December 1st: West Coast Cooler

December 1st: West Coast Cooler, 250ml, 3.5%, 0.7 standard drinks.

Price: $3.99

Why I picked it: Because I love West Coast Coolers, and I wanted something easy to start with.

Colour: Pretty much clear. I didn't know that. I'd never poured it out before. I'm going to ask everyone I know and see if they knew that West Coast Coolers were clear. I don't know if anyone in the history of ever has poured one into a glass before.

More stuff: When I was a teenybopper, cruisers weren't really invented yet. We had mudshakes (I have one in the tree, for reminiscence sake) and bacardi breezers and yes we had passion pop and goon sacks, but West Coast Coolers were the socially accepted single serve twelvie drink. They're pretty weak and they're small, so they're less than one standard drink each, which means you can't get drunk on them. As we've gotten older, that now means that they make the perfect roadtripping drink - when sticking to one an hour, you stay well under the legal driving limit, while letting your body know what's comming whenever you arrive at your destination. I suspect there are more empty West Coast Cooler bottles under my car seats than anything else.*

A couple of years ago they bought out a pink version, but tbh it's pretty shit.

Really, my goal in life is to work out which of the 750ml, 10-15% alcohol bottles of bubbly tastes like a grown up West Coast Cooler, and then just insist that everyone give up on fancy wines in favour of the brilliance of its "exotic fruit flavours". Buggered if I know what fruits they are but they're fkn delish. Well done, West Coast Coolers, for being the best tasting twelvie bevie of all time.

*actually, this is so that next time I am back home I can throw them in the ocean in an effort to maintain levels of prettily coloured frosted glass washing up on Shelly Beach into the future.