Hey, you're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg. I do communication at Binny's. Hey, I'm Pat. I do spirit stuff at Binny's. I'm Roger, and I do beer, and all the beer-adjacent things that align our shelves today. And speaking of beer-adjacent things. Yeah, what are we talking about today, Raj? Wait, hold on a second. So two years ago, we did sparkling hard seltzer. And it's really blown up since. We're due for a revisit, honestly. And last summer, we did canned cocktails. And this like is the gray area between those two. Yeah, this is a category that is emerging, that's going to completely straddle both, mix two together, blur the line. Exactly. Get ready for the summer of ranch water. Ranch water? What the hell is ranch water? Ranch water. Seriously, it sounds like the runoff at the Pizza Hut lunch salad bar. It's definitely what gets like squeegeed into a drain. Right. That's why they have to have holes underneath it so the water can drip through. It's from all the people who miss putting the ranch scoop back into the ranch bucket at the salad bar. Well, because their head has turned this way looking at the chocolate fountain while they're trying to dressing their salad and they just pour it on the floor. It's the drippings off of the decorative kale. All right, enough of this s*** salad bar bulls***. So really, what is ranch water though? So ranch water, unlike a lot of the cocktails we talk about where there's a lot of different reiterations of it and ways to make it, it's a drink that has a pretty standardized mixture. It originated down in Texas, specifically popular in West Texas and in Austin. And you can kind of think of it as a margarita-esque sort of like a tequila spritzer drink. It's very simple to make. You were talking tequila, fresh lime, and mineral water. And in general, that's it. More often than not, kind of the key ingredient to it, since it is so simple, is a very specific sort of mineral water. So we're not just talking seltzer from the bar gun. They are using a type of mineral water from Mexico called Topo Chico. Is it from Mexico? It is. It's from Monterrey, Mexico. I will say, I'm pretty sure I'm the only Subaru-loving, skinny pants-wearing white man in the Midwest who has never had Topo Chico before. I've never had it at all, just because I don't like fizzy water. I had it once backstage at Lollapalooza, because there was like an ice bucket of them, and I couldn't handle any more Lynchburg Lemonades. Okay, so before we disqualify ourselves by saying we don't understand why people pay so much for sparkling water, I reached out to a mutual friend who is hip but not a hipster to ask what she likes. That sounds like someone in denial about being a hipster. Yeah. What did your hipster friend have to say? Asking a favor in a sentence or two, can you tell me why Topo Chico is good? Okay, so she says, it's a refreshing and elevated way to enjoy sparkling water. Obviously, she writes ads. She works in marketing if she's using the word elevated. Also, the bottle adds to the experience, smiley face emoji. I personally like that it doesn't taste like much, but I still get the satisfaction from the bubbles. I say, well, how is that different from La Croix or even Perrier? I don't know the difference between this and Perrier. Says, I like La Croix but the flavors can be a lot sometimes. Topo Chico is more flavorless. Don't drink soda, so this is my treat besides alcoholic beverages. Your treat is carbonated water. Sounds like a very boring person, right? It does sound like a very boring person. Yeah. Who's in denial about her advanced age. Oh, very much. The key to this is twofold. I've read lots of articles about Topo Chico because the popularity has exploded so much. I've had it before, but I wanted to get the same kind of feedback. Why do people love this so much? The glass bottle is hitting the nail right on the head. That is a huge part of it. People like drinking out of a bottle as opposed to out of a can. Think of the environment. But more important- They're both barely recycled. They're in a truck all the way from Mexico. More importantly, the two main things to consider here is that this is a mineral water, so it's going to have some taste to it that is not an added fruit flavor or something. It's just the miner-minerality. Again, if you were talking about Perrier that has minerals or San Pellegrino, the other thing a lot of people tend to like about Topo Chico is that it's very highly carbonated. On one end of the spectrum, I would say is like Topo Chico and on the other end is San Pellegrino. San Pellegrino is almost flat when you open it. It is super car- Pat just cracked it. It is really carbonated and the bubbles are humongous. Yeah. Humongous bubbles. Okay. Can I try Topo Chico on its own before we do any ranch water silliness? That's good. That's fine. The other thing that I think you need to appreciate with this is that like PBR, it got this cult following at a lot of cool bars and music venues. People got used to drinking this at place that they had a great time. So just like that's what happened. That's not bad actually. It's fine. It looks like it's going to be crazy carbonated in these huge bubbles, but I think the big bubbles are why I don't mind it at all. Normally like fizzy water just like bothers my roof of my mouth in some way. I don't know. I just don't like it. My heartburn. