IN A FOLLOW-UP TO HER ALL NATURAL, ALCOHOL-FREE MIXERS LINE BETTY BUZZ, HOLLYWOOD’S CHEEKY PRINCESS BLAKE LIVELY DEBUTS BETTY BOOZE, A GOURMET LINE OF SPIKED SELTZERS WITH SASS

BY DAN SALAMONE

Among the handful of consistently entertaining pleasures found in social media over the last few years is America’s own version of married royalty: Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. While too impossibly beautiful and glamorous to really fit into the “stars, they’re just like us” trope, the two are about as close to “down to earth” as superstars can be in 2024. Witness how cheekily they troll themselves and each other, often in wonderfully vulgar and self-deprecating terms. All this is preamble to point out that, when Lively announced her new line of alcoholic and non-alcoholic fizzy drinks (the latter launched first in 2021, followed by the spiked expressions last year), it didn’t garner the customary cocked eyebrow. After all, her husband was among the first modern celebrities (after Dan Aykroyd and George Clooney) to do this, and definitely among the few to release something approved by connoisseurs. Plus, both marrieds are multi-millionaires many times over, even more so since Reynolds sold Aviation Gin in 2020 for $620 million. Given this utterly staggering number, it would seem somewhere considerably short of sanity if Lively didn’t come out with her own line of drinks, no?

Fortunately, the early reviews for Betty Booze and Betty Buzz (her alcoholic and non-alcohol lines of fizzy drinks, respectively) have suggested that Blake has invested the same care and carefree spirit into her new brands. USA Today taste-tested three flavors from the hard seltzers and found all to be excellent, deeming them the “Beverage of the Week.” The tester and scribe, Christian D’Andrea, was especially fond of the Sparkling Tequila with Lime Shiso flavor, noting, “I can safely say I haven’t had a canned drink like this before it actually tastes like an artisanal cocktail you’d spend $17 on at a hotel bar.” Lily Alig from Business Insider gave perhaps the most positive review to date: “I tried Blake Lively’s cocktail mixers and they were the perfect solution for someone like me who hates the taste of alcohol.”

Unfortunately, we live in a world where a small percentage of people on the Internet are disproportionately very loud, so even a near-universally embraced new offering has come with backlash, this time because Lively has admitted that she’s not much of a drinker. This wasn’t some kind of hidden secret uncovered by the world’s best investigative journalists. Lively clearly admitted it in the very first press release, noting her choice in flavors came from wanting to find something fun and fresh to drink, either to somewhat mask the taste of alcohol when she did have a drink, or to substitute for alcohol when relaxing with friends.

For the less aggrieved and more rational among us, Betty Booze and Betty Buzz are now widely available to allow you to form your own opinion. Both lines are offered in a wide assortment of bright citrus-forward flavors for roughly $4 a can, more expensive than White Claw, sure, but they come with the considerable benefit of not being a chore to drink. (The packaging is cool and sleek, too.)