Ranking each flavor of NÜTRL, the Häagen-Dazs of hard seltzers
By which I mean the name is vaguely Danish and the stuff inside is good.
Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. 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.
NÜTRL is pronounced like “neutral.” It uses an umlaut because its alcohol comes from the exotic land of British Columbia, Canada. This is all very stupid (not you, Canada, you’re lovely except for the home prices), but you need a hook to stand out in a crowded shelf space.
In that regard, NÜTRL has been a success. It’s slowly grown in stature, eventually landing alongside White Claw, High Noon and Truly when it comes to national seltzer brands. This makes sense; it’s a perfectly solid entry in a vast competition with a low bar of entry. If you’ve got bubbles, vodka and enough low-calorie flavor to make you forget about that vodka, you’re good to go.
That’s a bit of a spoiler for a review like this, but the fact remains just about any widely distributed hard seltzer is gonna hit that standard of drinkability (White Claw flirts with it, but gets a pass for being the first in the pool). NÜTRL’s offerings run a spectrum of quality. Some are undeniable hits. Some are misses that may only be enjoyed by a narrow audience. I drank a bunch of them and this is how I sorted that rainbow.
This isn’t an exhaustive list of all NÜTRL’s flavors. These are just the core varieties and the brand’s newest offerings, which means we’re getting into lemonades (yay) and cranberry juices (… less yay).