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like it. I tend to drink Perrier quite a bit and I don't really like San Pellegrino because of how flat it is. So. Francophile Adams in here. Yeah. If you're the kind of person that goes out of their way to drink those two waters, I think you'd enjoy Topo Chico as well. All right, so let's make a traditional ranch water then with this. So we're just throwing some, I would assume this is the kind of cocktail, and I use cocktail lightly, that is just really blended to taste, right? Correct. If you want a little stronger, a little more tequila, if you like a little more lift and acidity, just throw some more lime in there. So yeah, a lot of places will just give you the tequila and the ice and the lime in a glass, and then just hand you the bottle of Topo Chico for that very reason. Maybe you want to make it a very strong drink and then do side backs of just the water by itself. Some people, there is sodium in Topo Chico. Some people also add some extra salt to their ranch water as well. Really? All right. I'm going to start by squeezing a half. So I just poured some, what did I pour? I poured some Clark & Sheffield Silver Tequila in there. This is our house label, 100% Agave Tequila from Jalisco, Mexico. I just got to say, this is one of the most mixable tequilas. It's perfect for me. It's perfect for this. I mean, it's inexpensive, but it's clean, it's flavorful, it has like that classic citrus and roasted agave and a little bit of the pepper character, but it's not overwhelming. I poured some of that in the glass, then I poured Topo Chico on it. Then I put ice in and I'm just going to squeeze half a lime over it. I think Blanco or clear white tequila is the most common tequila type used for this. I could obviously experiment with Reposados or Añejos if you wanted, but I think there is something to be said that you want that vibrant agave flavor that you get in a Blanco to kind of shine through in this. But I'm going to be trying it with some Reposado at some point, too, just to kind of see how that pans out. Can I do a whole lime? I really like lime. I'm going to see how mine tastes first with a half, and then I'm going to bam it up a notch. Bam. So, Pat and I have mixed up Ranch Waters. Roger, you got one? I got one, baby. All right, here we go. Ranch Water. Holy cow, what a boring cocktail. Roger said I would like it because I like Palomas, and I do. And this is like, it's like if you took the Paloma and you dial the saturation down a little bit. I think a key aspect to Ranch Waters is that people drink them in Texas when it's scorchingly hot outside, where you don't necessarily want something that you're going to sip on, like you're going to drink these quick. So the idea, I think, is if you made yourself margaritas, you'd be like passed out in the sun because you need it so you hammered so too fast. Roger, you're right. This needs some salinity. It needs salt. Or if not salt, like a tiny bit of olive brine would make this like... Eww. No, it's good. It's super good. Greg, what I would suggest, I know that both of you, another thing that a few people do with this that I think might be right up your alley is they add a little bit of this bad boy. Oh, the tahine. Yeah. You juge it up a bit, right? Yeah, juge it up. Man, I left the giant bottle of tahine in the other office. This is a tahineless office. So you could either, I just threw it in there. I've seen people sometimes make a rimmer out of it. That's nice. It gets some smokiness to it. That's good. I could drink this all day. I could drink this forever. It's so boring though. Maybe you need the other. Oh, you got the whole lime too. This is a great upgrade to do a little test. I bet you'd love this in it. Oh, yeah. You got it in your office? With the tahine in this, I would enjoy it. Because as it stands now, it's just a little too flavorless for me. Okay. I can see why this is going to be a hit though. People, this is more interesting than a lot of the seltzers that we've had, and the flavors are more authentic in what we have in our glass right now. The lime is fresh, the tequila tastes like tequila, a little bit of the sparkling water to mellow it out and make it tall. It's going to be a real challenge for these companies to reproduce this level of fresh and light. I agree with that. We have a couple canned cocktails that are really just sparkling tequila cocktails. We've seen this influx of canned tequila sodas that specifically call out being sparkling tequila sodas and then they have lime or pineapple or mango or whatever flavor in them. Do we have anything that specifically says that it's a ranch water? I know we have one on the cocktail side. Do you have any, Roger? We do. I bet too that your tequila sodas, once ranch water is a known entity, I think they might even rebrand. But as we joked about at the beginning, it sounds like salad dressing. So as of right out the gate, I totally get why you'd say sparkling tequila or tequila soda. What a lot of the people who produce seltzer started to realize was that these are essentially very close to a hard seltzer. The only thing that's really missing is the tequila flavor. So since the alcohol base of a lot of seltzers is made by fermenting sugar, some companies have also added some agave to the mix when they're making the base alcohol. And then they also include natural flavors. And if I had to guess, some agave flavor is part of the mix as well. So you're left with a couple of different things. Topo Chico, what I would suggest we try next, released a series of hard seltzers. So they're not branded as ranch water for the same reason. I think they just figured not enough people know what ranch water is, but everyone knows what hard seltzer is. And then we have a company called Texas Ranch Water Co, which released... Wait a minute, Texas Ranch Water Co. Yep. And their can just says ranch water in giant letters, and the little Texas and the company are on the side. So they're really just hoping that people are going to buy their product because they're just going to hear about ranch water, and they're going to grab it. And then we have Cantina. Does Cantina