REVIEW: Mott’s Clamato Caesar Bacon Vodka Drink (Canada)

Mott's Clamato Caesar Bacon Vodka Drink

Mott’s Clamato Caesar Bacon Vodka Drink is the worst thing I’ve ever had. Note that I didn’t say that it’s the worst alcoholic drink I’ve ever had. Or even the worst beverage I’ve ever had. It’s so much worse than that. It is the worst thing I’ve ever ingested — and as a kid I ate an entire sample-sized tube of toothpaste on a dare.

Yes, eating toothpaste straight from the tube is better than this.

I honestly don’t even know how to describe the flavour. It’s piercing and relentless. It is a dentist’s drill, screaming into your taste buds, forever changing you. Haunting you.

It starts with a base of the worst tomato juice you can imagine. I guess that’s just Clamato — however, I felt compelled to try Clamato on its own for the purposes of this review, and it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t good, certainly, but at least I could drink it without triggering my gag reflex.

The ingredient list contains both onion and garlic as well as onion powder and garlic powder. This is stuff that can be quite tasty in other contexts, but here it seems laser-honed to make this drink as astringently foul as humanly possible.

Worst of all is the face-slappingly aggressive fake bacon flavour. You don’t notice it right away, but then it comes in hard and fast, lingering on your palate long after it has worn out its welcome. If you’ve tried one of those fake bacon products that were all the rage a couple of years back (bacon salt, bacon mayo, etc.) then you basically know what to expect — only multiplied ten-fold. This is extra strength fake bacon flavour. It is in your face and out of control. It will make you wonder why you like bacon in the first place.

Mott's Clamato Caesar Bacon Vodka Drink Closeup

I will say that the other flavours here (the disgusting ones) are so powerful that you can barely even tell you’re drinking alcohol until the buzz starts setting in. I’m sure the vodka adds some additional bitterness, but it’s so thoroughly masked by everything else that you’d have a hard time placing it. So if you’re the type of person who doesn’t like the taste of alcohol, well… Nope, I can’t finish that sentence. Even if you dislike alcohol, you’ll dislike this more. Because it is the worst.

I don’t think I’ve adequately described the horrors of this drink. I don’t have the words. Each sip was seemingly worse than the last. I knew that, for the purposes of the review, I needed to take at least one big swig rather than the tentative sips that it otherwise demanded. The prospect of this terrified me. No good could come of it. Eventually, I gathered up my courage and took a big, hearty gulp; it was like an assault. I let out a primal, guttural groan. I wanted to pass out from the awfulness.

Mott’s Clamato Caesar Bacon Vodka Drink filled me with a kind of existential dread; if a mass-market product this horrible can exist, what does it all mean? What’s the point of even getting up in the morning if a big company like Mott’s can inflict something so odious on the public with such shocking ease? A product this bad is criminal. I demand public trials and jail sentences.

I will admit that I’m not a big Caesar guy, but I had a couple of other people try it as well (because misery loves company), including one person who has Caesars semi-regularly. Both agreed it was the worst. One person decried that his taste buds were forever ruined; the other took one swig, shook his head with a very declarative “No,” and dumped the rest down the sink.

The issue of how best to remove that taste from our mouths was discussed. We all agreed that a thorough toothbrushing followed by mouthwash was probably the best course of action. Even then, the taste lingered. It’s gone now, but the memory remains. I will carry it with me for as long as I live. I will never forget.

(Nutrition Facts – Not available on can.)

Item: Mott’s Clamato Caesar Bacon Vodka Drink
Purchased Price: $2.80 CAN
Size: 458 ml can
Purchased at: LCBO
Rating: 0 out of 10
Pros: It is so unspeakably awful it will give you an added appreciation for everything else in your life; after all, no matter how bad things are, you could be drinking this drink.
Cons: Horrible aftertaste. Horrible duringtaste. Horrible everythingtaste. If there is a hell, this is all they serve there. If the worst pain you’ve ever experienced — emotional or physical — could be distilled into a flavour, it would taste like this.

29 thoughts to “REVIEW: Mott’s Clamato Caesar Bacon Vodka Drink (Canada)”

  1. This is the best TIB review I’ve ever read. Thanks for taking one for the team, whereby the team is all of humanity.

  2. I agree this has to be the most unpleasant drink I have bought, and I love clamato.

  3. Sorry I had to add a couple things
    My wife could not even drink more than a taste of this stuff and I could not add enough stuff to make it better ( cilantro,hot sauce worstechire ). I think maybe you could use it to marinate really gamey wild meat.

