There is nothing legally wrong; but yes - it is irresponsible and wrong!
Ok - I cannot come up with a study - but it is quite obvious and the legislative of several companies tried already to limit the sales of alco-pops [ready to drink] due to this fact. You won't be as naïve, to think, that the increase of abuse of alcohol won't have anything to do with the strategy to hide alcohol-flavors?
It seems like a strategy of the liquor industry to harvest a new market. If alcohol doesn't taste like alcohol, it is much easier to consume - there are very few people, who get drunk purely on Laphroaig - just to use your picture...
Vodka is usually a vehicle for "seasoned" alcoholics - but yeah - vodka is also often used by people who want to hide the flavor of alcohol - due to its rather neutral character. I would be the last, who won't criticizes vodka for that. The same which applies for spirits and cocktails also applies to beer: producers try to make very light beers [chilled extremely cold, to hide the rest of the alcohol character] and flavor the beers which a lot of dubious flavors...
Serious Drinking: Stop the Vodka Insanity
Source: LA Weekly
By Patrick Comiskey
Aug. 29 2012
It's time to say it: Flavored vodka is a threat to our cultural existence.
It's bad enough that vodka branding has devolved into an almost brazen mash-up of borrowed imagery, aspirational memes poached from music (Chopin), art (Van Gogh), clouds (Cirrus), ice (Iceberg), sky (Skyy), geometry, weirdly (Square, Level) and a host of other random vulgarities (Effen, Wet, Crystal Head).
But the spirit itself -- and its rich continental history -- has been shanghaied by flavorings, a trend that has officially jumped the shark into the realm of the offensive. The nadir? Earlier this year Van Gogh introduced a peanut butter and jelly-flavored vodka, setting a new low bar in beverage crassness. It's as if the companies making these products have given up on marketing to grown-ups.
The category of flavored vodkas started out innocently enough with fruit infusions, a tradition in Europe taken not unreasonably into a commercial realm. A modest profusion of fruit flavors followed: peach, raspberry, apple, pear, mango and pomegranate. But perhaps we all should have grown wary when bogus fruits started turning up in bottles, inventions like "Apeach," "Grapevine," "Cherrycran" and "Orient Apple." When labels started to sprout faux-Russian, like "Applik," "Peachik" and something called "Sticki" -- a honey-based concoction begging for a body shot -- we should have seen it as a sign.
Since the 1998 debut of the original mass-marketed flavored vodka, Absolut Citron, the number of flavors in the market has proliferated geometrically, like Tribbles on the Starship Enterprise. It seemed that one day vodka's replicating fruit clones would overwhelm every bar and liquor store shelf it saw fit to occupy, crowding out other spirits, overtaking supermarket shelves, leaving laundry detergent and mixed nuts to fend for themselves. Surely, thought weary bartenders, it had to end.
It didn't. In the mid-'90s vodka adopted a dessert meme, with flavors like chocolate, coconut, caramel and vanilla. Then, more recently, it morphed into an even more bizarre subcategory of processed dessert foodstuffs, with flavors like "cake" (devil's food, angel food -- take your pick), whipped cream, marshmallow, cookie dough, frosting, Fruit Loops, cotton candy, bubble gum and Gummi bear.
I wish I could say I was making this up. The same spirit that made a fetish of filtering, which boasted of its purity by way of triple, quadruple, quintuple distillations, now garnishes that purity with flavors that wouldn't be out of place at a child's birthday party. And this is a growth industry.
Flavored vodka is the Joe Camel of spirits. It has become to drinking what Yanni is to music, what Jeff Koons is to art. Vodka is garish. It is cynical. It is kitsch. It has become a booze category that serves to confuse us about booze, that trivializes all of the best elements of the cocktail revival and replaces it with puerile fantasy. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but it has dumbed down drinking - and that, for me, is a buzzkill.
Jeff Koons E92 BMW M3 "Art Car" (below), raced in the 2010 24 Hour of Le Mans. BMW Motorsports has commissioned a series of Art Cars over the years from noted modern and contemporary artists. I like it. A close friend of mine duplicated this design on his own race car.
