What We're Drinking

Move over, light beer: the top 6 non-beer libations to pack your cooler with for a day at the track.

Upstate Distilling Co.’s American Mule, available at Spring Street’s By the Bottle Shop, is the perfect race day drink.

If your version of a perfect day at Saratoga Race Course involves a $7 ticket and a picnic table, this post is for you. Typically, when you plan to BYOB to the track, it’s a boatload of beer you’re packing in your rolling cooler; glass bottles aren’t allowed in, a rule that has in the past vastly limited one’s options. But sometime in the last five or 10 years, beverage companies caught on, largely thanks to beach-goers: People simply want to drink alcohol at places where you’re not supposed to bring glass. But every trend reaches a crescendo, and now there is an overwhelming amount of options. And so, Saratoga picnic pros, we’ve tasted (hey, someone had to do it) and debated, and have landed on these six top track-friendly drinks to sip come opening weekend.