as much as i wanted to be all “i don’t know you” i had to raise my lime claw and agree that it is indeed, white claw summer- Harry Lyles Jr. It’s undeniable: Hard seltzer is the drink of summer 2019.Ī stranger yelled “white claw summer!” to me across the pool.
“This is here to stay.”īut more than that, hard seltzer is something of an aesthetic movement, complete with its own kind of culture: There are catchphrases - “Ain’t no laws when you’re drinking Claws” - and memes (it’s a White Claw summer, baby!), all with perfectly portable, Instagrammable cans. “This is not a fad,” Ricardo Marques, vice president of core and value brands at Anheuser-Busch, told CNN. Industry experts and retail trend professionals have spoken to pretty much every publication about hard seltzer’s skyrocketing popularity. If there’s one thing people love more than hard seltzer, it is talking about how big hard seltzer is. As of this year, every major beer company has at least one hard seltzer on the market, as beer continues to lose market share in favor of less alcoholic, less caloric options. It and the next leading brand, Truly, which is owned by Boston Beer Company, together make up about 85 percent of total hard seltzer sales. Half of those sales are concentrated on a single brand: White Claw, which is owned by Mark Anthony Brands, the owner of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Abel Uribe/Shannon Kinsella/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images A selection of the top hard seltzer brands.