(Image courtesy of Wiki Commons)
Perhaps this illustrates my point best. Some (almost certainly young) legal-age adults might find flavored vodka to their liking, even if we more seasoned "connoisseurs " don't. Just as an educated art critic might find Jeff Koons mirror-surfaced Balloon Dog silly (or trivial or "kitsch"), despite the mass appeal of his art.
It's a shame that the author didn't justify his "Joe Camel" implication that flavored vodka is an immoral or unethical for underage drinkers.
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Might this be a disagreement over methods and naming rather than the actual product? A London Dry gin seems like a form of flavored vodka, named in a way that does not suggest what base ingredients were used for flavoring. Need a fruit-loops flavored vodka be so different? Maybe if it had described it as "an infusion of our proprietary blend of rare citrus peels, carefully distilled"? Of course, I doubt any real fruit was involved at any step in the production process, but then I doubt gin is immune from this either, especially the cheap stuff. (I once had a bottom-shelf gin that tasted remarkably like blue cotton candy with the sugar removed... A chemist's pride and joy, I'm sure. Wish I could remember the name...)
I think that a more realistic hope might be an improvement in quality in the flavored vodka market. Less additives, more real fruits and spices, that sort of thing.
Dan,
I think you're right that Patrick Comiskey's op-ed fails to make a complete case.
Your Koons comparison interests me. Koons successfully challenges assumptions by tweaking established norms of taste amongst the tastemakers, and forces those art folks who aren’t too consumed by their own obsessions to at least chuckle and admit that they’re in a trap of their own making. For the general public, some of Koons’ work (e.g., the ballon dog) is a breath of fresh air and humor in a museum-going experience that can be airless, overwhelming, and seem snobbish.
But as always, context is everything, and Koons’ context is the rarified art world. That Le Mans race car only works because Koons is a famous artist. Without that, the only thing that car challenges is the assumption your race car must be plastered with stickers representing all your sponsors. Taken outside the art world, the balloon dog would never exist in the first place—the closest we come to that sort of thing otherwise are commercial signage and props like the Oscar Meyer hot dog car or the fiberglass sculptures in theme parks; no balloon animal professional would spend that kind of money.
So, I’m perfectly okay with, say, Tony Conigliaro creating a cocktail that tastes like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sticking it on his menu at Zetter for a month. I'd even be amused to taste it. But that has context, like the Koons facing off with a Velazques.
A commercial bottling of peanut butter and jelly-flavored spirit (or froot loops or whatever) is a completely different prospect. These are products that are broadly sold and marketed without any other context than the liquor store shelf, often in grocery stores. These products create relationships—bridges where once were chasms—between beverage alcohol (dangerous) and things that were “safe”: candy, children’s cereal, etc. There is a message being emitted by these products, and they’re protected every step of the way through plausible deniability. I think these products are probably immoral and unethical. They degrade us.
In my opinion, we don’t need to enlist new drinkers so badly that we need these products, especially in our contemporary society, which seems to already have plenty of responsibility-related problems.
This also came in today:
The Obession with Alcohol: Why are We Consumed with Under Age Drinking?
Source: The Elm
By Ian Barry
September 8, 2012
It's no secret that in the past two weeks, many freshmen have had their first experience with alcohol. For some of them, it probably isn't the first time. I am in no way endorsing this behavior, but practically speaking, the drinking age doesn't seem to present much of an obstacle. In an ideal world where impractical laws were addressed and remedied, you might ask, "Why is the drinking age 21? Oughtn't we keep it that way?"
As it happens, the minimum drinking age was set across the nation in 1984 by the aptly-named National Minimum Drinking Age Act. Prior to this act, drinking ages were set by individual states, though many were already 21 anyway, as that was the age of majority at the time Prohibition was repealed. Eventually, the age of legal adulthood was lowered, but the drinking age stuck.
So an 18-year-old in the U.S. can vote, drive, enroll in the Army, get married, smoke, and own a house, car, and long guns, but can't buy and consume alcohol.
