Ready-to-drink cocktail review: Monaco Cocktails (UPDATED)

We are double fisting this week ladies with two pre-made cocktails!

• Tequila Lime Crush (like a margarita??)  
  

• Blue Crush (what the heck does that even mean?? All I can picture is those crazy blue Hawaiian drinks you order when you first turn 21.)
  
  

We are all about to find out what these creative flavors are about.

Curiosity got the best of me and I just had to pour these pre-made cocktails into glasses so I could see what the colors would be like. If you saw my Instastory then you know the blue one is seriously blue. It is almost turquoise - which happens to be my favorite color and it automatically got a bonus point in my book. The green one is a much more subdued color similar to a margarita. But the most important thing is the taste right?

After my first few sips I dubbed these a "young person's cocktail." I am probably showing my age here but I'm not 21. However, I do remember sampling lots of different kinds of cheap drinks as a newbie drinker who was trying to avoid beer in an effort to not be one of the boys. These cocktails reminded me a bit of the Jack Daniels Downhome Punch I was fond of at that age. Super sweet + super boozy + super cheap = winning combination for a certain era of life. As I've said before, there is room for a wide range of ready-to-drink cocktails in the cocktail kingdom and this one has a place. But if you are more of a refined, matured cocktailer these days, I'd say skip these.

One other note before we get to the scorecard, I have to say this branding feels off to me. It has a more masculine vibe, almost like it's trying to be an luxury car brand, but the flavors are super girly. These drinks are sticky sweet which is jarring coming out of such a macho can. It has a rooster on it for crying out loud.

Okay, now that I've got that out of my system - let's move on to the scores.

Here is official my scores for the Monaco Cocktails:

I wouldn't necessarily say these tastes like a cocktail. They taste like you want to get drunk and fast. But I did like one of the cocktails better than the other so I'm going to break this down separately for us.

The Blue Crush is the sweeter of the two. It is strong and sugary. It definitely brought out my "surprise face" and I did a bit of a double take after my first sip. The second sip made me decide it was okay. But by the third sip I was out again and I decided I was too old for this style of pre-made cocktail.

The Tequila Lime Crush was much more drinkable. It reminded me of a house margarita. Very drinkable, nothing offensive, but nothing special either. This flavor did give me a bit of hope for the other cocktails in the line from Monaco Cocktails. 

One shaker = not sweet at all  // Five shakers = your teeth may curl

These are some seriously sweet cocktails y'all. And you know I love a good sweet cocktail but these fall in the category of sticky sweet in an artificial way. If it's going to be super sweet, natural sweeteners make a huge difference in my book.

Sidenote: These cocktails remind me a little bit of when you first try to convince yourself to start drinking coffee so you dump a ton of sugar and a ton of cream in to make it drinkable. They are like gateway cocktails for the new drinker - and we've all been there at some point so no judgement here.

One shaker = does this have booze? Five shakers = Four Lokos

Both Monaco Cocktails ring in officially at 9% ABV so they will definitely get the job done in the boozy department.

Would I buy this again?

I'll pass. Maybe it's my refined palette (ha!) or my desire to not waste calories on cocktails I don't absolutely love, but these didn't do much for me. However, I did love the trip down memory lane of my Downhome Punch and Boone's Farm glory days.  

If you'd like to try these or any of the other Monaco canned cocktails, you can order them online from Total Wine and have them shipped right to you.

Order the Monaco Blue Crush here >>

Order the Monaco Tequila Lime Crush here >>

Check out the full line of Monaco Cocktails here >>

UPDATE:

It has been roughly a year since I did my original review of the Monaco Cocktails. Since it was one of the first few reviews I did, I wanted to circle back and try it again now that I've tried a loooot more canned cocktails. 

Here are my thoughts:

• These are still not the *highest quality* canned cocktails on the market but I do think they have their place. They are almost always 2 for $6 when I see them at a gas station AND each can contains 2 shots of liquor. So it is like that Little Ceaser's joke about it's fast and it's ready, you didn't ask for tasty. These are cheap and strong if not super tasty.
  
  
• If you are going to try these - go for the blue one! Yes, it's like drinking Windex but it is the best one of the bunch. I also tried the orange one - mango maybe? - at a music festival so of the three I've tried, blue is the way to go! (Sidenote: the fact that I'm discussing these in terms of color instead of cocktail name says a lot.)
  
  
• I forgot how sweet these are! These cocktails will make your teeth curl with how sweet they are. I love a good sweet cocktails but these are the fake sweetener sweet that is almost guaranteed to make your stomach hurt. 
  
  
• There are soooo many great canned cocktails with more popping up every week so unless you are going for a cheap, fast drunk - I'd skip these. However, if you want to drown your sorrows in 5 mins or less for $3 - this would be a solid choice.

Have you tried this drink? What did you think? I'd love to hear from you in the comments section. The more opinions the better! Let's "drink together" and share our cocktail stories.

SHOP THIS COCKTAIL GLASS