In early Zima commercials, a suave man in a white suit touts the beverage as “zomething different” than a beer or wine cooler, the kind of drink that will help you woo a woman at the bar with its sophisticated flavors. “A drink that fragile coeds swill while giving each other pedicures.”Īnd it wasn’t as if Zima didn’t try to appeal to men, either. “It has long been considered the very opposite of macho,” Slate’s Brendan Koerner wrote in 2008. But it was also widely ridiculed for proving instantly popular with young women, which led to its reputation as a “girly-man” drink. Introduced in 1993 by the Coors Brewing Company, Zima was wildly popular, with 70 percent of American drinkers admitting to sipping a chilly Zima in the ’90s. The lineage of White Claw can be traced back to the syrupy-sweet Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers that originated in the 1980s, but a more direct comparison is Zima. Everyone gets to enjoy the fizzy, intoxicating joy of White Claw, and that’s a pretty far cry from where we were in the 1990s, when pretty much any malt beverage that wasn’t brewed from barley and hops was derided as “ bitch beer.” It falls into a sweet spot directly in between the hypermasculine absurdity of Liquid Death canned water and the hyperfeminine inanity of White Girl Rose. It’s just that this specific spiked seltzer has somehow managed to avoid falling into the toxic marketing tropes that have long dominated the beverage industry. It’s just the latest in a decades-long parade of sweet, low-proof beverages that have captivated the attention of the American drinker. The White Claw boom isn’t without precedent. But I also just feel comfortable saying I like White Claw and that it’s good.” If I’m at a party now and someone offers me an IPA or a White Claw, I definitely take a White Claw… I do dude things and get stoked and all that. Exemplifying this cross-over is Ben Shea, a self-identified bro, who recently told Business Insider that White Claw is “ridiculously good. It’s got a universal appeal that’s able to cut across dietary restrictions, booze preferences, and perhaps most uniquely, the surprisingly fraught gender politics of malt beverages.
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As Eater’s own Jaya Saxena notes, spiked seltzer also boasts a strong veneer of health and wellness thanks to a low calorie and carbohydrate count, and being free of bogeyman ingredients like gluten and artificial flavors. It’s lighter and more refreshing than a beer, has less hangover-inducing sugar than a fruity sangria, and has a much more trendy connotation than wine coolers, a time-honored favorite of high schoolers. Why people like White Claw isn’t really a mystery, especially during steamy summer months.