{"id":573677,"date":"2026-02-07T21:07:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T21:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/573677\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T21:07:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T21:07:12","slug":"liquor-sales-are-down-except-for-one-category-try-it-immediately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/573677\/","title":{"rendered":"Liquor sales are down\u2014except for one category. Try it immediately."},"content":{"rendered":"

This is part of\u00a0Wet February<\/a>, a series about America\u2019s increasingly muddled relationship with drinking\u2014and how to sip your way through it wisely and well.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had the same encounter multiple times, but I remember one instance vividly. I had finally spotted a canned version of the Penicillin cocktail<\/a>, by the brand Tip Top, on the counter at my local wine shop. \u201cI\u2019ve been looking for this one,\u201d I told the store clerk. It had been sold out on Tip Top\u2019s website ever since it was released. \u201cHave you tried it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I don\u2019t really do canned cocktails,\u201d the clerk said. \u201cIf I want a cocktail, I just make one.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard this refrain again and again from wine-shop folks and bartenders whose bars stock canned or \u201cRTD\u201d (ready to drink) cocktails, in industry parlance. I also love to mix my own cocktails, but honestly, the Penicillin\u2014a modern classic created by New York bartender Sam Ross in 2005\u2014is a pain in the ass to make at home. You need to make honey-ginger syrup, you need candied ginger, you need two different kinds of scotch. I don\u2019t tend to stock those things. I appealed to the clerk\u2019s sense of reason: Why wouldn\u2019t you want to have this perfect drink at home without $100 in overhead? Besides, I said, \u201cSam Ross himself partnered with them to make this one. That doesn\u2019t sell you on it?\u201d<\/p>\n

My friend at the counter shrugged. I bought two.<\/p>\n

When I got home and poured the cocktail over ice, I was astonished. It tasted incredibly close to the real thing.<\/p>\n

The spirits press has long been on the case: RTDs, once a throwaway category, are now often disarmingly delicious. \u201cCanned Cocktails Are Actually, Finally Good<\/a>,\u201d Eater declared years ago. Business is also good: Even as the American spirits industry continues to get pummeled, the canned cocktail sector grew last year, and it has doubled its market share since 2021<\/a>. Yet the snobs persist, as if you\u2019d only buy one of these things if you aren\u2019t able to mix anything more complex than a gin and tonic. (I also buy those in cans sometimes\u2014why not? The Social Hour brand<\/a>\u2019s is nice.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s absolutely still the person that we speak to who says, \u2018Canned cocktails not for me,\u2019 \u201d said Neal Cohen, the co-founder of Tip Top, when I called and asked if he also encountered the canned-cocktail jerks. \u201cIt\u2019s actually not a problem with canned cocktails. That\u2019s not the problem. It\u2019s canned cocktails that are poorly made. Unfortunately, as we\u2019ve been around\u2014we\u2019ve been around since 2018\u2014many, many, many more entrants have come into the category, and seldom are they a great representation of the potential the category holds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tip Top, with its delightfully tiny cans, launched with standards the Negroni and the Old-Fashioned, and has since branched out into modern classics like the Jungle Bird<\/a> and my beloved Penicillin. It\u2019s one thing to mix a few spirits together and can it, as with the simplest cocktails, but the newer additions to the company\u2019s lineup are complex drinks with citrus and other flavors that are hard to replicate when not fresh. Yet Tip Top largely pulls it off.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of those misconceptions with canned cocktails in general,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a shortcut to a cocktail. It\u2019s the true cocktail. And that\u2019s achieved by working with Miles Macquarrie at Kimball House<\/a> on every single one of our cocktails. It starts with him making his gold standard of that cocktail off of his bar, and then what we\u2019re doing is coming up with a scaled recipe using real ingredients to get as close to that as we can.\u201d (Asked how he also got a world-famous bartender like Sam Ross on board to make drinks for the brand, Cohen said it took a whole lot of emails and accolades.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n J. Bryan Lowder
\n It\u2019s One of the Worst Things You Can Put in Your Cocktails. Everyone Insists On Doing It Anyway.
\n Read More<\/b>\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Cohen told me another misconception is that canned cocktails are purchased only by drinkers looking for something easy on the go, whether at events or park dates or the like. In fact, most people, the company has found, buy them and drink them at home. They buy them for parties so they don\u2019t have to spend their entertaining time making drinks, or they get them with a \u201cspecific occasion in mind,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Then there are people like me. I have an entire cabinet in my tiny kitchen devoted to cocktail ware. I love making drinks at home, as everyone in my life knows, such that I cannot escape a holiday season without acquiring more cocktail stuff. (If my in-laws are reading this, I love the standing brass mixing set!) But there are lots of times it makes more sense for me to crack open a can and pour it over ice than to mix a drink myself. In the case of the Penicillin, it\u2019s simply a matter of resources\u2014unless I was making the drink for a crowd, I wouldn\u2019t bother to collect and produce all the ingredients. If I\u2019m in the kitchen cooking, which I often am, I don\u2019t necessarily want to stop what I\u2019m doing to bartend when I could pull one out of the fridge, ready to go. And there\u2019s the simple fact that canned cocktails are charming to explore, as the category explodes and so many new options enter the market. It\u2019s a shame to box yourself out of them because you are a \u201cnot that kind of person.\u201d It\u2019s fun over here.<\/p>\n

