
The above photo is a poor Photoshop of the 2020 box made in MSPaint
It was in the process of discovering the 2022 Aldi Advent Calendar information that I realized I went from average Aldi fan to full Aldi insane (Aldisane?). Per their website, Aldi has a seasonal Vista Bay Hard Seltzer Iced Tea Variety Pack exclusively for this summer. I don’t much care for Vista Bay but my curiosity was piqued. I’ve gone to the store for weeks and never been able to find it. I figured supply chains because it's 2022, all we talk about is supply chains. I scoured Untappd to see if anyone had checked them in with no luck. Not a single soul had had one within 100 miles of me. I started to get suspicious; I had to be missing something, I live in a city of 4 million. There isn’t a single person also drinking off brand alcoholic seltzer teas then obsessively logging them into an app? I reached out to Aldi corporate like a psycho and heard no reply. Then I remembered, I have access to additional information: I have the internet.

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, or TABC, is very strict. Every beer label must be registered, scrutinized by the state, and ultimately approved. There are millions of other rules but as someone that consumes alcohol but doesn’t regulate it, I only know the hits. But what I do know is the TABC keeps public records of all of these labels so almost anyone can look them up with basic understandings of a search bar.
So in my frustration to find Vista Bay Hard Seltzer Iced Tea (why are there so many words?), I searched the database to see if they were even approved by the state. Unfortunately, it looks like I won’t get to try the Vista Bay Hard Seltzer Iced Tea but I did happen to find all 24 advent beers and 12 advent seltzers. Unfortunately after additional sleuthing, I was not able to find any of the wine information at this time.
I did some quick googling to see if anyone else had written about this or made a TikTok about it and came up empty handed. So please play this audio clip before moving on and reading the next line your best DJ voice: