lawyer Sidney Powell’s election fraud claims (“Release the Kraken”), and the Georgia Senate run-off, including a Kelly Leoffler-themed “Inside Traitor” vodka-cranberry drink.
The January 6 storming of the Capitol building inspired a series of “Treason All-Stars” cocktails. A Marjorie Taylor Greene apple-and-gin drink dubbed “Serious Q: How On Earth Was This Lunatic Elected?” is sold out, but a brandy-apple-maple mix called “The Absolute F%?king Worst” picturing Matt Gaetz is still available. The top seller has been a negroni riff called “Account Suspended,” depicting Trump’s empty Twitter page.
“I’ve always been a little more outspoken in my opinions about these things than maybe everyone else in our business, and probably annoyed some people with it in the past,” Sheehan says. “But basically, it got to the point where things were getting so ridiculous that we all felt comfortable having some fun with it.”
A portion of proceeds from the political bottles benefits national voting rights organization Fair Fight.
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
