The cooler illusion - wine, beer, and liquor coolers

Vibrant Life, July-August, 1990 by Ann Montgomery

The Cooler

A my Jobin, a high school student in Illinois, says, "Lots of my friends drink wine coolers at parties. They're a kind of sophisticated, intimate drink. They're not quite as expensive as beer, and they have a sweeter taste."

Mike Bruni, a junior at Purdue University, was surprised to find out that coolers are higher in alcohol than beer.

"Everyone knows [coolers] have alcohol, but they don't necessarily take drinking a cooler as seriously as they would a beer," he says.

These impressions are not accidental.

Coolers look like sodas, they taste like sodas, and they're marketed like sodas. And, if the alcoholic beverage industry has its way, millions of consumers--especially women and teenagers--will believe that coolers are only slightly more intoxicating than sodas.

In fact, most wine, beer, and liquor coolers have more alcohol than a beer or a glass of wine, more calories than a soda, and in some cases, nary a drop of real fruit juice. Yet the alcoholic beverage industry has created a slick marketing campaign designed to perpetuate "the cooler illusion." Their clever strategy has eight key elements.

1. Soda look-alikes. Coolers are packaged to resemble sodas. They're poured into two-liter plastic bottles, 12-ounce glass bottles with short necks, and 6-ounce boxes with straws attached (usually, fruit juices marketed to kids are packaged this way).

Some coolers, such as Matilda Bay, come in four-packs, a tactic that not only makes them look more like a soda, but also ensures that people will buy the product in quantity.

Like Kool-Aid, coolers come in rainbow colors. A drop or two of FD&C Yellow No. 5 helps to make one cooler, Cactus Jack, look unlike anything you'd find in a liquor store.

2. No alcohol taste. Remember Fizzies, those tables you dropped in carbonated water? That's what most coolers taste like--sticky-sweet and carbonated, and in some cases, perfumed with fruit essences.

The sweetness disguises the alcohol taste, making it easier for people who have rarely or never consumed alcohol to gulp down a bottle or two.

3. Easy access. Coolers aren't sold just in liquor stores. In many states, they can also be sold in groceries, drugstores, and general mechandise stores such as K Mart.

Coolers have also become ubiquitous in restaurants, including chains such as Fuddrucker's and Chi-Chi's. Will the burger giants be next?

4. They're cheap. One reason coolers are so appealing is that they don't cost much. You can pick up a four-pack of Bartles & Jaymes or a two-liter bottle of Sun Country Cooler for $3 to $4--less when they're on sale. Recently, a "Yago Cooler Pak" (three coolers) on sale at a California K Mart was priced at 69 cents.

5. Spotty ingredient labeling. Want to find out what's in the cooler you're buying" If it's a wine cooler with less than 7 percent alcohol, then you're in luck. Wine coolers are regulated by the Food and Durg Administration, which means that they are required to list ingredients on the label.

But other types of coolers--malt- and spirits-based--do not have ingredient labeling. People with allergies to sulfites and artificial colorings and flavorings, beware. These coolers are regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF), an agency that has--by its own admission--no public health expertise.

In the past few years BATF has sought to gain authority over all alcoholic beverages, including wine coolers. Should that happen, what little ingredient labeling now exists--on wine coolers only--would disappear completely.

6. Fruit juice fantasies. Many companies imply that their coolers are brimming with fruit juice. They glibly give their products names such as White Mountain Orange Cooler or Matilda Bay Original Fruit Cooler, and they plaster bottles and carrying packs with colorful drawings of fruit.

In fact, many coolers--Seagram's Natural Peach, La Croix's Strawberry, and 20/20's Orange & Other, to name just a few--contain no fruit or fruit juice at all. Instead, they contain only fruit flavorings (sometimes natural, sometimes artificial).

Other cooler companies substitute cheaper juices for the more expensive fruit juice that the produce is named for. Riunite's Royal Raspberry, for example, has grape juice, but no raspberry juice.

7. Calories galore. Many consumers think that coolers are low in calories, in part because they're marketed as "light," fruity beverages. But the average calorie count is 200, as compared to a 12-ounce cola's 160. Drink two or three coolers, and you'll blow a meal's worth of calories--on a carbonated mixture of sugar and alcohol.

8. Alcohol deemphasized. Among the worst of the cooler illusions is that coolers are low in alcohol. They're not.

Coolers average 6 percent alcohol by volume. To compare, beers average about 4 percent alcohol, and most table wines range between 10 and 14.

But because coolers typically come in 12-ounce bottles (the same as beer and soda), the amount of alcohol in a serving is generous--more than is in a mixed drink such as a gin and tonic that's made with one ounce of liquor.