Blame it on LaCroix. Or maybe blame it on paleo. Whatever the reason, low-cal, low-carb alcoholic seltzers (and slightly less low-cal alcoholic spritzers) are exploding on the market.
But these drinks are not the Bartles & Jaymes of the 1980s, nor the recently resurrected Zima that folks of a certain age remember fondly from 1990s high school parties. Some are mass-market, but some are from smaller independent producers. Most are gluten-free, and many are vegan. And most are not malt-based, the way Zima and B&J were.
So we at the Scene decided to put a range of brands and flavors to a taste test and suss out which, if any, of these beverages are worthy of your hard-earned cash. What we found is that some are, some might be if you’re desperate, and some are still making us cringe days later.
The good news is that whatever you buy, even if you hate it, you won’t spend too much money. Prices ranged from $6.99 for a four-pack of Barefoot Refresh Summer Red Spritzer — with “aromas of ripe berries and oranges” — to $17.99 for a 12-pack of assorted flavors of White Claw Hard Seltzer. Most six-packs were around $10, consistent with craft beer prices. And most of the options we tasted come in cans, not bottles — perfect for the pool or a park.
The overwhelming favorite of our taste-testers was Bravazzi Hard Italian Soda. We tasted only the grapefruit flavor, but it’s also available in limonata and blood orange. “Bright, tart and puckery,” commented one reviewer. “Pleasant scent and grapefruit taste closest to actual fruit,” said another. The only taster who didn’t like the drink has an admitted aversion to grapefruit flavorings.
White Claw Hard Seltzer also has a grapefruit flavor, along with black cherry, raspberry and lime. White Claw seems to be in direct competition with Spiked Seltzer, which offers Indian River Grapefruit, Valencia Orange, Cape Cod Cranberry and West Indies Lime flavors. Both come in white 12-ounce cans; both are available in mixed 12-packs. And both taste like faintly sweet, slightly flatter and less flavorful LaCroix.
“Just drink a damn LaCroix,” one commenter said after tasting the White Claw lime. “Buy some vodka if you’re that desperate.” Another commented on the White Claw grapefruit: “This tastes like someone poured old LaCroix into a cup that used to have grapefruit juice in it.”
“I wish that one of these would taste like the fruit it claims on the label,” a different taster said after trying all the Spiked Seltzer flavors. “I’d risk losing friends if I dared serve them.” Still, two or three tasters said they’d use either brand’s lime flavors in place of tonic water to mix with gin.
The lemon-lime Henry’s Hard Sparkling was one of the few malt-based beverages we tried, with the general consensus being it tastes like watered-down flat Sprite. At least two tasters compared the flavor to piss, but that was before we tried the Flip Flop Fizzy Crisp White, which smelled like actual cat piss — no joke. (We suspect our cans might have somehow gotten spoiled, but we were too scared to try again.) “Made with actual flip-flops?” asked one taster.
The Barefoot brand spritzer had a couple of fans, but most thought it was far too sweet. Opinions were mixed on cans of Portland Sangria’s Dry White Wine Spritz — we tried “lemon-ginger with rosemary” and “blueberry with basil.”
“I’ll call this one ‘cleaning up the dinner dishes after my dad spilled half a bottle of chardonnay on the counter,’ ” one taster said after the lemon-ginger. Another thought the blueberry-basil had “too many flavors competing,” but someone else thought most fans of blueberry-flavored drinks would enjoy it.
The Mighty Swell Sparkling Cocktails in lemon — with 20 percent actual juice — were a little too sweet for some of us, but others loved the refreshing lemonade spritzer. Far less popular was the Press Sparkling Pomegranate Ginger Alcohol Seltzer, in which not a single person could taste pomegranate. Even more unpopular was the Truly Spiked & Sparkling with a “hint” of grapefruit and pomelo, which was mostly described as “bland” with a “weird, weird aftertaste.”
But the malt-based Smirnoff Spiked Sparkling Seltzers were unanimously deemed the worst of the bunch. A couple of people said they could tolerate the watermelon flavor, if mixed with vodka and cut with LaCroix, but the orange-mango flavor was spit out by almost the entire room.
“Aftertaste is like spoiled milk,” commented on person. “Smells like sushi, tastes like sunscreen,” added another. The consensus was that only if held at gunpoint would we ever taste it again.
There are other brands on the market, and other flavors of these brands we didn’t try. And maybe your palate is very different than those of the 15 or so of us who tried these. But our honest recommendation is that you’re probably better off mixing up your own spritzers or spiked seltzers at home, with real slices of fruit and no weird aftertaste.
