A form of grapefruit, a juice cocktail produced by Ocean Spray, and an alcoholic cocktail of my own creation.
Some smarty pants at ocean spray must have realized grapefruit juice had a reputation for tasting like orange juice with all the sweetness removed. So, in 1991, they made Rub Red Grapefruit Cocktail - basically, grapefruit juice from concentrate, some of it from the pinker and sweeter Ruby Red variety of grapefuits, with extra sugar and coloring added for good measure. No big deal, right? Wrong. People went crazy for the stuff. They've expanded the Ruby Red product line to include mixes of grapefruit with tangerine, strawberry, and even mango.
When it comes to juice, I'm a conservative, but when it comes to alcohol I have my adventurous days. On one of those days, about two years ago, my roommate and I were hanging around the house on a friday night watching cable. Bringing Up Baby had just begun, when suddenly I realized we had a full bar available us - the one inherited from my soon-to-be ex-wife. If I'm going to watch a romantic comedy with Cary Grant, I'll need a cocktail to go with. But if we're going watch a mad cap romantic comedy that includes Katherine Hepburn as well, then we'd need something quirky too. I'd have to make something up.
We paused the movie before the opening credits finished (God bless Tivo) and wandered into the kitchen to ponder ingredients. My roommate said she wanted something sweet but tart, and strong but subtle. Understand, I'm no mixologist. I like making strong drinks because I weigh 300 pounds and it takes several strong drinks to even give me a buzz. On occasion, though, I've been known to make drinks well-balanced enough to sneak up on people, but usually it takes some planning and trial and error. That night, I just took what she said, grabbed the ingredients that seemed right, eyeballed the amounts, and hit a home run. (Sometime late the next day I made one more shaker so I could write down the measurements.)
I added everything in the order listed, shook well, strained the contents into two martini glasses and garnished them with a slice of lime each. As we took our first sips, we turned to each other and said almost simultaneously, "It tastes just like Ruby Red!" Hence the name. We split three more shakers before the movie ended... I almost felt drunk.
Thanks to Wuukiee and lilianna for revision suggestions.