Fireball Cinnamon Whisky is a confusing beverage. I’ll admit I was confused until I started looking into the details for the collective outrage and even panic over this whiskey (or is it schnapps?) drink marketed by Sazerac. It’s one heck of an infamous party shot and it has driven a flurry of viral video headlines … Read more
Clearly, there are hundreds of beverage options to choose from that are NOT alcoholic. In other words, they are not “hard.” We have jugs of of pasteurized orange juice, bottle upon bottle of sports drinks, iced teas, and sparkling waters. It therefore seems quite strange that the only drinks given the odd name “soft drinks” … Read more
The narrative surrounding Stella Artois in modern food and beverage media has settled into a comfortable, deeply cynical consensus. In popular video essays and marketing teardowns, the Belgian lager is routinely held up as a prime example of corporate deception, a standard macro-brew that supposedly “fooled the world” into paying premium prices through clever branding, … Read more
If you have ever stood in the supermarket beverage aisle, bypassed the beer cases, and grabbed a brightly colored pack of hard lemonades, spiked teas, or fruit-infused bottles, you know exactly what the packaging promises. It sells the illusion of a breezy, crisp, distilled-spirit cocktail or a nostalgic soda-shop treat. But then you take a … Read more
Walk into any supermarket or liquor store today looking to scratch a specific, sun-drenched retro itch, and your eyes will likely lock onto a colorful display of Seagram’s Escapes. or similar bottled beverages. Packed with vibrant, neon liquids and boasting sweet, tropical flavors like peach, strawberry, and calypso colada, they look identical to the breezy, … Read more
In the spring of 1994, executives at Coca-Cola were still nursing a massive, decade-long psychological hangover from the 1985 New Coke disaster. Terrified of ever again risking the sacred global brand equity of their flagship product, they decided to treat an entire demographic as corporate guinea pigs. Enter OK Soda, a bizarre, short-lived alternative soft … Read more