say ranch water? One of the flavors does. So the things that... The ranch water flavor. Yeah. So Cantina canned vodka sodas we've carried for like a year now. And this summer, they've launched a line of canned tequila sodas under the name Cantina. And they're just classic lime flavor, I guess, is just called ranch water. But then they also have like a grapefruit sparkling, grapefruit paloma. It says paloma. I'm down. Yeah. Cool. And then we have some other things that are tequila sparkling cocktails. Yeah. We have one from Mamitas and one from Onda. They just say tequila and soda lime or sparkling tequila lime. So that's like a Jack and Coke, right? Like if somebody's like, what's the recipe for a Jack and Coke? Yeah. Totally. It's on the side of a can, but they don't call it a ranch water. Yeah. Again, I think the only reason is that not enough people know what ranch water is. A lot of people didn't even know what Topo Chico was until recently. Yeah. It's worth mentioning that Topo Chico, their bottling plant bottled Coca-Cola down in Mexico for years. Because Topo Chico has been around since the 20s, I think. It's quite an old product. It's got a rest of the table. They've been bottling Coke for ages, and I think Coke saw the writing on the wall and was like, now that everyone loves seltzers, LaCroix exploded, Coca-Cola bought Topo Chico in 2017. It used to be pretty hard to find Topo Chico. Now, you're seeing stacks of it in grocery stores. As it becomes more popular and people ask, what's this stuff? What do I do with it? Then you're going to see all the articles that are like, you should mix drinks with it. In Texas, they make this stuff called ranch water, and it's pretty easy to make. It's a three ingredient, basically a two ingredient cocktail. Only in modern America do people ask, what do I do with water? Yeah. Right? Well, let's open the Topo Chico Lemon Lime Hard Seltzer and see what we think of that. Dude, this glass, I forgot about this. But from the beer episode where we compared glassware, this one, I hate it. I hate it. I put the Topo Chico in there, I tried to get a nose, and this is like not even big enough to get my face on. Yeah. Arguably, you want to get your nose probably down further than you think. I like to get my nose and my mouth over the opening at the same time, so I can smell while I'm drinking. And it just hits me right in the middle of my big schnoz. Yeah. No, I hear you. I've done the same. World Time Radio. All right. Topo Chico Lemon Lime, eh? Yep. With the Seltzer Wars, it's all about the stats. So Topo Chico is 2 grams of sugar, 4.7% alcohol by volume, gluten free, and it has added minerals for taste. Which includes some sodium. There are 15 milligrams, 15 milligrams of salt in a can. Who's making this stuff? Coca-Cola, I think, dude. Coca-Cola is packaging alcoholic beverages? I guess they do. It's made in Tempe, Arizona and Auburndale, Florida. Oh, it's kind of sweet. Two grams of sugar. Yeah. And I think again, the minerals are going to add a perception of flavor to that. Obviously, salt being one of them. But I mean, it's okay. It's very lemony. I would say this is much more lemon than lime. It smells like candy. It doesn't smell authentic. It definitely smells like candy. It's packaged like a seltzer, not ranch water. So I was just curious since we're Topo Chico is the key ingredient in the ranch water to give it a try. As far as a hard seltzer, I'm not a hard seltzer drinker, but this is good. I think it's pretty tasty. It is a little sweet, but I think it's a pleasant flavor overall. But yeah, there's no tequila flavor in it, obviously. And it does taste like lemon candy and not really lime at all. Lemon candy, yeah. Does it say lime? This is so weird. It says tangy lemon lime, naturally flavored with other natural flavors. It tastes almost like a watered down sprite. Almost like a watered down sprite. Wait until you try the pineapple. This is a classic example of something tasting like pineapple candy and not pineapple. Hey, are you slamming ahead of us right now? We're taking our time and really analyzing. We got a lot of things to get through, baby. There are a lot of cans on the table right now. The Topo Chico Exotic Pineapple is one that I heard a lot of people particularly like out of the variety pack. Like lots of seltzers. I like this. This brand is not available individually. You just have to buy the variety pack. Apparently, lots of people are just okay with that. It's always been one of the- Is that like everybody has to buy the Sam 12 pack to get the one bottle of old Fezzi with? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I've heard stories of people- They really ought to put this chocolate porter in six-packs. Yeah. Their garage fridges are just full of the rejected seltzer flavors. All the cherry wheat. It just makes me laugh that people want to keep buying these varieties just because they like some or half. I don't know. But anyway, pineapple is one that people like. This reminds me of those Dum Dum suckers. Yeah. Nailed it. Yeah. Well, I mean, they nailed it. It's called exotic pineapple, which I didn't realize Dum Dum pineapple were so exotic before, but they definitely are. Only exotic when they're ending the pineapple run and they start up the root beer run and you get a weird sweetness in there. So the other thing that ranch water makes me think of is like farm runoff. And that's not exactly pleasant. Go back to your original cocktail and remember what tequila and lime and sparkling water tastes like. I kind of feel bad for accusing this of being flavorless earlier. This is quite delicious by comparison. Yeah, it's way more flavor packed than the hard seltzer. But to be fair, Topo Chico is saying hard seltzer and not ranch water. Right. All