I saw an ad the other day for San Juan Seltzer, one brand among many of so-called hard seltzer—flavored seltzer water with alcohol.
Digression #1: I looked briefly into the use of hard to refer to alcoholic beverages. It goes back at least to 1700 to refer to liquor involving distilled alcohol (“strong and spiritous hard Drinks”). By 1786 we’ve got hard cider, so the meaning hard expanded somewhat to any drink with alcohol. This of course contrasts with soft as in soft drink; the metaphoric contrast between hard (alcoholic) and soft (non-alcoholic) was in use by the mid-1800s.
The San Juan Seltzer ad got my attention because they talked about their seltzery, where they make and sell the stuff. Or as they like to style it, their Seltzery, capitalized.
Digression #2: The San Juan Seltzery is in Seattle, Washington, and not in, say, California or Puerto Rico. The name is inspired by the San Juan Islands, which lie off the northwest coast of Washington. The islands were named by a Spanish explorer in 1791. Somewhat surprisingly, the name persisted even after English exploration and American territorial claims. The area also contains the Spanish-named Strait of Juan de Fuca, which is pronounced locally as “Wanda FEW-cah,” to the confusion of some newcomers, and thus is yet another PNW shibboleth for distinguishing locals from outsiders.
Back on topic. I thought that the name seltzery was sort of clever, if perhaps a wee bit pretentious for a place that sells an alcoholic soda, basically.[1] It seems pretty obviously based on words like winery and brewery.
In fact, the -ery suffix appears on a fair number of words that have a general sense of “place where […].” Historically, we got these words in a few different ways …
Verb + ery (“place where [verbing] is done”):
- brewery (but see later)
- cannery
- distillery
- eatery
- fishery
- hatchery
- refinery
Update: Speaking of verb + -ery, FB Friend Alex McCartney points us to the excellent Scottish word sitootery, a place where you can “sit oot” in your yard.
Noun + ery (“place where [thing] is available/kept”):
- cattery
- confectionery
- creamery
- granary
- orangery
- winery (this one overlaps a couple of categories)
Profession + y (“place where [craftspeople] make [thing]”):
- chandlery
- millinery
- perfumery
Sometimes it’s a bit fuzzy whether the origin is verb+ery or profession+y:
- bakery (bake+ery or baker+y)
- brewery (brew+ery or brewer+y)
- tannery (tan+ery or tanner+y)
For the sake of completeness, I’ll include some terms we got from French with the -ery part already in place, although they carry similar “place of” semantics:
- monastery
- nunnery
- scullery
Back to seltzery. Seeing this word made me wonder if this was a widespread name for places that made hard seltzer, so I did some lite research. The first thing I learned was that the word seltzery goes back only a few years. Heck, hard seltzer itself only goes back to about 2013. (Mike’s Hard Lemonade was earlier, but not technically a hard seltzer. Some might remember Zima, which was basically a hard seltzer, but it was ahead of its time and wasn’t labeled as such.)
Update (8 Sep 23): Reportedly White Claw, the biggest seller of hard seltzer, is coming out with White Claw 0%, which is a … non-alcoholic hard seltzer? (“Most disturbingly for word respecters, the firm is calling the beverage a “’non-alcoholic premium seltzer.'”)
My investigations also revealed that the word seltzery involves some controversy! San Juan Seltzery claims a trademark on the word seltzery …
[…] used in connection with brewing and distilling of spiked sparkling water for others; sparkling water making services; taproom services; tasting room services; public house services; and bar, tavern, restaurant, and cafe services, namely, providing of food and alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages for consumption on the premises.
And they’ve been sending cease-and-desist letters (example) to other companies that are using the word seltzery for similar purposes.
I have no idea whether San Juan will succeed with its claim on seltzery (or Seltzery, thank you). As I say, it seems like a pretty self-evident analogue of words like brewery and winery, but I’m neither a lawyer nor a naming expert.
Update: FB Friend Barry Schoenborn notes that a place he used to live now features a kombuchary where they make (what else?) hard kombucha.
Final digression: Do you know the origin of the word seltzer? I looked into that some years ago, which you can read about on the blog.
Like this? Read all the Friday words.
[1] Ok, that’s a bit dismissive. Hard seltzer is made by fermenting alcohol (from sugar or malt), then adding water, then adding flavorings, then adding bubbles. The carbonation does not seem to be the result of the fermentation process, as it is with beer and sparkling wine. The process is described in an article in Wine Enthusiast. According to Wikipedia, hard seltzers are also known as alcopops.