Beverage of the Week: I drank La Croix and vinegar because I don't respect myself
Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Previously, we’ve folded these in to our betting guides, whether that’s been for the NFL slate or a bizarrely successful run through the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
OK. Full disclosure. I started this feature because I wanted to drink a bunch of fine German beers and then talk about fine German beers. While that very much remains in play, my beautiful, pure vision has since been perverted into hard seltzers, cookie liqueurs and a truly unhealthy amount of Coffee-Mate creamers.
But never did I see it getting this far.
Somewhere, somehow, from the dark recesses of TikTok came an ungodly creation. An abomination of ice, seltzer and balsamic vinegar known, for reasons I can only assume are ironic and/or idiotic, as a "healthy Coke."
This disturbs me. Greatly.
My stance on La Croix is that it tastes like someone whispering the description of a soda they had weeks ago. My vinegar usage is limited to steak fries and descaling my coffee maker (different vinegars, but still). Like you, I, at no point, considered pairing the two, just as I'd never considered drinking either on its own.
But, because I drank Utah's dirty sodas, added booze to Utah's dirty sodas and have sipped cookie dough whiskey in the name of science, this duty fell on my shoulders. "Vocation" comes from the Latin "vox," or voice, meant to imply a calling from God. In my case, that voice is filtered through my coworkers, lovingly reaching out to say, "hey dummy, drink this."
So I did. With my head tilted toward the heavens, quietly asking, "why?" I did.
Like last month, when I had to purchase two gallons of coffee creamer in a single trip, I felt weird running this through the checkout line. I fondly remembered the words Ryan Dunn's urgent care doctor gave him after an x-ray showcased a toy car inside his rectum at the end of the first Jackass movie.
"You don't talk to anybody. To your girlfriend, to your boyfriend, to whomever. You don't tell nobody. [My editor] already knows. That's too many people."
But while I can hid that shame from the cashier, I can't expense these drinks I don't want or salad dressing I won't use unless I write about it. Such is the plight of my offseason.
Round 1: Coconut La Croix and balsamic vinegar
Well, the lady in the video has one thing right. This does kinda/sorta look like Coke once you mix it. Granted, a watered-down, flat Coke -- the kind you'd find in an Arby's cup you accidentally left in the car too long.
Given the option, I'd rather take my chances with the watery leftovers. What I hoped was a surprising soda alternative turned out to taste exactly like you'd expect. My fight-or-flight instincts kicked in after one sip. My body reacted like I physically had to remove myself from the taste. My brain, enraged, let me know I'd just taken a large gulp of sunscreen salad dressing.
Worse yet, the carbonation -- THE ONE THING LA CROIX IS GOOD FOR -- winds up muted by the vinegar, which is a wildly stupid sentence to read without context and, in fairness, a mostly dumb one with it. These are, and I cannot stress this enough, two bad tastes that taste awful together. This is the opposite of peanut butter and jelly. I want to find whomever came up with this and ask who hurt them.
I tried adding more seltzer in hopes of balancing this out. Nope! That vinegar is here to stay. It's not even that much vinegar, either -- but it is vinegar, so I don't know what the hell I expected it to taste like.
Well, let's not let the fact this tastes like Satan's bathwater deter me.
Round 2: Berry and balsamic vinegar
La Croix cans, for reasons I don't fully understand, feature the word "innocent!" in bold print right on the front. With the exclamation point and everything. This feels like a tacit admission of guilt -- like they knew this was going to go poorly and wanted to make sure I didn't blame the harmless seltzer. "Oh no, officer, it was all the vinegar's idea! I was coerced into coming along. I HAVE PATTY HEARST SYNDROME. INNOCENT!"
Oh, La Croix, you are not blameless here. You are the getaway driver that carries the acid of weaponized grapes into my stomach. You thought just because you switched from coconut to berry I wouldn't recognize you. YOU FOOL.
Anyway, this is terrible. I cannot imagine how horrible your sense of taste has to be to think this tastes like Coke. Was the woman above's tongue damaged in an extremely localized fire? Did she spend the hour before filming this video absolutely ruining her mouth with Captain Crunch? I do not know, but I would like to think she has a motive for this monstrosity in front of me besides "lying."
My second glass of vinegar water was bad. You may be like, "hey, try adding less balsamic." But, friend, there was maybe half an ounce this time around. La Croix is so bland and tasteless it simply allows the foreign body to run wild and free over it. Berry or coconut, an ounce or half an ounce of vinegar, this all tastes exactly the same: like a punishment for a crime I have yet to commit.
My hopes for the third flavor are quickly fading.
Round 3: Key lime and balsamic vinegar
Every sip tastes like I'm being yelled at. This is the beverage of a post-apocalyptic wasteland where the ICBMs have been launched and the survivors are clinging to whatever scraps of normalcy they can find in the face of nuclear winter. "Here," they say in the dug-out bunker now passing as a public house. "It tastes just like Coke!" You happily oblige, dreaming of a simpler time.
And in the brief second between your brain registering it as poison and your mouth conveying that message, someone clubs you from behind. They steal your socks while you're unconscious. When you wake up, the only thing you're really mad about is how much that drink sucked.
This drink sucks.
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