right. Well, Topo Chico, not bad. And for hard seltzers, I think they're some of the more pleasant hard seltzers I've had personally. They're less cloyingly sweet. Yeah, I agree. I've heard anecdotally people who say they were normally white cloud drinkers who are now drinking Topo Chico. So yeah, I think there's some similarities from what people are looking for and that's fruit flavors that are candy-esque. Top-notch marketing play Coca-Cola. So let's try a Ranch Water branded product here. So this is... Original Texas recipe. Texas Ranch Water Company Ranch Water. So this stuff is 5% ABV. The alcohol is made from cane sugar and blue agave. It has 100 calories, 2 grams of sugar, 2 carbs, and 30 milligrams of sodium. The juice... That's a lot of sodium. Juice is real juice. Yeah, so twice the sodium of the Topo Chico hard seltzer. But the juice is real and it uses natural flavors. Okay, point of order. Pat and I are rinsing our glasses with the Ranch Water branded Ranch Water to get the pineapple flavor out of our glasses. Gotcha. This is certainly more flavorful than the Lemon Lime Topo Chico, I think. I agree. And it's more tequila-esque. Yeah. It's definitely more of a candied lime than a fresh lime. Oh, it's Rancho La Gloria brand. What? What is that? Maybe that's the tequila they're using. We carry Rancho La Gloria canned cocktails, and bottled, they have the super sugar bomb, premixed margaritas with all the fruit flavors. Oh, you got super worked up there for a second. Huh. All it says is there on the one random little bottom corner of the can. Maybe that's the tequila that they use? Yeah, it's got to be. 100 percent blue. Well, it doesn't say tequila. It just says made with 100 percent blue agave and cane sugar. So this was never a tequila. It was never distilled. No, it's just under the umbrella of the Rancho La Gloria family. Yeah. It is made in Mexico. Why is it called Texas Ranch Water Company then? Because Greg has angry questions right now. Because ranch water is a Texas creation that uses a Mexican liquor. It's a Texas thing. It uses not only tequila, but also a Mexican sparkling water. So this is fine, I guess. It's still no traditional ranch water. I don't care for the aftertaste. It grows and it hits you right here. It's probably, actually, I was saying I wanted some salinity in this other one. It's probably the salt, but it just rests right back here in the salivary gland part of my palate. Because of the sweetness here, this reminds me of a sparkling margarita versus ranch water. Yeah, but if you got a sparkling margarita that tasted like this, you'd be like, hey, where's the margarita part? Yeah, where's the tequila? It's got some agave flavor, but it's lacking the tequila flavor, if that makes sense. Nope. Yeah, no, I hear you. Well, yeah, there's no tequila in there. All right, let's try their grapefruit ranch water, which I would argue they probably could have just called this paloma. Not to be confused with the paloma. It just smells like every other grapefruit hard seltzer. It's different. It tastes different for sure. You get the agave on this. Yeah, it tastes salty. You get the agave on this for sure. I don't mind this one. I think this is pretty good. It's better than the first one, yeah. If you blinded people on this one, not the lime one, I think people might be fooled into thinking there is tequila in this. Nah, nah. Nah. Here's the other thing. I've been drinking a lot of Palomas, including last night, with the fever tree grapefruit, which is so flavorful. You can pour it like half and half. It's delicious. You can make it a stiffer drink, and it doesn't have to be like, it still gives it a refreshing quality. Well, I would say that you're not only the high octane of your Paloma aside, you're using quite quality ingredients and fever tree. Most people when they think of Palomas, think of squirt and tequila. Well, that's most people's fault. This to me tastes a lot like squirt, with a very subtle amount of agave flavor. But if you have this with squirt, like next to it, you would be like, wow, the squirt is sure is sweet. The squirt sure is full of flavor. Like these are all just so dial back. OK, I'm going to get my old man griping out of the way right now. Right now. Sorry, people. Listen to me. When I first tried one of these, Jeff brought a can in one of our liquor buyers, brought a can into my office and he was like, you got to try this. And I tried it and he was like, what do you think? And I was like, nothing. This is nothing. This tastes like nothing. How did we get to this point? Obviously, it doesn't taste like nothing. It tastes like a little bit of lime and a slight minerality in a sparkling water. How did we get to a point where this is drinking? Like, I don't know, when I was a kid, drinking was something that like, you know, the- Hard-nosed dock workers did exclusively? The gum chute, the hard-boiled detective did. Like, he pulled the bottle of, like, you know, dant out of his desk and snuck one or, you know, whatever. Kids don't do that anymore, Greg. Nobody rustles up to a bar and orders a shot of whiskey and says, leave the bottle anymore, Greg. Right, right, right. But it doesn't- it tastes like anything. It's nothing. It's sparkling water. It tastes like squirt and kids know it. Twenty-one-year-olds, I keep saying kids, young, new drinkers who a lot of this is marketed to, they know what pop tastes like. They know, you know, what candy and slurpees and energy drinks and- But this isn't sweet. And I think this- you're right in terms of palates in general, but this is speaking to someone who wants something a little more dry and clean. Yeah. See also our friend's notes about Topo Chico, the brand, at the beginning. They're looking for something that's like light and fresh and