Even so, in writing this article, I discovered I am also a canned-cocktail snob, just not in the traditional sense. Louis Catizone, the co-owner of another of my favorite brands, New York-based St. Agrestis, told me the company\u2019s famed bottled Negroni<\/a> was originally intended to promote its Inferno bitter<\/a> product, a heady alternative to Campari that is worth seeking out if you enjoy such things. If it held up in the most famous red-bitter drink, the company reasoned, people would know it\u2019s worth buying. But the bottled Negroni exploded in popularity and, along with St. Agrestis\u2019 well-known nonalcoholic Phony Negroni, came to dominate the business. (Now the brand even makes a Negroni in a box<\/a>, which yields 20 cocktails and makes a good party trick.) Catizone made it clear that what I love about canned cocktails\u2014their craftsmanship, their variety, their novelty\u2014is not necessarily what other people love about them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this concept of ready-to-drink, and then we\u2019ve actually started to refer to our products as ready-to-serve, meaning they\u2019re not really intended to be consumed out of the vessel,\u201d he told me. \u201cThe interesting thing about ready-to-drink versus ready-to-serve is our products are intended to go into a glass and to be served over ice, where most RTDs are intended to be just consumed right out of the can.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n <\/p>\n

    It\u2019s One of the Worst Things You Can Put in Your Cocktails. Everyone Insists On Doing It Anyway.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n

  2. \n
    \n This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only<\/p>\n

    A Guide to the Epstein Files if You, Like Me, Just Need to Know What Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet Is Doing in There
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    I have to admit I am a fraud in this sense\u2014I don\u2019t usually drink canned (or bottled) cocktails out of the can. I get out a nice glass and nice ice, and maybe even an orange peel if I have it, when I open a St. Agrestis Negroni. Do I now have candied ginger in the house for garnish when I buy the Tip Top Penicillin? Maybe. It lasts a long time. But I\u2019m choosing to think of this as respect for the form. If people want to imbibe directly from the container, well, there is no judgment here, where we like canned cocktails.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe dealt with a lot of doubt in the beginning,\u201d Catizone told me. \u201cThe big question that we always got asked\u2014I actually remember there was a buyer at Eataly\u2019s wine shop on 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan who said the consumers would always come in and be like, \u2018These are really nice bottles, but is it good?\u2019 That was always the question: \u2018But is it good? But is it good? But is it good?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

    If you think of yourself as someone who has no use for the single-serve cocktail revolution, please think twice the next time you see one on your wine-shop counter. I\u2019m here to tell you: Some of them are very, very good.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

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