  4. When I tried this, It reminded me a lot of bbq chips, in juice form, almost like they were brewed in stagnant water. It was completely nasty.

    1. Yup. What Jason Wayne said. It tasted like the liquid form of a bag of bacon flavoured chips. A BAD HORRIBLE bag of bacon-flavoured chips mind you.

  5. I imagine licking a jock strap after 12 hours of hockey would taste better than this crap. I cant get the taste out of my head, nearly a week after trying it. Ugggg, I would rather change an adult diaper than drink this again!

  6. Welcome to the 0 out of 10 club! And welcome to the “foods that fill you with existential dread” club! It’s a terrible club. I’ve been there a handful of times. As a food reviewer, you’ll probably be back.

    I’m trying to remember what I used to get Jones Bacon Soda flavor out of my mouth, but I think, like you, nothing worked. I’d say “bullet in the mouth” but I must be mis-remembering because I’m still alive, so.

  7. I swear on all that is holy and sacred. I thought to myself great – I like bacon, I like caesars, what could go wrong. Well this did. I thought it would be salty and smoky like bacon. Couldn’t have been further from the bullseye. The best I can describe it is that it seems like they infused the vodka with raw bacon and you know the juice at the bottom of a fresh bacon package when you open it up? I think they just poured it in. Nasty nasty stuff.

  8. What colour IS that drink? I tried it and then forced my wife to try it. The divorce proceedings are going smoothly. 😉

    Anyhoo, seriously. What colour is that?

    Another thing – you didn’t note the strong sucrose-fructose content. I don’t blame you for not noticing it. I guess all tasters went through their own private hell while enduring this drink. My wife says it was the sugar that made her cry. She actually was forced to tears.

  9. This is the most accurate of all reviews of anything ever. I bought 2 cans and I am choking them back to make a point to myself that actions have consequences. This stuff is so bad, the biggest boozebag in the world would go sober if this was the last hooch on earth.

  10. I’m glad they don’t pay you do reviews and where did you drum up all of these co-collaborators who had the same violent reaction, did you pay them. I couldn’t find ten people to not like it!
    This is the greatest drink Motts has ever thought of and I am glad there only ten or twelve of you with this disdain for it. As for me and my forty some odd thousand satisfied customers who can’t keep enough of it in their fridges and in our bars we say…. that’s just too bad. Pass the Bacon please!

    1. Well, if there are forty some odd thousand satisfied customers who actually like Mott’s Clamato Caesar Bacon Vodka Drink, I would like you to bring them together and tell them to leave a comment here to tell everyone how much they love it. You know what, I’ll make it even easier. If you can get 25,000 fans of Mott’s Clamato Caesar Bacon Vodka Drink to leave a comment here to let the world know how great they think it is, I will delete this review off the face of the internet and replace it with all 25,000 positive comments. I will also never doubt a word that comes out of your mouth. If you say the world is flat, I will believe you. If you say Jurassic Park is a documentary, I will believe you.

    2. Fortunately, Mott’s is not a small micro-brewery. It’d probably have to sell a half-million units (units sold, not shipped) for the company to consider producing more of Mott’s bacon-horror-vodka. Hopefully it won’t. Hopefully the Mott’s employees responsible for making this drek were fired out of a cannon into a 10,000 deep pit of this stuff.

  11. I love Clamato both regular and spicy, and bought 2 cans to try. I could not finish the first can, not even a quarter. The drink is disgusting, and ruined by the overwhelming taste of the worst kind of bitter smoked bacon.
    I do not know what Motts was thinking, a light bacon flavour so not to mask the taste of clam and tomato would probably be good. I often experiment and have made some nice mixes with pepper sauce and such things as small amounts of dill pickle juice, pickled onion vinegar, beef stock, soy sauce etc. (not all together!)

  12. Bought a can of this stuff tonight on an impulse. Didn’t think bacon could do any wrong but after reading this review, I’m afraid.

  13. Wow I just opened a can because it was a special edition. We’ll all I can say it was like drinking canned poke and beans. Ug, it was awful

  14. Wow I just opened a can because it was a special edition. We’ll all I can say it was like drinking canned pork and beans. Ug, it was awful

  15. This is truly the worst thing I have ever had. Even Spices, Lemon Juice, Celery Salt cant make it taste good! My feeling is it tastes like a smoked wiener in a can. Yuck!!! Stick with the original Motts!!!

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