not overwhelmingly sweet, not cloying, but also like no challenge. No- there's nothing interesting here. So it doesn't taste bad. None of these taste bad. It's not your cup of tea because you find it boring. Come on, picture a 101 degree humid July day. These things are awesome. If a great bottle of Bordeaux is a novel, and if like a really interesting Mezcal is like a Citizen Kane or something, this is like a TikTok video of a dog pulling a plant on a skateboard. Again, Greg, let's not expect these to swing out of their weight class. They're trying to be hard selsers. It's utterly absurd to compare this to Bordeaux or Mezcal. Yeah, but even like Barefoot Merlot is like an infomercial, you know? Where it's like, do your laundry faster or something. This is literally alcoholic water with some flavoring at it. That's it. You're overthinking this. That's it. You're overcomparing this and overanalyzing this. You're right. You're overanalyzing this. Far too high of standards. Why don't we do the Cantina, yeah? Tequila soda? Yeah, we'll do the Cantina. Specifically, he calls it out as ranch water, tequila soda. Now, if this doesn't have an actual tequila flavor to it, boy, am I going to blow my top. There will be alarm bells, right? I'm kidding, I won't actually care. Oh, it does. Well, it's got certainly an aroma to it. It smells like macaroni. Macaroni? Yeah, it smells like macaroni and cheese. Have you ever had macaroni and cheese? Yeah, but higher up. Dude, it smells like boiled pasta. Then the cheap kind that comes, the store brand. Well, it tastes like lime soda. I'm getting a kick out of his description there. I was going to ask if he was having a stroke, but I actually see what he's getting at there. You see what I'm talking about? Yeah, that's weird. Thanks for putting that in our minds. Not the orange powder stuff, it's the noodles in the box. It's the noodles boiling. Boiling noodles. Well, so under that is some. I don't think this is terrible, but it's not good. The finish is a little weird. It tastes like watermelon rind. That's it. It does taste like watermelon rind. It has a rubber like new shoe flavor. I don't get the rubber. I definitely get the watermelon rind. I don't find it offensive, but it's fine though. We're saying all these bad things, but it's okay. Yeah, it's fine. I mean, it's right in line in intensity as the rest of these and the flavors. Yeah, intensity being low and boring. Well, yeah. Well, it sure tastes more like tequila since it actually has tequila. It does. Maybe that's it. It tastes like lousy tequila to a very slight degree. Even though we're saying all these weird things, this is the one that is getting me actually interested. I can't explain it. It's like if you smell your knee or something. I mean, to put this one in perspective, 99 calories, 1 gram carb, 0 sugar. Not bad. Now, they don't actually put the stats on there like the waters do. Grapefruit, the plum. Raj, did I give you the grapefruit plum when I was there? Yeah. Okay. Oh, it smells like squirt. This is also 99 calories, 1 gram carb, 0 sugars. Straight up squirt. This has less tequila flavor to it. Less flavor overall. This is just alcoholic squirt. Yeah. But somehow finishes dry. The grapefruit aroma is real nice on it. It is. It's a nice grapefruit. It reminds me of a very fresh grapefruit smell. I've had much worse grapefruit seltzers. Oh, yeah. Like a grapefruit at the other end of the hallway. That's pretty good. I don't mind it. A little bit of weirdness on the finish. It reminds me of those Pilates beers where- Oh, yeah, yeah. People- There are a couple of people at the store who said they reminded them of how raw chicken smells. I remember thinking that was very odd, but I got where they're coming from. I don't know what you're talking about. Of course, I haven't smelled the raw chicken in 25 years. Least vegetarian over here. I almost think this has a guava- Sorry, I'm getting chicken smelling. A guava flavor on the finish. I could see that. They add it, because it says grapefruit and orange flavors, so- Interesting. I don't know what they're getting at with the flavorings here, but it seems like a little more than just grapefruit. I like this. I would drink this. I'd drink it too. Yes, it's pretty good. I would drink this. There's no effort involved. It's demonstrably better than their ranch water flavor. Yes, I feel it's like the same thing with the Texas ranch water. I think the grapefruit is better. Going back to my original, that's what tequila tastes like. The homemade one is still rocking some sweet tequila flavor. What we have here, I have the Onda Sparkling Tequilas, which are, we have a lime and a blood orange. And they have a couple of new flavors coming in the store soon, in a variety pack. But right now, we have the lime and the blood orange. They both advertise 100 calories, 5% alcohol. Definitely going after more of the wellness crowd. One gram carbohydrates. All right, which one first, bro? Onda Sparkling Tequila Lime. Onda? Onda? Onda? Oh yeah. Onda? What is it? Onda? Onda? I don't know. This is the best one so far. Yeah, it is. This one is. Well, yeah, because it's tequila. This is good. Now, we've been pushing these ones because when we tasted a 100 canned cocktails in one long all-day session, all the liquor buyers got together, we tasted all these things, and this is one of the handful that we were like, yeah, we'll bring these in I wanted to record it. They wouldn't let me. It was a lot of spitting and a lot of swearing. This is so good. Well, it's not so good, but this is less boring. For a canned sparkling tequila, this is pretty damn good. Even sparkling tequila is a misnomer. Made with blanco tequila, zero sugar, real legit juice, it says. It says legit. Lime and tequila. It says the word legit. Yeah, it does say legit. 