How Many White Claws To Get Drunk

It's been a big week in the hard-seltzer world. White Claw, the most popular brand of hard seltzer in the U.S., introduced a new product with a special hook: It's higher in alcohol.

White Claw Surge, which comes in blood orange and cranberry flavors, bumps up the alcohol content from 5% to 8%, and fills a bigger can — 16 ounces, as opposed to the original's 12 ounces. Naturally, the larger volume and higher alcohol adds some nutritional impact. Whereas its other hard seltzers advertise their 100-calorie-per-can counts, Surge delivers 220 calories.

In other words, White Claw, after building a brand on the premise that its hard seltzers are a healthier alcohol choice than the competition, seems to have pretty much abandoned all pretense surrounding that. I'm hoping this means that the rest of us can abandon that pretense too. Hard seltzer has never been a "healthy" beverage. Drinking any type of alcohol specifically for health reasons is drinking it for the wrong reasons.

May White Claw Surge usher in a new era of transparency. It's as if Surge is winking at us, whispering, "All along, we knew that all you really wanted was to get drunk."

Since it first exploded in popularity in 2019, the hard seltzer category has continued to climb, part of the larger trend of "wellness"-oriented alcohol. Nielsen data shows that hard seltzer sales reached $4.4 billion, a jump of 121%, in the year-long period ending March 27. White Claw remains the biggest player in the space — together with Truly, it represents 75% of the total market, according to Nielsen data from last year — but new players are trying to get in on the gold rush all the time. Even country music star Blake Shelton has a hard seltzer now.

Millennials have driven much of hard seltzer's rise, and their preference for the beverage — informed, no doubt, by their interest in wellness — may be eating into sales of other drinks. While Millennials' thirst for hard seltzer has remained strong, they're still not buying as much wine as previous generations did at their age.

Seltzer's not alone; prefixes like "clean" are now proliferating in wine and spirits marketing. Zero-proof beers are suddenly a thing. It's not surprising that this line of thought has caught on with the masses: It conveniently allows you to tell yourself that you're drinking alcohol in order to do your body a favor.

White Claw Surge, a new higher-alcohol hard seltzer. Instead of 5% ABV in a 12-ounce can, Surge packs 8% ABV into a 16-ounce can.
White Claw

White Claw is hardly the first to come up with the idea of a higher-impact hard seltzer. The innovator there is, of course, Four Loko, the alcohol brand that goes so hard it's sometimes had to be shut down by the government. Four Loko's hard seltzer clocks in at 12% alcohol, in 23.5-ounce cans. ABV-wise, that's basically like drinking four glasses of wine.

If hard seltzer brands were high school students, White Claw would be the football team quarterback: popular with everyone, always winning, clean-cut. With Surge, it seems, the quarterback is trying to take a cue from Four Loko's outlaw punk kid who's skipping algebra to smoke cigarettes in the bathroom.

"This hard seltzer goes as HARD as the name suggests," says the website description of Four Loko's black cherry flavor. "Tastes like the hardest seltzer in the universe (literally)."

I've said it before, but I think it bears repeating: There's nothing natural, and nothing especially healthy, about White Claw in any of its iterations. Despite the lighter-than-air connotations of "seltzer," the product is in fact malt liquor. Like Colt 45 or Smirnoff Ice, it's derived from fermented malted grains, then carbonated, sweetened and flavored with artificial additives.

For those counting calories, the original White Claw isn't actually all that impressive. At 100 calories, it's barely less than a 12-ounce Bud Light (110 calories) or a 6-ounce glass of wine (about 120 calories). Once you're in the 220-calorie range, as is the case with Surge, it's going to be tricky to sustain the illusion that you're choosing the beverage for physical fitness.

What I love about the arrival of Surge is that it exposes this healthy-alcohol fallacy. Can people just stop pretending that they're drinking hard seltzer because it supports their wellness lifestyle — and admit they're just drinking it to drink?

This is where I extend my gratitude to Four Loko, which has never tried to play any games, and whose hard seltzer may have as many as 400 calories per can, according to one estimate. Now that's honesty.

Dominic Foppoli allegations

Shannon McCarthy recounts her relationship with Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli in the backyard of her Florida home.
Zack Wittman / Special to The Chronicle

Since The Chronicle published an investigation detailing four women's allegations of sexual assault by Dominic Foppoli, the mayor of Windsor and co-owner of Christopher Creek Winery, there have been several updates.

• A fifth woman came forward, alleging that Foppoli sexually assaulted her dozens of times during a three-year relationship. Foppoli has not directly addressed this account but denied the original allegations through an attorney.

• Foppoli's brother Joe has joined the calls for him to resign as mayor. Joe Foppoli has also said that his brother will no longer be involved in the operations of Christopher Creek.

Hollie Clausen of Santa Rosa holds a sign calling for Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli to resign on the sign for Christopher Creek Winery.
Marlena Sloss / Special to The Chronicle

• Some wine-industry organizations have distanced themselves from Foppoli. Both the Sonoma County Vintners and Russian River Valley Winegrowers Association have moved to expel Christopher Creek as a member. Yesterday, a representative from a notable wine auction in Tulsa, Okla. told me that Foppoli and his winery "will not be participating in or have any relationship to the 2022 Philbrook Wine Experience."

• The scandal has cast a cloud over the town of Windsor, whose prosperity in recent years had been intricately tied to Foppoli's political rise.

• Finally, I considered some of the deeper implications of these allegations for the Sonoma County wine industry, a tight-knit and insular community in which Foppoli always played a complicated role.

What I'm drinking

Groundwork's Counoise, a light-bodied, carbonic red wine from a Paso Robles winemaker.
Esther Mobley / The Chronicle

Groundwork's Counoise: This fun, super-fruity, light red wine is made from a southern French grape variety that's rarely seen as a varietal bottling. Winemaker Curt Schalchlin, who also has the Paso Robles label Sans Liege, has been making Counoise in this easy-drinking style (a.k.a. with carbonic maceration) for a decade now, and it's a bargain, with many retailers selling it for $16 or $17 a bottle. Don't forget to pop it in the fridge first. Here's my full review.

What I'm reading

• Yao Ming's Napa winery is getting in on the NFT craze, auctioning off a Rutherford Cabernet that comes with a digital image of Yao drinking. The wine typically sells for $425 a bottle, but who knows how much bidders will pay now that the NFT — which stands for non-fungible token, a form of digital artwork that's sweeping the Internet — is involved. The Chronicle's Serena Dai has the story.

• My colleague Justin Phillips writes that the Napa Valley city of St. Helena appears to have a segregation problem. He argues that the anti-growth sentiments within the community may have compounded some of its racial inequities.

• Artificial sex pheromones may save Argentina's vineyards, writes Shelby Vittek in Modern Farmer. Her article looks at the experiments underway to save the country's grapevines from an invasive pest.

Drinking with Esther is a weekly newsletter from The Chronicle's wine critic. Follow along on Twitter: @Esther_Mobley and Instagram: @esthermob