You can buy ‘margarita wine’ with a 15% ABV

Nothing refreshes on a hot summer day like an ice-cold, sweet-and-sour margarita. But if you’re short on ingredients or just don’t care much for strong liquor, there’s a ready-to-drink margarita you can snag on your next Target run.

Flybird is a “margarita wine,” a pre-made cocktail prepared to pour and serve. Like the margs at your favorite Mexican spot, you can choose lime or strawberry flavors, and garnish as you wish.

Making a “margarita wine” is an interesting process: According to Flybird, the product is actually a “100% de agave wine,” and it’s a cool substitute for the hard stuff.

The wine begins with aguamiel, or “honey water,” which is a liquid released by agave plants as they cook. Usually, this liquid is fermented and distilled to make tequila. But instead of distilling the aguamiel, Flybird adds a little already-finished blanco tequila to the liquid for a kick of alcohol.

That zap of tequila is where the drink gets its formidable 15% alcohol-by-volume. According to LiveScience, traditional wines average 11.6% alcohol content per serving. Beer’s a mere 4.5%, and hard liquor blows both out of the water at 37%.

OK, so perhaps 15% alcohol is a happy medium for an alcoholic beverage! For folks like me, who don’t drink many cocktails, it’s nice to have a predictable amount-per-serving so we don’t land in bed before dinner.

Flybird is available for purchase online, as this Facebook post declared on June 25 alongside a photo of these pretty margarita drinks:

You could also find the margarita wines in most places that sell liquor, though you might want to check your local Target store. It’s listed at $9.99 on Target’s website, a pretty fine discount from the $14.99 suggested price.

Of course, Flybird’s not the first premixed margarita — brands like Cutwater Spirits, Jose Cuervo and Cayman Jack make them, too. You might even find a local company that sells margs-to-go; where I live, there’s Cocktail Squad, for example, and in Houston, there’s an “adult ice cream truck” that delivers delicious summer cocktails — including margaritas.

Anybody else getting thirsty?