flavored malt beverage

Taurine has been widely used in alcohol beverages for about ten years. One of the early approvals is Hard E Malt Beverage with Taurine, as above. Another early example is Sparks with Caffeine, Taurine, Guarana and Ginseng, from a few months later. Taurine showed up in TTB/ATF products around 2001, a few years after Red Bull hit the US. Red Bull famously contains taurine as well as caffeine and B vitamins. Some, like CSPI, have said taurine is of dubious legitimacy in food, but this article points out that Red Bull sells the beverage, with taurine, in well over 130 countries. The US of course is among those countries and there is no big sign of FDA concern. France had banned Red Bull with taurine for many years but began allowing it in April of 2008. On this occasion, the company said:

Last year alone, over three and a half billion cans and bottles of Red Bull energy drink were consumed in over 143 countries across the world and no one anywhere has ever shown any link between [the product] and harmful effects. Red Bull could only have such global sales because health authorities across the world have concluded that [it] is safe to consume.

The term is derived from “taurus,” Latin...

This approval shows a tremendous amount of change in eight short years. First of all, it is hard to imagine that the Bureau would ever allow the term “vodka” on a beer label. Somehow I don’t think that would fly in this day and age. Further, the qualification seems to mandate the use of this term, in a particular way. The qualification suggests that the arrangement of the words may lead to controversy, rather than the reference to vodka and a famous vodka brand on a beer label. Pages 12-22 of this document show the controversy. Second, the product is gone. So is the named agency (that is, the label functions have moved from ATF to TTB). So is the person that approved it. Judy was tremendously helpful and probably had many good reasons to approve this label, in a different era. I wouldn’t want to mention the person, but for the fact that the name is right there and the memories are good. This is also a good example of a “use-up.” The approval tends to say the label is not ideal but the agency will allow it to be used for six months only. I believe TTB/ATF has allowed use-ups for many, many decades. It is difficult to imagine other agencies allowing this privilege, such...

Quite a few readers have said, “yeah, unusual approvals are great, but what about rejections?” Here we have the first post of many, from time to time, showing common or revealing label rejections. First, some ground rules. We will not show the brand or company at issue. TTB tends to treat label rejections as confidential and approvals as public, and we’ll mirror this sensible policy. To this end, we may blur out some identifying information where necessary, such as above. In rare cases, we’ll change a little bit of text (in the example above we changed about three letters to avoid the distraction that might otherwise be caused by typos; we did not change the substance). If you have a good and interesting rejection, please let us know and we’ll make sure to treat it in line with the policy above. On to the controversial term at hand. For many decades, TTB has been concerned about the term “refreshing,” so common on all manner of beverages. TTB’s concern seems to be that it’s awfully close to a therapeutic claim, suggesting an effect on your body. “Invigorating” or “stimulating” would go a bit further and probably raise the same issues. Rather than ban the term “refreshing” outright — which would seem a bit out of proportion to the...