2018: The Summer of Zima

If you were of legal drinking age in the mid-90s -- or if you weren't of legal drinking age, but drank anyway -- you probably remember Zima drifting through popular culture for a few years.

Yeah, you remember Zima...that clear, wine-cooler type beverage marketed in the wake of the early 90s "clear beverage" fascination and right around the time of "ice" beers. What was the 90s fascination with "ice brewing," by the way?

Zima, as it's creators probably imagined it, was best drunk in bars in Miami with sleek glass counter-tops, lots of neon lighting, and people who wore "power suits" with shoulder pads. Come to think of it, Zima was probably best drank in the 80s.

What actually happened was Zima ended up in the hands of either a.) women who did not like to drink, or b.) fascinated high school kids who didn't know better and quickly found out what the word "hangover" actually meant. Therefore, I think it's oddly fitting that Zima is back on the shelves, precisely when those teenagers are now in their late 30s and 40s and probably willing to at least try Zima again, if for nothing else than the 90s kitsch value. How do I know all this? You guessed it...I was once one of those teenagers.

After my friends and I had our initial run with Zima -- a campout on which at least one of us puked -- I don't think any of us every tried Zima again. I personally don't remember thinking it was that bad, but I also didn't remember thinking there was anything about it that made it preferable to Natural Ice, our beverage of choice in those days.

Oh how the tables have turned.

Randomly, at a barbecue the other day, I reached into the cooler and pulled out a chilled bottle of Zima. For a moment I thought I was the victim of a time warp. "Zima? Whaaat? They still sell this stuff? But...why?"

Actually, Zima is back after disappearing for about 10 years (apparently the brand survived all the way until 2008, a fact which absolutely blows my mind) for a "limited release" that has lasted about a year now.

While Zima may have carried a stigma in the 90s as a "girly" beverage and one that was, basically, not very cool, frankly I'm at an age and a comfort level with my masculinity in which I can conclusively say Zima is pretty damned awesome.

I still can't recommend drinking six Zima's in two hours, any more than I could have recommended that in the 90s. In fact, that was probably the problem a lot of drinkers encountered; you can't really binge drink Zima. But on a hot summer night a couple frosty Zima's really hits the spot in some special way that beer just doesn't. It's like a combination of a glass of sparkling wine and a gin and tonic. Crisp, tangy, light, refreshing.

Therfore, I have declared 2018 the Summer of Zima. What that means is I will be drinking a lot of it, and I will also be trying (probably in vain) to convince my friends and associates of Zima's merits, to probably limited success...oddly, just like this eccentric beverage itself.