While America was built upon the belief that all men are created equal, that creed is suspended in the liquor cabinet.
Bars apply the caste system when they organize liquor. The higher quality brands are packaged as sports trophies, crowned on the top shelf. Meanwhile, affordable brands languish in nondescript bottles out of sight so that peons like me don't notice we are drinking lighter fluid.
Cheaper brands are adapting to increasingly diversifying consumer tastes by adapting the soft drink strategy of engineering flavored variety.
From key lime vod to bubblegum vod, I present the fruits of the free market. Behold:
Beam, Inc.'s Pinnacle brand of vodka is responsible for double-digit sales growth in just the second quarter of this year alone.WSJ reports:
Even in a fragile economy, U.S. consumers are trading up, with ultra and superpremium spirits growing at volumes well above the market rate, analysts say.
People are buying cool-whip flavored vodka to satisfy their complex culinary standards.
"Premium and above is where we innovate," said Larry Schwartz, Diageo's president of North America. Experimenting around vodka and North American whiskey, such as amaretto-flavored Ciroc and 10-year-old bourbon Bulleit, is driving U.S. growth, he added.
I order Ciroc for its quality (obviously) and because it's sponsored by Diddy.
Last year, Diageo's innovations in North America over the past three years produced nearly $800 million of sales.
It doesn't matter who's selling it to us, America is always looking for the next "new" thing.
"We have pretty much built a billion-dollar business over the last 4½ years on innovation in the U.S.," says Mr. Schwartz.
Billions in sales prove one thing: Americans have quite the sweet tooth.
Some Americans are so desperate for their next buzz, they're now brewing alcohol inside their own stomachs.
