A couple weeks ago, I received some cocktail bombs in the mail. You know, the kind you plunk into your bathtub—I mean, cocktail glass—with seltzer water, then let them fizz out their powdered flavors before perhaps adding a little booze and drinking them.
The cocktail itself tasted fine, if a little redolent of Flintstone vitamins. But as I watched the kinetic crystals of orange mojito dissipate, something snapped. How on earth did I get here, I wondered, consuming a product so gimmicky that its drinker could be forgiven for accidentally taking a bath with it?
The beverages had gone too far.
At seemingly every supermarket and drugstore, I’ve tripped over a dozen hard seltzer displays spilling into the aisles. I kept my cool through the influx of cactus, hop, birch, aloe, probiotic, and adaptogenic waters; through the canned highballs, sake spritzes, and margaritas (a few quite good), flavored lattes, sparkling cold brews, and redundantly conceived “hard” kombuchas. I didn’t even overreact that time I brought home an energy drink I’d mistaken for tangerine-flavored sparkling water—mostly due to humiliation that I somehow missed ENERGIZE shouting in all caps on the box.
Listen, I’m American. I love, nay, need consumer choice. Nothing empowers me more than matching my exact mood to the thing I’m imbibing. (Am I feeling warm-spicy, like ginger beer with black pepper? Or fiery and fresh, like jalapeño-watermelon tepache?) I likewise understand that for far too long, people who opted out of addictive stimulants or alcohol faced abysmal alternatives. Plenty of products are thoughtfully made, genuinely delicious, and cleverly named (looking at you, Phony Negroni). The ritual of gathering over them can be universally fun.
But we’ve swung so far into beverage saturation territory that I can’t even peruse the coolers at 7-Eleven without wanting to bury my head in the sand like an ostrich because I’m overwhelmed by choice.
I suspect we’ve only scratched the surface of “innovation” in the beverage category. The global ready-to-drink (RTD) market reached $89 billion as of 2022, according to research company Transparency Market Research. The firm also estimates that the North American RTD beverage market will hit somewhere between $13.9 and $22.3 billion by the end of this year. Between 2020 and 2021, premade, spirits-based RTD makers increased revenues by 42 percent in the US, no doubt buoyed by recurring periods of at-home happy hours due to the pandemic.
If my inbox is any indication, reopening society has done little to stem new product introductions, alcoholic or not. Recent newcomers included watermelon-infused moscato from a celebrity, strawberry-vanilla prebiotic soda, and those cocktail bombs. Who knows what fountain-of-youth or sentient concoctions drink makers will be peddling us next year?
Lately, I’ve decided to rebel the only way I know how, by opting exclusively for analog and DIY drink choices—I’m talking tap water, home-brewed coffee, and (gasp!) plain old wine in bottles. Occasionally I’ll make a London fog (tea brewed in steamed milk) for a bit of theater.
I may not be alone in seeking plain beverages. Recently, I came across the stat that nearly half of American adults admit to giving into the urge to drink the chocolate milk they bought for someone else in their house (like their kids), according to a survey conducted by the dairy maker Organic Valley, anyway.
I poured my first glass of chocolate milk in 25-odd years to see what the fuss was about. The first sip delivered sweet nostalgia, like being seven again and coming in the house from a neighborhood bike ride. But I delighted even more in the ritual of squeezing chocolate syrup into the liquid, watching it darken the milk with each tinkling stir of the spoon.
A cynic could argue that chocolate milk is (technically) merely one of dozens of functional, plop-and-fizz, mood-altering drinks the purported majority of Americans reach for in a given week. Or maybe, like me, they’re longing for a time when tinting milk with syrup was as innovative as beverages needed to be.