Clamato Juice

Clamato Juice

 

The word Clamato is a mix between the words ”clam” and ”tomato”, the beverage is a trademark of the Mott's company, which was bought by Cadbury-Schweppes in 1982 and is these days owned by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

 

The drink is primarily made from tomato juice concentrate and is flavored with different spices and clam broth, and also contains monosodium glutamate (E621) which is a commonly known flavoring in many processed foods. The idea to make Clamato originates from two employees at the Duffy-Mott company in New York who wanted to create a Manhattan clam chowder style cocktail by combining tomato juice and clam broth with spices.

 

One very popular cocktail which contains Clamato is the Caesar, also known as the Bloody Caesar, is a Canadian cocktail with many similarities to the Bloody Mary, it contains Vodka, Clamato, Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco sauce. The Caesar is in fact so popular that Mott's has now started to market different types of pre-mixed versions of the drink, it can be bought without alcohol, ”extra spicy”, or ”all-dressed”.

 

Clamato is also a popular mixer for American and Canadian beer, this drink is known in Canada and the northern US as a Red Eye. In 2008, Budweiser released canned blends of Budweiser beer and Clamato called Budweiser Chelada and Bud Light Chelada.

 

Because of the success of Clamato, other companies has tried to create imitation beverages which are commonly marketed as tomato-clam cocktail, these are often cheaper than Clamato. However, most people do not distinguish between these beverages and the original Clamato and will simply refer to all of them as clamato. This threatens Mott's trademark and the company has taken steps to protect it by running print, radio and television advertisements which attempt to distinguish their tomato-clam beverage from other brands.