If this was the year of anything, it's the year of creative and not-so-creative alcohol-based products. You may have heard of Four Loko, the caffeinated alcoholic energy drink that became the subject of bans and dire FDA warnings. Then there was CREAM, the booze-infused whipped topping that our own Dave Lieberman said tasted “like a cross between a can of Reddi-Wip and a can of Aquanet.”
But have you tried Adult Chocolate Milk? I've heard of the product only in passing. I'm sure I saw it from the corner of my eye for $15.99 once at our most dependable liquor purveyor, Hi-Time Wine Cellars in Costa Mesa. But yesterday, I encountered an entire pallet of Adult Chocolate Milk for sale at Costco at the District in Tustin.
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It wasn't hidden in some back corner of the warehouse where the rest of the booze is stored; it was displayed right smack in the front of the store, at the entrance, the first thing you see as you flash your membership card–a major coup for any product that wants to gain acceptance with the masses.
The drink, by the way, has its roots here in O.C., developed by Newport Beach mom named Tracy Reinhardt who mixed up the concoction in her kitchen purportedly after she put her kids to bed. She blurbed about it on her Facebook page, which got her in touch with Nikki Halbur, a former classmate of hers from Santa Ana's Mater Dei High School. Together they refined the formula, then started selling and marketing the stuff to NFL players and R&B stars to gain some street cred. Ginuwine endorses the product.
And for now it can be put in your Costco cart along with that gigantic bale of toilet paper.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.