White Claw Raspberry Hard Seltzer

Rating: 5/23 OK, this isn't based on a distilled spirit, so technically it doesn't qualify as a pre-made cocktail. Why am I classifying it as one then? Well, there's an interesting history behind hard seltzer. Spoilers: tax dodge ahead. Because of the high tax rates on spirits, diluting them to make ready-to-go cocktails was unmarketably expensive in much of the United States, despite a long-standing desire by many companies to put out such a product. The reason for this is two-fold: (1) Low-end spirits in particular are generally competing with beer, which is taxed at a lower rate. (2) It is not uncommon for spirits to be taxed at least partially based on the total volume of the product they are in, rather than the volume of distilled alcohol. At less than 10% ABV, this made taxes prohibitive. Enter hard seltzer: the natural outcome of a singularity where light beer reached zero flavor and then suddenly tasted kind of like a spirit. Hard Seltzer is fermented from sugar in order to taste as much like vodka soda as possible and claim a chunk of the market looking for cocktails in cans. So this isn't actually a ready-to-go-cocktail, but it is doing its best emulate one. Without this fermentation innovation, a similar canned cocktail (an actual cocktail) would cost ~20% more. When you're selling supplies for a frat party, that 20% matters. N: Not much going on here. A little bit of raspberry. A little sweet. Kind of like freeze-dried raspberry, I guess. It smells a little fake, but not absolutely awful. P: Mmhmm. It tastes like fake raspberry, but not miserably fake. It pretty much tastes how I'd expected. There is nothing really going on here beyond that mildly unpleasant flavor. The bitterness from the raspberry gives this a little bit of a chemical flavor, but the soda dilutes it to the point that I can kind of look past it. I get some clear artificial sweetener in here. I might get some yeast in here, but it's kind of hard to tell where that starts and where the bad raspberry tartness ends. This is incredibly bland. It largely tastes like nothing. F: A little bit of the sweetness and tartness from the raspberry linger, but the bitterness is most noticeable. It isn't a very substantial finish, but of course I never expected it to be I bought the raspberry White Claw because I thought that it stood the best chance of being inoffensive and I'd say that my assessment there was pretty accurate. I really don't want to drink this, but it isn't actively painful or wrecking my palate or anything. Like a vodka soda, it clearly exists for the purpose of consuming alcohol without really noticing it. In that regard, I'd say that it fairly well succeeds, though if the purpose to to get hammered at a party, the measly 5% ABV doesn't really compare with a real vodka soda, which is usually closer to 10%. I'm actually fairly impressed by how much this tastes like it could be a vodka soda. It reminds me of when I was tasting all of those awful Veil flavored vodkas. If you told me that somebody had taken 50ml of raspberry flavored vodka and diluted it 7:1 with soda water to make this, I'd probably believe you. In that regard, this is actually quite successful. This does taste better when mixed with some other liqueurs and optionally some other spirits. Framboise and gin are the obvious choices. At some point though, I'm essentially using this as soda water and masking those other flavors. And then what was the point of going to all of the trouble to put it in a can? It doesn't get any credit for this. Regardless of how effective it is at mimicking something bad, that doesn't make it better than the bad thing. It's better than drinking awful flavored vodka neat because the flavor is diluted and there isn't any burn, but it's in no way pleasant. All factors considered, I think that this is a 5. I had it boxed into the 4 to 6 range because it tastes better than Piper's Clan and worse than Jollite VSOP. No, those aren't reasonable comparisons, but I try to avoid stocking stuff this dreadful if I can. I think it tastes closer to the Jollite and I'd like to give it a little bit of credit for achieving its purpose of being mild and bland, but I can't give it that 6 because drinking it gives me a headache. I was actually sure that it was because of the use of artificial sweetener, but having looked I don't see any listed on the ingredients, so I'm at a loss to explain. Anyway, it's a 5.