100 calories, zero carbs, zero sugar. Yeah. Not bad. That's a sell point. The only thing that someone might read is off-putting here is because there's no sugar, it has a bitterness. It's a slight bitterness, but it lingers and it lingers and it lingers on the palate like a natural lime juice actually would. Yeah. It's pretty good. I'm pretty impressed with that. So question guys, as we've been doing this, do you think this product is going to consider rebranding as Ranch Water? Because I think they could, right? I think they could. If Ranch Water gained such a critical mass of popularity, I could see it. But I think it's a long way off from that, honestly. I know there's industry rags and a lot of people paying attention in beer. Certainly, they're like, Ranch Water is going to be the next thing. And I can see it. I really can. But I think it's going to be a while before companies totally pivot on their brand. It was even in Adweek. Really? Adweek ran a thing that said Ranch Water is the drink of the summer. Really? Yeah. So that's mainstream. That is. That's the industry rags that we read. Yeah. Wow. Huh. Wonders never cease, gentlemen. All right. Let's check out the grapefruit. I don't like this one. So I think it has the grapefruit nose, the kind of squirt grapefruit nose. It's flavorless though. But then it has kind of like a salty quality. It's going to get bleeped, Roger. It's fine. Yeah. This has what I was referring to before as the raw chicken smell that's kind of off putting. Oh, maybe. I don't mind this at all. I think it's raw chicken is salty. Jim, please bleep. Just that part. Yeah, that one's kind of a swing and a miss. Sorry. It's like a little bit of BO or like a sweaty. Yeah, sweaty. I disagree. I like this one, but the lime was much better for sure. It's probably like a more true to flavor grapefruit versus some of these others because it's not sweet like a grapefruit soda or grapefruit candy. But I don't know that it makes a good drink. Yeah, but there's a tanginess here that's you hit on it in very colorful ways. It's kind of bizarre. Like a boot after an afternoon of skiing. Okay, what's next? Those smell. Greg and I trying blood orange. Blood orange? Onda. I like that they have a faint color that you can tell. It's got a bit of juice at it. I'm so glad we smelled this. It smells like sweet tarts. It smells janky. Really messy. Really messed up. Whatever. It's fine. It's not as good as the lime. The lime is still the best one. This is so bright by comparison. It's like a powdery fruit candy. Yeah, I got that. If they totally took a packet of sweet tarts, crunched them up in a hammer, rolled them open and dropped one into each batch. Yeah, they stepped on a bag of runts. Yeah, totally. Would not drink. Mamitas. Mamitas. Tequila and soda, lime. So it's a line of tequila sodas. We got a few different flavors and a variety pack. We're gonna taste the lime, the paloma and the pineapple because that mixes with what we tasted on the other guy's stuff. There's no nose. Where's it at? Where you at, Mamitas? Yeah, this is empty, totally empty. It's void of flavor. That's so weird. Yeah, there's no nose at all. It's like smelling club soda. It is. Oh, it's got a weird saltiness. Guys, I love my job sometimes. This is 95 calories, gluten free, 1.4 grams of sugar, 5% alcohol. What were you saying, Greg, about certain things tasting like nothing? Green apple Jolly Rancher. A little bit, yeah. But then it turns more citric on the back end, but salty. Yeah, not a fan. Not really willing to have that in my mouth much longer. What do you think, Roger? Bizarrely muted flavors. Yeah. Even the carb level is strangely still, but I really don't get much lime. I see what Greg's saying with apple, but I don't really taste tequila at all. For this being made with real tequila, it's bizarre. Yeah, there's nothing there. On your car stereo, if you turn your bass and treble down, and just turn the mids all the way up, that's what this tastes like. Like Roger's saying that there's an absence of flavors, but it's there. It's just in the wrong bandwidth. I'd also like to point out that the sodium content is suspiciously absent. These are salty. Yeah. Unfortunately, I did not care for that. All right. Should we try the Paloma? Yeah. I like the cans. Cans are pretty. Yeah, they're cute. This smells like lawnmower, freshly cut grass, and then nothing. Yeah. These are notably less intense, and just absence of everything compared to these Ondas. Yeah. Wow. How do they make it smell like nothing? There must be some aromatic. They filter the hell out of it. They filter it through carbon and stuff to make it clear, and yeah, they filter the hell out of it. This isn't bad. It's just so muted. It's just so muted. This is sparkling tequila sodas for the hard seltzer crowd, I would say. Yeah. Like if you like grapefruit hard seltzer but you wish it had a little bit more interesting character to it, like this is a step up from the grapefruit hard seltzers, but it's certainly not like the sparkling tequilas that we had before. A whisper of flavor. I would take it one step further. I would say this is going to appeal to people who like grapefruit LaCroix, not people who like grapefruit hard seltzer, because there's not much sweetness here. No, yeah, it is bone dry. I'm going to point out also that at the finish. This is 0.9 grams of sugar. After very little grapefruit flavor, it finishes on this weird citric acidity. Yeah. And it just catches in the back of my palate, like the top of my throat. I kind of like that acidity, though, on the finish. You like that feeling? I mean, it's a visceral feeling. It's like, I don't know, it's almost like, oh, I need another sip. It literally makes you want to drink more. It makes