Back to Cool School

Guest Column – Chris Losh.  Was it really 20 years ago that the ultimate in chic was a bottle of Sol with a wedge of lime stuffed in the top?  Want to know how cool you are?

Want to know how cool you are? Okay, which of the following do you drink on a regular basis: Stella, Hoegaarden, Cobra, Asahi, Tiger Beer, Guinness, Havana Club and Campari? If, like me, your answer was somewhere between nought and one and you were looking vainly for the wines and whiskies, then, like me, you are not cool. It’s official.

These drinks brands were all included in some information I was sent before Christmas, listing the coolest brands in Britain – a selection put together by fashion and media types who, judging by their photos, are far too cool either to shave or to shop at M&S. And while I had, hearteningly, at least heard of most of the brands they picked out, the likes of Lulu Guinness (handbags), Gizmondo (electronic stuff) and Fisher and Paykel (dishwashers) drew a total blank – other than the residual question of how on earth a dishwasher can be cool.

However, putting aside my stylistic inadequacies (being 38 years old and living in Shoreham-by-Sea, it’s a bit much expecting me to have heard of Buddhistpunk), it did raise an interesting issue: namely, what makes a drink cool?

Obviously, judging from the super chi-chi panel’s choices, it helps to be a) a beer and b) foreign, but I have to say I found their choices puzzling. I mean, Stella, for gawd’s sake? It tastes like toes and is drunk by 18-year-old Herberts. And, much as I like Campari, I can’t remember the last time I ever saw anyone actually order one, still less drink it.

But that’s the thing with coolness – if people like me do it or have heard of it, by definition it can’t be cool. Plus it’s subjective enough to be open to question, and ephemeral enough to carry implicit embarrassment. Was it really 20 years ago that the ultimate in chic was a bottle of Sol with a wedge of lime stuffed in the top? There are plenty of readers of this magazine who, if they have any shame at all, should be blushing at the memory of adding items from Sainsbury’s fruit section to bottles of carbonated urine. You know who you are.

Coolness, though, is nothing if not surprising. I mean, who could ever have predicted the cultural paradox that was Newcastle Brown’s sell-out success in San Francisco a few years back? An equivalent here might be the vodka/Red Bull combo of the late 1990s. What began as a 240-volt pick-me-up for city types was adopted by club culture and then made its way into the mainstream – where it abruptly stopped being cool and became popular instead. The same thing happened with the Mojito.

Once a product becomes mainstream, it is no longer cool. There are billions of examples of this, from Burberry through to Stella Artois (which is why I don’t agree with the beautiful people’s list), that once the wrong people are associated with a product, whether it’s the great unwashed or a credibility-free supermodel, that product’s coolness is history. Unless, of course, as a brand it’s good enough in its own right to be able to withstand temporary highs and lows in hipness. Cristal, for instance, is a bit of a footballers’ Champagne, where, say, Krug and Dom Pérignon aren’t; but Cristal was famous among the cognoscenti long before the centre halves of the Premiership got hold of it and will continue to be so long after they’ve moved into cosy jobs with the BBC. Guinness, too, seems to be perennially acceptable, largely but not solely due to its iconic advertising. 

The perennial ability of a quality product to sell itself is the reason why so many mid- to long-term drinks trends in the spirit world start in bars, where mixologists are always looking for something good but different to get their creative juices flowing.

In the neutral 1990s it was vodka; now flavour is back, and so are bourbon and rum.

Which brings me to two final conclusions: firstly, you can’t price promote and be cool (viz the shot credibility of Aussie wine and blended Scotch); and finally, perhaps most importantly of all, all coolness is cyclical. Just take a look at what’s hot at the moment: rosé, single malt and rum; even gin is reckoned to be on the verge of a major comeback, while I’ve heard that Fino Sherry is going loco in New York. Whatever next? Port and lemon? Spam? Black Tower?

All I know is that it won’t be Campari. That’s just so last year dahling… 

db March 2006