I can't know the thought processes of the lawmakers, but I'll hazard a guess: alcohol is a dangerous substance. Which is hardly a unique property; water is poisonous if you drink too much, Fluffy pillows can be used to smother people, and bricks aren't too constructive if applied directly to the forehead.
But the benefits and dangers of alcohol are inseparable from each other. On one hand, you're relaxed, warm, and happy (with a side order of 'reduced risk of cardiovascular disease'); on the other, nausea, vomiting, increased risk of addiction, injury, death, liver damage, cancer, lighter wallet, and a whole host of other conditions I don't have the word count to list. A Center of Disease Control report estimated alcohol overuse as the third leading lifestyle-related cause of death in the U.S. From a cost-benefit perspective, it doesn't seem worth it.
So if it's so bad for us, why do we still keep drinking it? Perhaps most people don't conduct strict cost-benefit analyses of their beverage habits. But we're aware of the dangers. We all had to complete AlcoholEdu, and many of us didn't get through high school without a lecture on the evils of alcohol and being shown the picture of the liver with cirrhosis.
I think it's because we live in a culture steeped in alcohol. It's glamorized to an almost excessive degree in our media. Our media examples are all able to drink scotch and vodka and martinis then shoot a zillion bad guys. Characters who don't or won't drink are portrayed as immature, childish, or just "off" in some way.
Of course, no stereotypical college experience is complete without drinking until you pass out. In a sense, alcohol use is portrayed as a sign of maturity and adulthood. Our culture promotes indiscriminate use of a substance that affects judgment and inhibition. And use of that substance is heavy among the age groups whose judgment capabilities are already not fully developed. Not a great combination.
So what should we do? Assuming we want to minimize the negative effects of alcohol consumption on a national scale, the drinking age doesn't seem to be doing much.
Raising the age would be pretty much a token effort unless enforcement and punishment became more stringent. We've already received an object lesson that complete prohibition is ineffective.
I don't think this is a problem that can be solved by legislation. Our problems with alcohol are inseparable from our culture, and changing the drinking age will do nothing to solve that. Perhaps we need to begin deconstructing the unrealistic positive associations we possess with alcohol.
Martin Doudoroff:Your Koons comparison interests me. ... These products create relationships—bridges where once were chasms—between beverage alcohol (dangerous) and things that were “safe”: candy, children’s cereal, etc. There is a message being emitted by these products, and they’re protected every step of the way through plausible deniability. I think these products are probably immoral and unethical. They degrade us. In my opinion, we don’t need to enlist new drinkers so badly that we need these products, especially in our contemporary society, which seems to already have plenty of responsibility-related problems.
...
These products create relationships—bridges where once were chasms—between beverage alcohol (dangerous) and things that were “safe”: candy, children’s cereal, etc. There is a message being emitted by these products, and they’re protected every step of the way through plausible deniability. I think these products are probably immoral and unethical. They degrade us.
The Jeff Koons reference was from your earlier quoted article, BTW.
I think if the relationship were between, say Barney (who is hopelessly uncool to anyone over about 3) and purple grape vodka, I'd agree with you. There is no valid reason to want to interest 3 year olds in vodka.
But the relationship is between thing two things that a 21 year old can perfectly appropriately like: alcohol and the flavors one tends to like in their 20's -- PB&J included. Because a 21 yo might not enjoy a sophisticated flavor such as Scotch (or more to the point, a Dirty Vodka "Martini"), it's perfectly appropriate for a vodka company to develop and market those godawful flavors of vodka. There is nothing wrong -- and certainly nothing immoral or unethical -- about these relationships. Ditto for Red Bull and Vodka. Just don't ask me to drink it. ;)
I thoroughly enjoyed the drinking that I did in my youth. If there had been PB&J vodka, maybe I would have liked it even more. I never once passed out, and I've vomited from alcohol only twice in my life.
