Zima Is Making a Comeback! 9 Cocktails to Make with the ‘90s Classic

Somewhere along the way the 1990s became the default decade for nostalgia. Blame millennials missing a simpler time of AIM screen names, the Nintendo 64, and Saved by the Bell. Whatever the reason, another relic from the era keeps clawing its way back: that fizzy, citrusy, faintly boozy thing called Zima. If you were conscious in the ’90s you know it, even if you were too young to drink it.

The strange rise and fall of Zima

Coors released the clear malt beverage in 1994 and it took off fast. At 4.7% ABV, it was pitched as an alternative to beer and sold 1.3 million barrels right out of the gate. It landed in the middle of the New Age beverage craze, and its whole appeal was about what it wasn’t: not a beer, not a wine cooler, just “zomething different.” In year one, Coors spent $38 million (about $63 million today) on marketing and got an estimated 70% of American drinkers to try it.

Most didn’t come back. Coors’s target demographic, young men, mostly found the taste off-putting, while women embraced it, which marketers decided gave it a “girly” reputation they couldn’t sell around. The fix was a bourbon-flavored version called Zima Gold, which flopped even faster than the original. Between that and a run of genuinely strange TV ads, Zima became a punchline, a regular target of David Letterman jokes. By 1996 sales had dropped two-thirds, and the fluted bottles had mostly vanished by the time millennials reached legal age.

Coors kept trying anyway, rolling out tangerine, pineapple, blackberry, and green apple before pulling the plug in the US in 2008. The company never quite gave up on it, though, partly because Zima arrived years before Smirnoff Ice and Mike’s Hard Lemonade found their cult followings. It later returned for a few limited, nostalgia-fueled runs, in the summers of 2017 and 2018, and for a moment those jewel-cut bottles were back on shelves. Japan never let go of it at all: Zima sold there continuously from 1996 until 2021, and came back in 2023 under a licensing deal with a sake brewer.

Drinking Zima straight was never really the point. The good news is it’s an easy swap into a cocktail: use it anywhere you’d reach for 7-Up, Sprite, or another lemon-lime soda, and you’re back to “zomething different.”

9 cocktails to make with Zima

• Chicken in a Blender: 1½ oz vodka, 1½ oz bourbon, ¾ oz silver tequila, ¾ oz grenadine, lemon juice, Zima
• Cupid Cooler: 5 oz white wine, 1 oz Chambord, 2 oz Zima
• Fuzzball: ⅓ part peach schnapps, ⅔ part Zima
• Goosin’ Cupid: 2 oz orange vodka, ½ oz sloe gin, Zima
• Hot Ice: 1 oz pepper vodka, ½ oz Blue Curacao, ½ oz pineapple juice, ¾ oz Zima
• Mother-in-Law: 1½ oz vodka, ⅓ oz amaretto, cranberry juice, Zima
• Pretty Little Girl from Omagh: ½ oz dark rum, ½ oz light rum, ½ oz blackberry schnapps, ½ oz cherry brandy, Zima
• Rum Special: 1 oz spiced rum, 1½ oz lime juice, Zima
• Wyooter Hooter: 1 oz whiskey, 3 oz Zima, grenadine

Start with the Fuzzball if you’re skeptical. Peach schnapps and Zima tastes like peach soda, and that schnapps mixes with almost everything else in your fridge.

5 more, built on nothing but the bottle

These are what people actually made with Zima in the ’90s: a bottle, one other thing, no measuring to speak of.

• Jolly Zima: 1 bottle Zima, 1 Jolly Rancher. Sip first so it doesn’t foam over, drop the candy in, wait. Watermelon and green apple were the dorm favorites.
• Zimadori Zinger: 1½ oz Midori, 12 oz Zima. Zima over ice in a collins glass, Midori poured on top and left unstirred so it sinks in a green streak.
• Green Zima: 2 oz melon liqueur, 12 oz Zima, stirred in a beer mug. The Zinger for people who’d rather not look at it.
• Raspberry Zima: 2 oz raspberry liqueur, 12 oz Zima. Chambord if you’re feeling flush.
• Nuclear Zima: 6 oz Zima, ¾ oz vodka, ¾ oz grenadine, over ice in a highball. Pink, sweet, and close to twice the strength of the bottle.

Making a pitcher of it

The Cupid Cooler scales without changing character. For a 60 oz pitcher: one 750 ml bottle of white wine, 5 oz Chambord, one 12 oz Zima. Stir the wine and Chambord and chill them for an hour, then add the Zima and pour right away. A pitcher goes flat inside 30 minutes, so for a long party keep the wine base in the fridge and open a fresh Zima for each round.

Two more things. Zima is 4.7%, so anything built on a whole bottle is beer strength before the liqueur goes in: a Zimadori Zinger lands around 6%, a Nuclear Zima closer to 8%. And it wants to be colder than beer. Never shake it; pour it last, over the other ingredients, and stir once.

An old bottle from the back of a cupboard follows the same rules as expired beer: it won’t hurt you, but a 2018 Zima in 2026 will be flat, faintly sweet water. Drink the new ones.

Frequently asked questions

Is Zima still made?

Not as a regular product in the US. Coors discontinued it in 2008 and has brought it back only for occasional limited, nostalgia-driven runs since.

What does Zima taste like?

Light, fizzy, and citrusy, somewhere between a lemon-lime soda and a wine cooler, with a faint malt edge.

What can I substitute for Zima?

Any clear lemon-lime soda. 7-Up, Sprite, or Sierra Mist all stand in well, and a hard seltzer gets you closer to the original’s light booze.

How much alcohol is in Zima?

The original was 4.7% ABV, right in the range of a standard beer.

Is Zima a beer?

Legally, yes. It’s a flavored malt beverage: brewed from a malt base like beer, charcoal-filtered until clear and flavorless, then flavored with citrus. That’s why it sat in the beer aisle and was taxed as beer.

What was the Jolly Rancher trick?

Drop a Jolly Rancher into an open bottle of Zima and let it dissolve. The candy adds color, flavor, and sugar to a drink that didn’t have much of its own. It was the house cocktail of every ’90s dorm, and it’s in the database as the Jolly Zima.

Is Zima the same as a hard seltzer?

Same idea, different decade. Both are clear, fizzy, low-proof malt drinks. Zima was sweeter, with a lemon-lime soda character; White Claw, Truly, and the rest are drier with far less sugar. If you’re using seltzer in a Zima recipe, add a splash of lemon-lime soda to make up the sweetness.

Most of Zima’s appeal now is pure nostalgia, but it still earns a place in a glass. If hunting down oddball combinations sounds like a good time, Cocktail Builder has a deep catalog worth digging through.

Photo credit: Courtesy of MillerCoors.

Last modified on September 3, 2026