Dick's Mixes earns three medals at The Fifty Best 2026 — including Double Gold in the Bloody Mary category, outperforming one of the world's most recognized mixer brands. The secret? Real ingredients.
We'll be honest — we didn't start Dick's Mixes to win awards.
We started it because every Bloody Mary mixer on the shelf was terrible. Corn syrup. Sodium benzoate. Artificial flavor. The kind of ingredient list that makes you wonder why you're bothering to make a cocktail at all.
Thirty years of backyard BBQs and family gatherings later, we figured out what a great Bloody Mary actually needs. Real California tomatoes. Fresh horseradish. Louisiana olive brine. Tabasco hot sauce — the real kind, aged in white oak barrels in Louisiana. And nothing else that doesn't belong there.
Turns out, the judges at The Fifty Best agreed.
The Results
At the 2026 Fifty Best Cocktail Mixer Tasting — a prestigious New York-based blind tasting evaluated by wine and spirits journalists, mixologists, and industry professionals — Dick's Mixes walked away with three medals:
🥇🥇 Double Gold — Dick's Classic Bloody Mary Mix
🥇 Gold — Dick's Classic Margarita Mix
🥈 Silver — Dick's Habanero Margarita Mix
In the Bloody Mary category, we earned Double Gold while Fever-Tree received Gold. In the Margarita category, we earned Gold alongside Zing Zang — brands that have been on grocery shelves for decades. None of the judges knew which bottle was which. They tasted everything blind.
The judges described our Bloody Mary as "natural, satisfying...layered, summer, rich, memorable."
They called our Classic Margarita Mix "the most like a fresh margarita" in the entire tasting.
We'll take it.
Why This Matters
We're not sharing this to pat ourselves on the back. We're sharing it because it validates something we've believed from day one: when you use real ingredients, real people taste the difference.
Our Bloody Mary Mix has Louisiana olive brine and oak-barrel-aged Tabasco. Some of the brands we competed against have MSG, sodium benzoate, and artificial color. Our Classic Margarita Mix has real lime, lemon, and orange juice with organic agave. Some competitors use cane sugar, citric acid, and artificial flavoring.
Real ingredients don't need a chemistry lab. They need care.
What the Consumer Already Knows
Here's the thing — your Safeway shopper, your Raley's shopper, your Mollie Stone's shopper — they already know this. The premium mixer category is growing at 6-12% annually because consumers are trading up from mass-market brands and reaching for something real.
The mixer aisle has been asleep for thirty years. It's waking up. And Dick's Mixes intends to be at the front of that conversation.
Find Dick's Mixes
Dick's Mixes Classic Bloody Mary Mix, Classic Margarita Mix, and Habanero Margarita Mix are available at Safeway premium stores, Lunardi's, Mollie Stone's, Berkeley Bowl, Draeger's, and stores across Northern California — or online at dicksmixes.com.
The complete 2026 results from The Fifty Best Cocktail Mixer Tasting can be viewed at thefiftybest.com/cocktails/best_cocktail_mixer/