Dan Chadwick: But the relationship is between thing two things that a 21 year old can perfectly appropriately like: alcohol and the flavors one tends to like in their 20's -- PB&J included. Because a 21 yo might not enjoy a sophisticated flavor such as Scotch (or more to the point, a Dirty Vodka "Martini"), it's perfectly appropriate for a vodka company to develop and market those godawful flavors of vodka. There is nothing wrong -- and certainly nothing immoral or unethical -- about these relationships. Ditto for Red Bull and Vodka. Just don't ask me to drink it. ;)
I think I maybe do not agree with you about this. If you have to mask spirits to make them palatable, whether that's drowning it in juice or otherwise flavoring it to taste like what it is not, you've reduced the beverage to a mere drug delivery system. It's the same as flavoring cough medicine to make it easier to choke down, only in this context, the aim is recreational inebriation. For a lot of drinkers, self-medication is where it begins and ends (they never get past that stage) and this is where a lot of social costs come from. As they always have, people will seek to drug themselves, but I don't think they need to be facilitated, encouraged and preyed upon by liquor producers. Beverage alcohol is a drug, but it has to be much more than that, first. I'm all for the legalization of marijuana, but not so that Hostess can sell hash brownies in the grocery store.
Dan Chadwick: I thoroughly enjoyed the drinking that I did in my youth. If there had been PB&J vodka, maybe I would have liked it even more. I never once passed out, and I've vomited from alcohol only twice in my life.
What a ringing endorsement.
Martin, this is a thoughtful post and I am full on your line.
Most people [unfortunately also a lot of bartenders] are just reducing alcohol to a recreational drug, don't consider the obvious risks and its seriousness.
I do also agree to a certain extend, when it comes to the context of a specific drink. A PB&J cocktail, made by a great bar, might be just a whimsical attempt for a drink. But the audience are "serious drinkers" who are aware of the taste of alcohol and obviously its hazards. However the same flavors targeted to an immature audience [these are your vodka brands sitting in the supermarkets] only aggravate irresponsible drinking. It is obviously a fine line.
I guess it is similar to fine dining and avant-garde restaurants, which are often picking up some common dishes and flavors, and make something more artful out of them - only that in this reference you have no danger of an addictive drug...
Martin, I'm enjoying this debate and hope you are too.
I think we are getting to the crux a bit more. I think drinking for the effect is fine, and I'm inferring that you do not.
Hypothetically, imagine a Scotch made with an ethanol substitute. Let's call it Martinol. Martinol has the exact same flavor, smell, texture, pH, etc of ethanol, but has no effect (negative or positive) on one's body. Scotch made with Martinol tastes exactly like the beautiful aged, single malt Scotch that we enjoy today.
I would not enjoy drinking this new Martinol-based Scotch as much as I would, say, my Lagavulin. I enjoy the effect of alcohol. I believe my life is richer and better lived for having my near-daily drink.
Now you object (on moral or ethical grounds, not on our own personal preference about which we both agree) to alcoholic beverages being flavored with the flavors of early adulthood. Let's call these neophyte legal-age drinkers Novices.
Now imagine a company makes an alcoholic beverage and flavors it to appeal to people slightly older, with slightly more mature tastes. Let's call those folks Intermediates. Cosmo drinkers, for example. And then us old farts -- let's call us Experts.
Novices like PB&J and still eat Cotton Candy and Whipped Cream. So we have PB&J, Cotton Candy, and Whipped Cream vodka.
Intermediates like simple fruit flavors with no bitter or challenging herbal flavors. Cosmos, Sea Breeze, Long Island Iced Tea, Spiked Arnold Palmer, etc.. So we have cranberry-flavored vodka. And orange flavored vodka. And lemon flavored vodka. And sweetened orange peel vodka (triple sec).
Experts like better, herbal, and challenging flavors. Se we have juniper-flavored vodka (gin). And coriander vodka (Ransom gin). And bitter, herbal menthol vodka (Fernet).
These are all points on the same spectrum from Novice drinkers to the most educated connoisseur. I see no logical reason to draw an line and divide them into "OK" and "Not OK". They are all products made to appeal to a certain drinker, at a certain point in his/her drinking evolution.
I did not understand your ringing endorsement. comment. Are you saying that at no point in your life did you drink to excess? My first time was my very first experience. I simply did not realize that a whole bottle of Ripple was too much for a kid. My second time was in college when I had one beer too many. So of the roughly 10,000 times that I've had something to drink in my life, zero resulted in passing out, 2 resulted in getting sick, a handful resulted in feeling queasy, and another handful resulting in fear that I may have been excessively disinhibited. That leave 99.8% positive experiences.
