Spirits that Twitter

In the spirit of my last two posts, here is a quick overview of the liquor brands that use Twitter. For the most part, the well established brands are sitting on the sidelines while the younger upstarts figure out how to gain traction via this nascent channel.

• @BaconVodka: Living up to its porcine name, Bakon Vodka provides tasty drink recipes while keeping their 2,055 followers informed on where and when they can buy this product.
• @MR1X supports a relatively new line extension from Belvedere Vodka that is imbued with the lifestyle of Parisian graffiti artist Andre. With over 880 followers, the tweets track Andre’s world travels and endless nightlife. MR1X aggressive use of Twitter, Flickr and YouTube may make it the first generation of truly social media-driven spirits.
• @Belvedere_Vodka keeps their 539 followers buzzed with a steady stream of summer drink recipes and other self-promotions.
• @DonCenobio: This tequila brand has about 500 followers and focuses on brand-related event activity.
• @Blackbottle: This whisky brand enthusiastically covered their appearance at the Taste of London for its 353 followers which may be just enough for them.
• @CieloTequila: This Mexican based tequila has 300+followers and claims to be “the smoothest tequila on the market” but with no events listed it would be hard for anyone to know since it hasn’t updated its page in over a month.
• @NudeVodka09: This scantily veiled brand keeps its 300+ followers updated on events and new concoctions. They seemed to be more engaged than most as many of their posts are fan offered thank you’s.
• @RepublicTequila: By Texans for Texans, this brand seem to focus solely on The Lone Star state reporting on local promotions for its 230+ long horned followers.
• @SoloranzoTkila: …..Tkila…..get it? The text-friendly name is about all this tequila twitter page has to offer its 178 followers unless they’re into historical facts about tequila, such as one of its most recent posts “For many years it was known as “mezcal wine” or “mezcal tequila,” since mezcal or mexcal is another Nahuatl term for agave.”
• @PinkyVodka: Despite this vodka’s small following (only 91), their enthusiastic self-promotion of the “world’s most beautiful vodka” and constant reminders of Pinky-drink ideas lets one know how to get and what to do with this product.
• @Mragave: After reading this site’s post you will know how strong this tequila is- but not much else. With a mere 37 followers, this brand claims to be more popular in “Agave Friendliest States” like CA, TX,NY, IL,FL,AZ, and CO.

Noticeably absent from this list are any Diageo mega-brands like Smirnoff, J&B, Captain Morgan and Johnnie Walker. Since there is no way currently to “age gate” your Twitter followers, perhaps they are simply electing to “keep on walking” rather than risk the potential wrath of watchdog groups. Given the relatively small size of the followings of other spirit brands, at the moment being “ready to Tangueray” need not include tweets.