Ready-to-drink or RTD cocktails got their start as so-called “alcopop” beverages, such as Smirnoff Ice, which are malt liquor-based beverages that approximated a cocktail experience through the addition of different flavorings, generally sugar- and fruit-heavy, plus a healthy amount of carbonation. As with most alcoholic beverages, RTD products have moved upscale in recent years, with numerous craft distillers producing genuine cocktails ready to drink out of the can or bottle. These are often made with the identical ingredients you’d get if you made the cocktail from scratch, though quality tends to vary considerably.
Top Ready-to-Drink Cocktail Posts:
Zima
Cutwater Spirits Whiskey Highball and Whiskey Lemon Tea
Truly Spiked & Sparkling Water
By now, you have definitely heard of hard seltzer. But what about hard coffee? Well, it’s a thing now, too. Mad Bean bills their boozy coffee in a can as a unique twist on the ...
Deschutes Brewery — which we cover at length here — recently expanded its footprint into the canned cocktail market. While they’re sippable on their own as “hard bevy” ready-to-drink cocktails, Deschutes is also positioning them ...
Milwaukee-based SoulBoxer (aka Soul Boxer) makes a trio of classic recipe, ready-to-drink bottled cocktails. How classic? Two of the three are old fashioneds, one based on brandy (which is apparently a big thing in Wisconsin). ...
We already gave you the lowdown on Hochstadter’s Slow & Low Rock & Rye way back in 2014, and we even told you back then that there was also an adorable canned version of this ...
As any drinker knows, a “long drink” is one made with a nonalcoholic mixer — gin and tonic, Scotch and soda. What then is the Finnish Long Drink? It sounds like it ought to be made ...
I was delighted to discover — if only so I could say it out loud — the unique beverage Mamajuana (sometimes Mama Juana) on a recent visit to the Dominican Republic. Dating back to the ...
Hard seltzer is definitely having a moment, and according to beverage trend experts this year will only see more of those moments. The latest of these products to come across the Drinkhacker desk is Arctic ...
The Bitter Housewife is a fanciful name for a new line of products clearly not being developed by a housewife at all but by a savvy entrepreneur. I met owner Genevieve Brazelton at a recent ...
Lonerider is a longtime Durham, NC-based brewery turned distiller (or at least bottler). With its first two whiskey offerings, it’s taking MGP bourbon and finishing it in house, alternately in sherry casks and in its ...
Jon Taffer, the Gordan Ramsay of the bartending world, recently lent his name to a line of hard seltzers. Each flavor is “inspired by the popular flavors in modern mixology,” according to the website, and ...