Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Silver and Jack Daniels Hard Cola have some new company with a difference in the supermarket beer cooler.
Beam and Cola is the first of the group to be made with real distilled spirits. In this case, it's a belt of Jim Beam bourbon.
Despite their hard-liquor-sounding names, the rest are flavored malt beverages. That makes them part of the fast-growing malt-ernative family that includes wine coolers and drinks such as Zima.
Marketers have been attracted to malt-ernatives because they extend liquor store brands to bottled drinks that the law allows in supermarkets and convenience stores. It also steers them around TV network bans on hard liquor ads.
Not that it matters. Beam surveys found that 68 percent of adults mistakenly think malt-ernatives, which can be advertised on the networks, are made with whiskey, rum or vodka.
"We purposely held off jumping into malt-ernatives because we didn't think people would buy Beam and Cola if there really was no Jim Beam in it," said Kelly Hopf, a spokeswoman for Jim Beam Brands Co., a unit of Fortune Brands LLC, which also owns DeKuyper cordials, Titlest golf balls and Moen plumbing fixtures.
At 5 percent alcohol, Beam and Cola comes in six-packs that retail for $8.99, about $2 more than malt rivals. Beam handlers are launching the drink in seven states this month including Florida, the top-ranked state for the bourbon made in Clermont, Ky. Actually, Beam and Cola has been sold in Australia for more than a decade where its 6 percent share of the alcoholic beverage market trails only two beers.
Beam is backing the launch with ads touting the fact the drink has only two ingredients.
While the bourbon is real Jim Beam, the cola is neither Coke nor Pepsi.
"It's a generic cola we make ourselves," Hopf said.