you thirsty. Maybe it's a trick, like how they figured out. That is drying my mouth out. Like mouth crunch of Doritos, that makes you want to eat another Dorito or Cheeto. Now they're engineered. The crunch ability of Oreos, food scientists everywhere. Okay, Mamitas Pineapple. This one's got the most sugar, 1.3 grams of sugar. Therefore, we're over two grams of carbs here now. Familiar Pineapple Candy Nose right here. It's like they got the same flavoring from the same company. Oh, for sure. I mean, there's tons of artificial flavoring companies out there. Once again, what are we tasting? We're tasting, I just went back into this mode again. We're tasting sparkling water with flavoring and alcohol added. Yeah. So we're just like, when we taste a beer, we're like, what did the brewer do? We taste the wine, the land of the grapes. Taste the distillery, like the barrel and the grain source. Here, we're tasting like the chemistry. We're tasting the food science and it's nothing. We're tasting nothing. Well, sometimes you need a little nothing. People sometimes like that if they just don't want to think about that hard about what they're enjoying and they just want to be refreshed. You're with a bunch of people having a barbecue in the backyard and you don't want to have to dissect some beer or bourbon or something like this. I know you're right, but this is literally the Pepsi Challenge. Here, so- A Pepsi. Why don't we just do a Pepsi episode? I would suggest you try this next to the Topo Chico pineapple because they're quite different. Are they really different? Yeah, the Topo Chico one I think is a lot better. Good idea. I don't have enough glasses. I mean, not a ton better, but I slightly prefer better. I mean, not a ton better. That's way better. Well, it's a little better. I think the aroma is nicer. Oh, yeah, Topo Chico is way better. There's more bubble gum and it's more refined. It is definitely more grapey sweetness. Yeah, more sweetness on the palate, but overall though more pleasant front to back. It's brighter and then it cleans up more. Way more realistic and less. It makes the Mamita seem almost cloying, which is funny since it doesn't have a lot of sugar, but. I agree. All right, whatever we said. Mamita has less sugar than the Topo Chico. The Topo Chico pineapple has 2 grams sugar, and Mamita's 1.3. Interesting. That's weird. Yeah. It's way more complex. In marginally complex, but okay. Suck it, Mamitas. A classic drink that is kind of fallen by the wayside is a TNT, and no, I am not talking about Tankeray and Tonic. No, you're talking about one of your 86 favorite ACDC songs? You're so true. This guy loves ACDC. So next time I'm listening to ACDC Live at Donington, I'm going to be drinking a tequila and tonic while I do so, and it's a pretty awesome drink. Better than ranch water? It's more like a tall margarita. Because it has the sweetness, but then it has the bitterness to balance and not make it seem cloying. So did you put lime in there? Yep. That sounds better than this. Tonic water actually has a flavor. Look how offended he got. Wait a minute, this was an option? That's what I'm doing. That sounds better than this. Let's see if we can tag that onto this and have something good. Oh man. That's hilarious. You know what people like? They like drinking but not tasting anything. Yeah. Again, tonic is an adult flavor, Greg. A lot of people don't like that it has that itchy bitterness. If you're okay with that, yeah, try tequila and tonic. You'll love it, Greg. You love tonic, you love bitter things, and you love tequila. I added some Topo Chico to the TNT and it's crazy dry now. It's very interesting. You literally watered down your cocktail. Yeah, but it's crazy. That offends Greg on a visceral level. The minerality of the Topo Chico must have just completely killed any semblance of sweetness from the tonic to the point of like, it's almost aggressive, but it's good. Not what I expected though. Should we get a really nice tequila and make a high-end ranch water? I feel like I deserve a high-end ranch water after this, but I also wonder about the tequila and tonic and if that's a better, more complex angle. I don't know. What do you think, Roger? Either way, I think maybe the tonic might be more interesting for the viewers. You get the tonic. I'll get the tequila. All right. Sounded like a Billy Joel song for a minute. You get the tonic, I'll get the tequila. As per Roger's suggestion, Pat and I are making a Clark & Sheffield tonic, tequila and tonic. With a lot of lime. This was a juicy lime. I squeezed half of it and there's a lot of lime juice in there. Was that one of my limes or one of yours? I don't know. Thank you. I didn't label them. I think you got the juicy half. Oh, this is better. There's some bitterness. I normally make margaritas with repos or nejos because it's what I have in my house and they're really good. Repos is where I go with it. Yeah, but this Blanco has made a more flavorful tequila and tonic for sure. Okay, this is the second best drink that I had today. Was the best one the original ranch water? Yeah, the ranch water. The homemade ranch water was good. With Clark & Sheffield tequila and some lime and some Topo Chico. My takeaway today is that making your own ranch water is clearly the most flavorful and therefore the best. The Topo Chico lime was pretty decent. The Onda lime, I think, was better. That was my winner. But it was actual tequila. It's not just seltzer water the way the Topo Chico is. The Topo Chico lime just tastes like hard seltzer. I would say arguably the Texas ranch water company. Yeah, the Texas ranch water was a little better. The Cantina ranch water, pretty flavorless. It was terrible. The Texas ranch water, decent. Homemade, obviously the best. Cantina