I cannot really understand, how you could really endorse this.Alcoholism is a terrible disease. And more and more people are abuse alcohol and get into this accelerating disease.
Your martinol is unfortunately a theory - until today nobody found a way, to find a way to get rid of the alcohol but not influencing the taste.Problem is, that you can't take yourself as example; who knows how your affection to alcohol looks in 5 or in 10 years... but for the moment you seems to be one of the consumers, who can easily control their habits. Why are other drugs forbidden [which are rather used for their effect - like THC, cocaine and so on? Why are narcotics under rigorous control by the government?
Responsible drinking is not a joke! Some people can control whatever they do - a lot of people don't. Thats why the society decided to have laws against the abuse of drugs.
We know all, that it didn't really work for alcohol. And yes, I like my Ardbeg and Dos Maderas - but it is my responsibility not to loose control. Drinking for the effect is like playing with fire - you most probably will burn yourself.
I remember, that my parents let me try some or the other alcoholic beverages [only a sip], and that I didn't really like it. That is why I never touched it in secrecy, thats why I have not touched alcohol for a long time. When I was old enough, I tasted it again [whisky, cognac, wines etc] and only found slowly the way to appreciate the tastes.I am sure, that my affection would look completely different, when there would have been RTD's, cotton candy flavored vodkas and other alcoholic beverages, which don't taste like alcohol.
Dan Chadwick: Martin, I'm enjoying this debate and hope you are too.
Not entirely, but it seems necessary (see below).
Dan Chadwick: I think drinking for the effect is fine, and I'm inferring that you do not. Hypothetically, imagine a Scotch made with an ethanol substitute. Let's call it Martinol. Martinol has the exact same flavor, smell, texture, pH, etc of ethanol, but has no effect (negative or positive) on one's body. Scotch made with Martinol tastes exactly like the beautiful aged, single malt Scotch that we enjoy today. I would not enjoy drinking this new Martinol-based Scotch as much as I would, say, my Lagavulin. I enjoy the effect of alcohol. I believe my life is richer and better lived for having my near-daily drink. Now you object (on moral or ethical grounds, not on our own personal preference about which we both agree) to alcoholic beverages being flavored with the flavors of early adulthood. Let's call these neophyte legal-age drinkers Novices. Now imagine a company makes an alcoholic beverage and flavors it to appeal to people slightly older, with slightly more mature tastes. Let's call those folks Intermediates. Cosmo drinkers, for example. And then us old farts -- let's call us Experts. Novices like PB&J and still eat Cotton Candy and Whipped Cream. So we have PB&J, Cotton Candy, and Whipped Cream vodka. Intermediates like simple fruit flavors with no bitter or challenging herbal flavors. Cosmos, Sea Breeze, Long Island Iced Tea, Spiked Arnold Palmer, etc.. So we have cranberry-flavored vodka. And orange flavored vodka. And lemon flavored vodka. And sweetened orange peel vodka (triple sec). Experts like better, herbal, and challenging flavors. Se we have juniper-flavored vodka (gin). And coriander vodka (Ransom gin). And bitter, herbal menthol vodka (Fernet). These are all points on the same spectrum from Novice drinkers to the most educated connoisseur. I see no logical reason to draw an line and divide them into "OK" and "Not OK". They are all products made to appeal to a certain drinker, at a certain point in his/her drinking evolution.
I think drinking for the effect is fine, and I'm inferring that you do not.
The physiological effects of alcohol are intrinsic and inseparable, O’Douls notwithstanding. All drinking of alcoholic beverages is, in part, for effect. Stupefaction is actually only one of the effects (for example, there are digestive effects), but it is the problematic one.
Much ink and blood has been spilt over the moral problem of alcohol and I am not about to rehash it here, but let us not pretend it doesn't exist. The moral problems of alcohol require that commercial and organizational entities—and their society at large—adopt ethics. I believe this is where we are principally at odds in this discussion: you are defending these products on the basis of personal, individual freedom. You imply that you are free to drink cotton candy flavored vodka and therefore it is moral and ethical for Beam to sell you their Pinnacle Cotton Candy product.
