These are the Sacramento region’s 11 signature drinks. How many have you tried?

The Abridged version:

• The Sacramento region’s 11 signature drinks, selected by Abridged senior food editor Benjy Egel, encompass the area’s multifaceted beverage scene.
• Cocktails, beer and wine are represented, along with tea, coffee and soda.
• Read through these picks, then nominate another in the box at the bottom.

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One made its bar the biggest seller of an Italian liqueur in the world. One is made in Elk Grove but fills grocery store shelves around California. One is chilled in a freezer, and half-off when temperatures rise above 100 degrees.

These are the Sacramento region’s 11 signature drinks, from Davis to rural El Dorado County. Some are entrenched in the community from decades of brewing, winemaking and cocktail mixing, while others have soared in Sacramento’s more recent history as a culinary destination.

While several of these drinks contain alcohol, the list also includes third-wave coffee, a cozy matcha latte and a locally made soda distributed statewide. Give it a read, then let us know what’s missing at the bottom.

White Linen from The Shady Lady Saloon

1409 R St., Sacramento

It’s been written up in The New York Times. Competitors all over Sacramento have come up with their own variations. Raley’s sells a just-add-gin bottled version. The White Linen is Sacramento’s quintessential cocktail, a balm tailor-made for 100-degree days and patio drinking.

Invented by Rene Dominguez (then a bartender at The Shady Lady Saloon as well as Ella Dining Room & Bar) for the 2008 Sacramento Cocktail Week, it combines gin, elderflower liqueur, lemon juice, simple syrup and soda water, with a quartet of cucumber slices for extra refreshment. It’s easy to drink and easy to love, particularly in the summertime heat.

Chardonnay from Bogle Family Vineyards

37783 County Road 144, Clarksburg

Trawl the Internet for widely available quality wines, and Bogle Family Vineyards is bound to come up. The Clarksburg winery is the 13th largest in the U.S., having sold 2.6 million cases in 2025, and most of its mainline bottles retail for $12. Yet the Bogle family, Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta farmers for six generations and winemakers for three, have managed to grow their business while maintaining quality along with affordability.

Look at the chardonnay, Bogle’s perennial bestseller. The 2023 vintage won double gold and was named the best of its class at this year’s San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, following up a similarly award-winning 2022 edition. A citrusy nose gives way to spiced stone fruit on the tongue, with a toasty, balanced finish. It’s one of the best budget wines on the market and a fixture in cellars across the Sacramento region.

People’s Pilsner from Sudwerk Brewing

2001 Second St., Davis

Founded by Ron Broward and Dean Unger in 1989, Sudwerk Brewing is the surviving pioneer of the Sacramento region’s craft beer scene. The Cali-German brewery’s märzen was the toast of those early years and is still an easy-drinking amber lager, but as times and palates changed, so too did Sudwerk. Unger’s grandson Trent Yackzan and his business partner Ryan Fry, both 28 at the time, took over the brewery in 2013 and launched the People’s Pilsner shortly thereafter, riffing on their predecessors’ original 1989 pilsner recipe.

Brewed with Weyermann Pilsner malt and Bavarian Hallertauer and Tettnang hops, the People’s Pilsner is crisp and refreshing with a mild bready flavor. It’s medaled eight times at the Great American Beer Festival, including golds in 2021 and 2022, the first of which helped Sudwerk secure Brewery and Brewer of the Year (5,001–15,000 barrels) that time around. It’s also Sudwerk’s bestselling beer; the people’s choice, indeed. Unfortunately, Sudwerk’s most recent change was ceasing widespread distribution in grocery stores, so you’ll need to visit the brewpub or a handful of local bars to get a taste.

Freezer martini from The Butterscotch Den

3406 Broadway, Sacramento

For all Sacramento’s love of native sons and daughters, the city’s restaurant and bar scene has indisputably benefited from transplants with big-city visions. See: The Butterscotch Den, opened by Irish Hospitality Group (Ro Sham Beaux, The Snug, Day Tripper) in 2022. The 1970s-inspired North Oak Park cocktail lounge and grill-your-own-meat steakhouse is the vision of partner/creative director Trevor Easter, a veteran of Los Angeles, Bay Area and San Diego bars.

All drinkers should enjoy a properly made martini, Easter says, so The Butterscotch Den’s signature cocktail is a mere $10 ($8 during happy hour, and $5 when the temperature rises above 100 degrees). A mix of Fords Gin, dry vermouth, vermouth blanc and water, it’s bottled and lodged in a freezer until poured at the bar. It’s smooth and lower in alcohol than at competing bars, prompting Esquire to name it one of America’s best martinis in 2024. Easter has the same holistic belief of Sacramento County caviar, so “bumps” are available for just $5 ($4 in happy hour). Pair the two, and it’s a deliciously highbrow night of “fine diving.”

Breaking Bud West Coast IPA from Knee Deep Brewing

13395 New Airport Road, Suite H, Auburn, and 2793 E. Bidwell St., Suite 100, Folsom

The region’s craft beer boom throughout the 2010s bore a wealth of crowd favorites, including Urban Roots’ Luna de Miel Mexican lager, New Glory’s Gummy Worms hazy pale ale and Bike Dog’s milk stout. All are worth sampling, but Knee Deep Brewing’s signature IPA gets the nod for this class. The Auburn brewery consistently made more beer than any other area breweries throughout the 2010s (among those that responded to the Sacramento Business Journal’s annual survey), found fans from taprooms to stadiums and courted legal danger with its signature IPA’s trademark-flirting name.

