When I was a kid back in the early nineties, my parents ran a Thai restaurant and a small Asian grocery that sold—along with hard-to-find ingredients for Thai cooking—a bottled drink from Thailand called Krating Daeng. English translation: Red Bull.
It was rare in the U. S. but already prevalent in Southeast Asia. On my first trip to Thailand as a kid in the eighties, I remember seeing an image of two red bulls butting heads on interstitials between soccer games on television. The logo was also emblazoned on the shorts of Muay Thai fighters squaring off in bouts that I begged to see live.
The bottle didn’t resemble the blue-and-silver canned energy drink most of us know today. Back then, Red Bull came in brown, medicinal-looking bottles. My older cousins and youngish uncles all drank it—always in the evening, before going out. When I asked what it was for, they told me it gave an energy boost for driving long distances. But going out in Bangkok didn’t require any long-distance driving. They refused to let me try it.
Back in my parents’ store, there was one customer who would buy the imported Krating Daeng regularly, and, well, he wasn’t using it like a long-haul trucker.
When purchasing a six-pack of those little brown bottles, this gentleman would regale my dad with enthusiastic tales of how he could have sex for a very, very long time after he had drunk a Krating Daeng.
“Hours, man!” he told my dad. “I lasted for hours!”
This made a big impression on young me.
And so, from a very formative age, I always thought of Red Bull as a party drink. Naturally, I wanted a taste of the lifestyle that this elixir offered. It just happened that, by the time I was an adult, Red Bull had been paired with another beverage to create a new classic (even more turbo) cocktail: the Red Bull Vodka.
The official club drink of the early aughts wouldn’t have happened if Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz hadn’t taken a business trip to Thailand in the eighties. He was experiencing jet lag, as one does when crossing several time zones. Then he downed a Krating Daeng and, boom, no more jet lag.
In 1984, Mateschitz collaborated with the creator of Krating Daeng, the Thai businessman and pharmacist Chaleo Yoovidhya, and transformed it into a less medicinal, effervescent energy drink for the global market. The revamped version of Red Bull as we know it in the West today was launched in Austria in 1987. It hit the U. S. market in 1997. The newly repackaged Red Bull would surge in popularity over time, and Mateschitz would leverage that success to position the brand as a behemoth marketing force in extreme sports. Today, the Red Bull team is the dominant player in Formula 1.
The Red Bull Vodka cocktail is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary this year. Butter, a rave-centric bar in San Francisco, is often credited with helping to popularize the concoction. The RV, as it was called, debuted there in 1999, and it is still on offer today. The Red Bull Vodka eventually went mainstream, making it to the menu of TGI Fridays. Dave & Buster’s offered an entire menu of Red Bull Vodka drinks using various flavored Red Bulls.
I came of drinking age in New York City in the early aughts, during a resurgence in cocktail culture that was more high-minded and centered on speakeasies. I tended to gravitate toward those self-serious bars, as opposed to the collegiate chug huts where the Red Bull Vodka was co-opted by the frat set. I wanted too much to cultivate myself as a cocktail sophisticate to partake in that scene.
In my twenties, annual trips to Vegas became a thing between tech conferences and bach- elor weekends. I did not like Vegas. But I learned pretty quickly that if you can’t stop judging why anyone would wear a shiny shirt and wait in line to enter a club, Vegas will make you miserable.
For me, the Red Bull Vodka was the blue pill that allowed me to embrace the illusion. It got me amped up and loose at the same time. It made me enjoy Vegas. It made me enjoy night- life. It made me less judgy and less worried about being judged. I could party for partying’s sake. I didn’t need to impress folks with my burgeoning knowledge of bitters. (No one cared anyway.) I finally understood and appreciated the RV.
Red Bull notably refuses to acknowledge the phenomenon of the Red Bull Vodka. The CDC warns that mixing energy drinks with alcohol can mask the depressant effects of the latter. Yes, that’s probably not a good thing for you from a physiological standpoint. But when we’re talking about partying? That sounds like a recipe for a very good time. The drink itself is not much to look at. It’s on ice in a glass in which you would serve a vodka soda. You might say the golden color is reminiscent of Champagne—if you’re trying to be nice about it. It’s only good when it’s very cold. At clubs with bottle service, you often get a bottle of vodka and a bunch of juices and sodas. I always requested Red Bull as a mixer. It should be standard. Who wants to drink a screwdriver or a greyhound on the dance floor?
The Red Bull Vodka is not contemplative and broody like a Manhattan or an old- fashioned. It is not elegant like a martini. But it’s also not just a club-kid drink. I like them at concerts. If I need something to kick off an evening after a long flight, the Red Bull Vodka is an ideal way to jump-start the night. More often than not, on the rare evenings when I’ve wanted the night to stretch just a little bit longer into dawn, the Red Bull Vodka has gotten me there.
In the serious cocktail world, the Red Bull Vodka still has the stigma of a trashy drink. It hasn’t received the kind of retro respect afforded to early-aughts drinks like the espresso martini and the cosmopolitan. The only fancy version that I’ve come across was at Undercote in Manhattan, where they made an artisanal version of Red Bull with powdered taurine. It was quite delicious, and I’m sad they no longer make it.
Ultimately, there shouldn’t be any shame in drinking the Red Bull Vodka. It deserves respect on its own terms. So when the moment is right, order yours with the confidence of a dude who walks into a grocery store and tells a stranger that he likes to drink one before get- ting it on all night long. Because, chances are, he’s having more fun than the rest of us.
