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Clamato Juice is a beverage with a name that implies it’s made from a combination of clams and tomatoes and designed to prank your friends into chugging what they think is cloudy fruit punch. But are there really shellfish in that strange, bottled elixir? And who in their right mind would drink it on purpose?
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Clamato juice is a beverage with a name that implies it's made from a combination of clams and tomatoes
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and designed to prank your friends into chugging what they think is cloudy fruit punch
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But are there really shellfish in that strange bottled elixir? And who in their right mind would drink it on purpose
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Well, today we're figuring out who the heck actually drinks Clamato juice
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Okay, time for a Clam-tastic pour. So, if you've never heard of it before, then you're probably wondering something along the lines of
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what the hell is Clamato Juice? Does it really have clams in it
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And why on earth would anyone drink that? Clamato Juice, as it is sold in supermarkets, is made from reconstituted tomato juice concentrate
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dried clam broth, sugar, salt, spices, high fructose corn syrup, ascorbic acid
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and the flavoring agent known as monosodium glutamate, or MSG. Wait, isn't that just clam juice
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Actually, no. Clam juice is the liquid that's left over after clams are steamed in water with salt
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It's marketed under names like clam juice, clam broth, and even clam liquor
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And it's used in the preparation of a number of soups, sauces, seafood dishes, and beverages
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Since it's a byproduct of the clam steaming process, it does technically contain clams
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That being said, you won't feel little bits of clam sloshing around in your mouth or anything like that
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Which is to say, clam juice is essentially just clam-flavored water with salt in it
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But it's just one of the many ingredients in Clamato juice. Sort of like how orange juice and a screwdriver aren't the same thing
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Even though they have some classes together. As for Clamato juice, well, that's another story entirely
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As the old song says, you say tomato, I say tomato, and there's a similar difference in opinion over
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the inventor of Clamato Juice and nobody knows for sure who is right What we do know is that on January 23rd 1935 a corporation calling itself the Clamato Corporation of New York filed a patent for what they described as clam and tomato juice in combination
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We also know that House and Garden magazine published a recipe for a similar drink in 1938
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And in 1940, a guy named Harry Hackney, who called himself the Lobster King
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acquired a trademark on the word Clamato so his Atlantic City restaurant could sell the stuff in cans
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By 1957, that brand name had been acquired by the spice conglomerate McCormick & Company
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However, Clomato Juice, as it exists today, began being produced by the Duffy Mott Company of New York in 1966
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For the record, that's the same company that brought you Mott's apple juice and applesauce
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And since it was their business, they were perpetually on the lookout for exciting new fruits to juice and sauce
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The company itself credits the invention of Clomato Juice to one of their California-based chemists
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Francis Lusky, who was working alongside another Mott's employee to create a mixer for a cocktail
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in the style of Manhattan clam chowder. Yes, that sounds like a pretty weird idea
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but it was in pursuit of that chowder that Lusky mixed up some tomato juice with some clam broth
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threw in some spices, and bam! Mott's Clamato Juice was born. Mott's decided to bottle the stuff
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and went about securing the trademark from McCormick. And the rest is history. And speaking
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of history, Lusky didn't exactly get the idea for that weird clam chowder cocktail out of nowhere
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In 1951, author Ted Saucier published a cocktail recipe book called Bottoms Up. Page 45 of that
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book features a cocktail called the Bloody Mary a la Milo. The recipe is published, calls for vodka
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tomato juice, clam juice, and Worcestershire sauce. And the book credits the recipe to one
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Milo J. Sutliff of New York, hence the name. Whether due to that particular recipe or some larger culinary trend
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over the next decade or so, drinks like the Bloody Mary a la Milo started popping up all over the place
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These cocktails bore names like the Smirnoff Smiler, the Gravel Gertie and the Imperial Clam Digger but they were all just variations on that same recipe from bottoms You may have noticed that the recipe contains all the basic ingredients of Clamato juice
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including the spices, in the form of Worcestershire sauce. In fact, except for the vodka
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it's basically just a recipe for Clamato juice. Based on that, it's likely this cocktail
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was the one Lusky had in mind when he developed his clam chowder drink. Whatever the inspiration may have been
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in 1968, Mott's, along with Seagram's, announced it had invented a new cocktail called the Clam Digger
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They even sponsored a national advertising campaign promoting the drink, despite it being just another variation on the bottoms-up recipe
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Fast forward to today, however, and that drink is almost universally known as a Caesar
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or sometimes a Bloody Caesar. Despite the long history of similar drinks, the Caesar is generally credited to Walter Chell
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a restaurant manager of the Calgary Inn. According to the story, in 1969
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Chell invented the cocktail for the Alberta-based hotel's new Italian restaurant. Chell claimed the drink was based on a spaghetti and clams dish he had been served in Italy
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although it's hard to believe a seasoned restaurant manager was unaware of all the previous cocktails with similar recipes
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Regardless of the truth, the drink was a massive success. So massive, in fact, it was the number one most popular mixed drink in Calgary just five years later
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Sometimes all it takes is a catchier name. Despite the extensive clam digger campaign, sales of Clamato juice were initially slow
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In fact, in its first year on the market, Mott's sold just 500 cases of the stuff
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But after the Caesar took off, Clamato rode its coattails. Today, according to Mott's, the Caesar is the single most popular drink in Canada
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It never really caught on in the U.S., but its neighbor to the north consumes roughly 350 million of the cocktails each year
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And the Caesar is not the only cocktail that uses clamato juice in its recipe
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It's also a frequent ingredient in micheladas, a popular cocktail in Mexico
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Just like a Caesar, there are a lot of ways to make a michelada. But one popular recipe mixes beer with lime and clamato juice
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It is often said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but Clamato Juice would probably sue whoever said it
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In 1989, Cadbury Schweppes, the company which at that point owned Mott's, filed suit against
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one of the companies they had contracted to produce Clamato Juice. That company was called FBI Foods, and as far as we can tell, they had no association
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with a government agency. Or the TV show. According to the filings, FBI was putting out a bottled version of Caesar's cocktail, according to which allegedly was based on the recipe for Mott's Clamato juice
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After a series of rulings and appeals, the Supreme Court of Canada found that FBI probably did knock off Mott's recipe
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but that any juice company worth its salt would have been able to figure out how to legitimately reverse engineer the recipe in a year or less
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That being said, the court awarded the plaintiffs $300,000, which was meant to represent the profits Cadbury lost in the first year of competition
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Since then, Cadbury had been acquired by Keurig Dr. Pepper, who is no less litigious
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In fact, since 2018, the company has sued a number of other juice manufacturers for infringing on the Clamato trademark by using the suffix Mato on competing products
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According to Keurig, the point of all this is to prevent Clamato juice from becoming a generic term like orange juice or grapefruit juice
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The clam must really be worth the squeeze. You can currently find Mott's Clamato juice at your local supermarket in five different flavors
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Those include Original, Picante, Limon, Michelada Especial, and the latest addition to the line, Sweet and Spicy
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for daredevils and people who genuinely enjoy a refreshing glass of Clamato
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And while sipping it straight is certainly an option, Clamato is still primarily sold as a mixer
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If the Bloody Caesar or the Michelada aren't your cup of sea, the official Clamato Juice website features a slew of Clamato-infused recipes
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including everything from spicy grilled wings and stuffed peppers to chicken tacos and Clamato tuna and bean salad
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And if you run out of Clamato, don't fret. In a pinch, you can use Beef-O-Mato