http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/dining/topo-chico-water-mexico.html 2016-09-16 21:15:12 How Do Texans Beat the Heat? With Water From Mexico Bottles of fizzy Topo Chico are a favorite in restaurants, bars and stores, even though marketing is minimal. === HOUSTON — Anyone who has survived a summer in For relief, natives and pretenders (talking about you, Brooklyn transplants in your boots and bolo ties) reach for an ice-cold Topo Chico, a Mexican sparkling water with an effervescence as aggressive as the summer heat is oppressive. This super bubbly agua mineral, in retro green-tinted glass bottles, has developed a fervent following here in Texas. Devotees stock entire refrigerators with the stuff and tattoo themselves with the brand’s logo, an Aztec princess who legend has it was healed by drinking the water, which emanates from an inactive volcano in Monterrey. Bottles of Topo Chico are tabletop everywhere in Texas this time of year, including tatty taquerias in the Rio Grande Valley and reservations-only restaurants in Houston. The water is often the finishing fizz in cocktails at the hippest bars in Austin and the sidecar to espresso drinks at indie coffee shops in Dallas. Don’t even ask for San Pellegrino or Perrier; they’re likely not served. At supermarkets and bodegas, it’s hard to find a shopping cart that doesn’t contain a 12-pack of Topo Chico. According to the market research firm Sales in the United States were around $58 million for the year ending in June, up 83 percent from 2012, no doubt helped by health-conscious consumers who are S “There’s a certain irony that we’re drinking water from To be sure, travelers and even locals in Mexico are warned against drinking the water, but Topo Chico has been bottled and consumed there since 1895. Before that, travelers from the United States flocked to Monterrey to drink and bathe in what Nowadays the water continues to be bottled at the source after a purification process that the bottler, Compañía Embotelladora Topo Chico, said does not alter the water’s natural mineral composition, which includes sodium, magnesium, calcium, potassium and manganese. Carbonation is added, but just enough to restore any fizziness lost during purification, in keeping with The bottler makes no health claims other than that the water “quenches thirst” and “aids in digestive processes.” But some Texans insist it’s the best hangover cure. “I think it’s because it’s got that vibrant sparkle, kind of like Alka-Seltzer,” said Daisy Ryan, assistant beverage director at Beyond any curative powers, many fans of Topo Chico will tell you that it just tastes good. Justin Yu, the chef and owner of “There’s nothing better than a cold Topo Chico after a long, hard service,” said Mr. Yu, who was named 2016 Best Chef Southwest by the The cookbook author and “ Musicians, too, seem drawn to Topo Chico. “I think there’s extra surface tension in those tiny bubbles that deliver a very uplifting effect,” All this love has taken the bottler of Topo Chico somewhat aback. Family-run since the turn of the 20th century, the company merged at the turn of the 21st century with two other beverage operations to form Still, Topo Chico is only a tiny division that operates relatively independently, and its marketing is endearingly un-slick. (I Like “The tattoos and all that, it’s surprising,” said Gerardo Galván, president of Interex, which was formed in 1987 specifically to distribute Topo Chico in the United States and is now an Arca Continental subsidiary. “We don’t go looking. People come to us, like Jim Beam wants us to do a cross-promotion and we said, ‘Sure, why not?’” Efforts to market the water to a nonimmigrant audience began only recently. They have been limited primarily to sponsoring music and food festivals along with “We have limited resources, so we look and see who has picked up on Topo Chico and is running with it already,” said Giovanni Gallucci, who was brought on as social media consultant in 2013. “We send them product so they will share it with the folks around them. It’s hand-to-hand, guerrilla marketing.” But as part of an “That’s always a danger, but my gut instinct is that Arca will continue to let the brand do things on its own,” said Lauren Torres, an analyst at Certainly, the summer heat in Texas isn’t going away.