I disagree. I do not believe the same standards apply to the commercial entity because the commercial entity has a different social contract than an individual. I do not challenge your freedom to drink cotton candy vodka, and would even defend your right to produce and consume your own with your friends or—for that matter—to make Art out of it. In that case, the moral context is different. Heck, *everything* is different: forcing you to engage in craft moves the entire proposition back into a cultural context other than “boozecandy”.
Historically, the bar has been high: alcoholic beverages have been an acquired taste. Taste—both literal and cultural/aesthetic—matters. The bar should remain high with no commercial efforts to lower it to entice and appeal to juveniles, regardless of their age in years (plenty of today’s Americans in their twenties and thirties clearly have no business drinking liquor—they lack maturity). We don’t need don’t need a product that says “try this—it tastes kind of like the candy you like but you can get buzzed, too.” We don't need more “training wheels” in liquor. Beer, cider and wine are all the training wheels we need, and all the training wheels most of us here ever got. Self-selection, guided by informed family and community principle generally works at the individual level. Contrary anecdotal examples—usually tragic—will always be with us.
I'm not in favor of more regulations and legal restrictions because they require clear line distinctions that are unattainable without inflicting massive collateral damage. Prohibition doesn’t work. I do think that advocates (both industry groups and enthusiasts, such as the membership here) should be condemning the most egregious of these juvenile-oriented products, rather than defending them or erecting deniability schemes to excuse them. Self-regulation can work surprisingly well if ethics are advocated and remain actively discussed.
Martin Doudoroff: Dan Chadwick: Martin, I'm enjoying this debate and hope you are too. Not entirely...
Not entirely...
I post for enjoyment. Since the fun isn't mutual, I'll stop now. I do understand (and respect, if not agree with) your position, particularly well articulated in your last post.
Dan Chadwick: I post for enjoyment. Since the fun isn't mutual, I'll stop now. I do understand (and respect, if not agree with) your position, particularly well articulated in your last post.
Sometimes we have to do things that aren’t fun, right? Such as confront the darker aspects of things we enjoy? If we advocates don’t, then we effectively delegate responsibility to outsiders and court the WRONG kind of attention.
I receive a daily feed of industry press releases and the frequency of “news” about the effects of alcohol on health (almost always characterized as disastrous), epidemics of binge drinking amongst youth, and real reactive legislation (happening now in libertine Europe) such as blanket minimum drink pricing and other one-size-fits all legal responses gives one the impression we’re in the full swing of a neo-Temperance movement.
I believe that taste matters. Taste can quickly become elitist and ultimately snobbish, and it’s rightly satirized for that, but it’s our best—and near only—defense for “vice”.
I’m also going to shut up for a while to make some room for other voices. Thank you Dominik MJ for joining in! Carry on! I know there’s a lot more to talk about in this general area. While I’ve sounded pretty strident in this thread, I’m just being argumentative. While I’m not positive I’ve got this all right, I’m quite sure that something in the marketplace is just plain wrong.
Perhaps Mr. Chadwick does confront and advocate in ways he chooses? Perhaps he (or others, like myself) promote responsible drinking by being a good example, speaking face to face with friends, peers, our own children, and often presenting a well-rounded view of the dangers, pitfalls and positives of drinking any alcoholic beverage at times of our choosing when we feel appropriate?
I didn't read his respectful post to decline further debate as to mean he was bowing out of advocacy or presenting himself as a good example. He just declined to add another post in an internet forum discussion.
I've enjoyed reading the various views in this thread, too. You're all very articulate and clearly thoughtful people. I also have a sense that there's an undercurrent of "something wrong in the marketplace" too and am exploring the finer points so I can really put my finger on it. I can't quantify why I feel that way as strongly as I probably should - but I do feel there's a "Joe Camel" element to it.
[Stranded on an island essential cocktails: Sidecar, 3:1 Dry Martini with 2 olives, my own Neo Old Fashioned.]