Topo Chico: The drink of a sweltering state.
HOUSTON — Anyone who has survived a summer in Texas will tell you the heat has heft. It pushes back when you try to move through it, squeezes sweat from pores you didn’t know you had and leaves your mouth so dry you could strike a match on your tongue.
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 on tables 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 most likely not served.
At supermarkets and bodegas, it’s hard to find a shopping cart that doesn’t contain a 12pack of Topo Chico. According to the market research firm IRI, Topo Chico has captured 62 percent of imported sparkling water sales at grocery stores in Texas, and 74 percent at convenience stores.
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 avoiding sugary and artificially sweetened carbonated soft drinks.
Social media posts indicate that Topo Chico is difficult to find outside Texas. Its American distributor, Interex in Fort Worth, said it is available, albeit to a lesser extent, in 29 other states.
“There’s a certain irony that we’re drinking water from Mexico,” said Liz Lambert, founder and creative force behind the Bunkhouse Group, which operates two boutique hotels in Austin, another in San Antonio and a “nomadic hotel and campground” in the artist mecca Marfa, where guests (Beyoncé among them) are offered a bottle of Topo Chico upon checking in.
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 newspapers of the era called “thermal springs” at the base of Cerro del Topo Chico (“little mole hill”). The water was said to have great medicinal value in the treatment of tuberculosis, liver disorders and rheumatism.
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 FDA rules for products sold as sparkling water.
The bottler makes no health claims other than that the water “quenches thirst” and “aids in digestive processes.”
Beyond any curative powers, many fans of Topo Chico will tell you that it just tastes good. Justin Yu, the chef and owner of Oxheart in Houston, said it’s better than the sparkling water he grew accustomed to drinking while doing internships in Europe.
“There’s nothing better than a cold Topo Chico after a long, hard service,” said Yu, who was named 2016 Best Chef Southwest by the James Beard Foundation. “I think it has a cleaner taste, it’s definitely the fizziest, and I really enjoy the slight salinity.”