Seltzer is the latest craze in ‘healthy’ booze

Seltzer is the latest craze in ‘healthy’ booze. Seltzer is alcohol-spiked water.

Hard seltzer is popular among the health-conscious. Seltzers are sugar and gluten-free, with less than 100 calories. It is for those who don’t want to stop drinking altogether.

Several companies now produce alcoholic versions of seltzer water. They are responding to the demand for low-calorie alcoholic beverages with natural ingredients. Anheuser-Busch bought Spiked Seltzer and rebranded it Bon & Viv Spiked Seltzer. White Claw is made by Mark Anthony Brands. MillerCoors has Henry’s Hard Sparkling Water. Boston Beer has Truly Spiked & Sparkling. Smirnoff has Smirnoff Spiked Seltzer.

The makers of SpikedSeltzer, when they first started trying to sell the product, retailers were in “total confusion” about what it was. But they saw an uptick in sales in the summer of 2015 that was “fantastic,” said Dave Holmes, SpikedSeltzer’s co-founder. SpikedSeltzer is made similarly to traditional beer, with a cold, natural fermentation process, but instead of malted barley fermenting, the alcohol comes from fermented sugar.

“I think seltzer is a completely different game,” says McMahan, who worked with Smirnoff on the release of Smirnoff Ice. “I think when you have products that are light, sessionable, and drinkable, it’s very different from all the predecessors that were generally high sugar and high in calories. We’re seeing a faster adoption rate with these than probably anything since the launch of Smirnoff Ice.”