Made with Mosaic, Simcoe and Columbus hops, Breaking Bud is a classically piney West Coast IPA done well — the best of its style for the 2022 U.S. Open Beer Championship. True hopheads should also try the Double IPA version, which bumps from 6.5% ABV to 9% and 50 IBU to 70. And Knee Deep’s best days may still be coming: The Folsom location just had its grand opening on June 6, and an outpost in Westfield Galleria at Roseville will debut this winter.

River City Root Beer from River City Soda

5050 Laguna Blvd., Elk Grove (no storefront)

Sacramento’s Gold Rush roots can be tasted in River City Soda, a nostalgic brand founded by Bob and Janet Lake in 2009. The Lakes had been beverage distributors, came up with River City Root Beer’s recipe after trying more than 50 competitors and stamped their bottles with the Delta King and Tower Bridge to let people know where they’re from.

It’s a soda, to be sure, but River City Root Beer has more of a nuanced, slightly bitter sarsaparilla flavor than some tooth-aching national competitors. Made in small batches with cane sugar, bottled exclusively in glass and recommended with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it’s the star of a lineup that also includes ginger beer, blueberry lemonade and orange cream soda. There’s no tasting room, so grab a bottle from Nugget Markets, Raley’s, BevMo or one of 600 other grocery stores or restaurants carrying it statewide.

Golden Cadillac from Poor Red’s

6221 Pleasant Valley Road, El Dorado

The most time-tested drink on this list, the Golden Cadillac was invented at Poor Red’s down-home barbecue joint in 1952. As the story goes, a newly engaged couple rolled up to the tiny mountain town of El Dorado in a particularly flashy car and gleefully asked bartender Frank Cline to create a cocktail for them. Cline came up with the Golden Cadillac (Galliano, white crème de cacao and heavy cream), split into in a coupe glass for the wife-to-be and a highball for the future husband.

At the end of the 20th century, Poor Red’s was the biggest seller of Galliano in the world, responsible for 3% of the Italian liqueur’s North American sales. With a sweet vanilla front giving way to an anise aftertaste, it’s not for everyone. But like the Hangtown Fry in nearby Placerville, the Golden Cadillac is something any steward of Sacramento-area food history should try at least once.

Pour-over coffee from Temple Coffee

Ten area locations

Third-wave coffee shops took over Sacramento starting around 2005, with craft roasters such as Old Soul Co., Chocolate Fish Coffee and Pachamama Coffee opening and then expanding. While every caffeine hound has their favorite, it’s hard to argue with Temple Coffee as the class representative. With 10 sleek cafés from Davis to Folsom, superknowledgable baristas and a reputation for top-tier coffee, everyone goes to Temple — religious or not.

Temple’s approach to craft coffee is best experienced in its pour-overs, which vary based on the visit. You might find beans from Costa Rica with notes of cashew and honeydew, Burundi with golden raisin and blood orange or Ethiopia with candied lemon and hibiscus, all sourced by Temple representatives traveling six to eight months out of the year. A Sacramento International Airport cafe opened in Terminal B this week is the latest outpost.

La Sandia from Midtown’s Cantina Alley

2320 Jazz Alley, Sacramento

Sacramento: We’re so farm-to-fork, our favorite fishbowl is a fruit. La Sandia is the biggest head-turner at Midtown’s Cantina Alley, Art Aguilar and Max Archuleta’s rustic, open-air (but crucially shaded) ode to Mexican street life, a central Latino hot spot during Sacramento’s summer months.

To make La Sandia, a bartender carves out a mini watermelon and fills it with tequila blanco, lime juice, agave syrup and some of the scooped-out pulp. A Tajín rim surrounds roughly 2.5 watermelon margaritas, with pineapple slices on the side. Be sure to get a spoon with your drink, as there’s plenty of booze hiding in those fleshy walls, and look for a second location in Historic Folsom District to open later this year.

Chenin blanc from Haarmeyer Wine Cellars

610 Harbor Blvd., West Sacramento

Chenin blanc grapes from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta were destined for jug wines for decades, but they’ve become a darling of craft winemakers in recent years. And around the region, no one is more dedicated to chenin blanc than Haarmeyer Wine Cellars.

Owned by Craig Haarmeyer, who has the words “chenin blanc” tattooed on the back of his hand, the West Sacramento winery makes several different variations using grapes from nine organic area vineyards. He treats and stores each of the white wines similarly, making the differences between them more reflective of the fruit than the winemaker’s tinkering. Haarmeyer Wine Cellars makes “world-class wines,” a San Francisco Chronicle headline read in 2024, and inspires other chenin blanc-curious winemakers to follow its lead.

Matcha latte from Scorpio Coffee

1905 16th St., Sacramento

A favorite of Sacramento hospitality industry employees and the coolest kids on the grid, Scorpio Coffee’s signature drink contains no coffee. Sam Balean’s Midtown café, which lists its name in Japanese as well as English on signage, calmly passes one matcha latte after another across the bar to customers caught up in the West Coast’s obsession with the green tea.

Made with ceremonial matcha imported from Uji, Japan, and the customer’s choice of milk, it’s become a preferred drink of Sacramento Gen Z’s, modern beverage gourmands and, yes, performative males. An initial creaminess gives way to mild, earthy bitterness, with the drinker’s requested amount of syrup along to smoothen the ride. For a nuttier, toastier version, try the stone-milled hōjicha latte.

Benjy Egel is the senior food editor at Abridged. Born and raised in the Sacramento region, he has covered its local restaurants and bars since 2018. He also writes and edits Abridged’s weekly food and drink newsletter, City of Treats.