Paloma, though, no slouch. Cantina Paloma was pretty good. So I think my takeaway is the Palomas or the grapefruit versus the ranch water or lime, I would go with the grapefruit every day. You just like grapefruit more, though, I think. Yeah, probably. And you make Palomas and enjoy Palomas more. Indeed. Yeah, maybe wrong. But yeah, I just I like the I like tequila and tonic. That's normal. How many other people in the world have a job where they can just like sit at a table littered with lime, lime peels and open tequila bottles and they're like, we do it for the people so they don't have to. We do it for the cause. So I still have some Paloma here and I also have the Clark & Sheffield tequila and tonic. Which Paloma do you have? The very first one. Oh, the Cantina. Although there's a lot of melted ice in it at this point. Okay. So we made a tequila and tonic with Clark & Sheffield tequila, Fever Tree Premium Indian Tonic Water and a fresh lime. It's really good. It's really good. I didn't think I was going to like tequila and tonic this much, but this is actually good. And I like that it has this herbaceous bitterness on the finish and it really keeps it from, I don't know, it's just great. It keeps it from being a little too sweet. It flirts with getting sweet and then it gets a little herbal spicy kick at the finish. That could be a little bit of sweetness from the tonic and the tonic bitterness, the herbal bitterness from the tonic and the lime bitterness from the tonic. There's definitely like a citric bitterness on the finish too. And the tequila just stays out of the way. It's a nice mellow, you know, it has some tequila flavor, but it's not. It kind of reminds me almost because of that herbaceousness of some mezcal, like without the smoke. I can see that. I bet this would be good with mezcal. I didn't want to say it and like get the paddle fired up, but a little bit of smoking complexity on the ranch water cocktail would actually bring a pretty cool dimension to it. You'd have to use a pretty mild mezcal, I think though. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, better than seltzer? Is that the angle here? Yeah, I think so. I mean, overall, I would reach for the ranch water over the standard hard seltzer. Yeah. Whether it's the Texas ranch water. I mean, well, the Cantina ranch water was kind of lame, but the Cantina Paloma was good. So I don't know what this taught me. This taught me that ranch water is just a slightly more flavorful seltzer, but honestly, making your own ranch water is obviously superior. And the sparkling tequila cocktails across the board were a little more flavorful than the standard sparkling water. Not the Mamitas, but the Ondas were far better than any hard seltzer we have. What do I take away from this? I don't know. The ranch water that I made, I'm not going to lie, it has four to five times the alcohol of any of these. Yeah. And that's just because I like tequila, I mixed it a little bit stronger. And that's not what you're going to get from the can. So, making it yourself, you can control those factors, right? Yeah, we established that, right? You can play around with this cocktail for how simple it is. You can add your own little accents. You could put, you know, tahini in it, you could put, you could rim the glass with, with, you know, something, you could, I mean, people do all sorts of stuff. They put hot sauce in it. Yeah, hot sauce and ranch water. I know I thought about it, because I- Why didn't you, why did you bring this up now? Dude, in my office, I've got two, I've got a habanero hot sauce. You're a fat white guy, you got hot sauce in your office. Of course. If I don't want to have to mess around with mixing drinks in my basement and carrying them around, and I'm in the, you know, I just have a fridge full of beers, this might be a very easy way to go. Yeah. Very easy way to go. I think the most important takeaway here is that you can't expect too much out of this. It is what it is. It's trying to be a super refreshing, uncomplicated drink. That's true. Just like when you mix one, it's uncomplicated. The ones that are pre-mixed for you aren't that complicated either. So when you're looking for something when it's really hot out and you want something refreshing, this is a nice alternative to your typical salsers. Totally. All right, guys. Hey, if you enjoyed this, get into Binny's and buy some ranch water. Also, if you enjoyed this, leave a review on the podcast platform or of your choice. Let's be serious. Leave a review on iTunes. It's on the Apple Podcast. It's what we really need. So help us out. Give us five stars on Apple. Tell your mom about the show. YouTube music doesn't even have reviews on podcasts. Really? Thanks, YouTube. Thanks, Google. Does Amazon? We're on Amazon podcast now. Do they have reviews? I don't know. Your brother is the only person. I think my brother is literally the only person who has downloaded it on Amazon. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I have stats. It doesn't even show up on the stats. So he probably doesn't even listen to us. He probably listened once and was like, I don't know why I kept asking for this. Yeah, he's like, what an a**hole my brother. Jim Brophy, if you're listening, thanks. Okay. What I'm trying to say is, thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We'll be back in your feed next week with, I don't know, red burgundy or some a**hole. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Pat. And I'm Roger. Keep tasting. Oh, s**t, stole it from you. Oh, eat it. Keep tasting. Seriously, leave us a review, otherwise we're going to have to get an ED medicine sponsor for this podcast. The post office needs podcasters to talk up the non-post office post office. Buy a mattress, it comes in a box.