The sighting
It came in the way these things always do. A text. A photo taken too fast to be in focus. A glass bottle, the right shape, the right label, sitting on an HEB shelf in The Woodlands like nothing had ever happened.
Topo Chico is back.
Coca-Cola confirmed it the first week of October: a phased return starting at select Texas retailers, with the rest of the country waiting until 2027. HEB's line is that it is "slowly hitting store shelves in limited quantities." Translation: if you see it, buy it. Do not go home and think about it.
Eight months in the wilderness
For those just joining us, the classic glass-bottle mineral water went dark in February. The official story was facility upgrades and geology problems at the 130-year-old spring in Monterrey. We covered the whole saga in three parts this spring: the cartel-controls-the-aquifer theory, the Nuevo Leon drought, and the suspiciously well-timed rise of HEB's 1877 Mineral Water.
We said then that we were a little disappointed the cartel did not actually control the aquifer. We stand by that. We would also like it on the record that nobody has fully ruled out a Trump angle either. We have no evidence. We have never had evidence. That has not stopped anyone at a backyard gathering in Creekside, and it will not stop us.
What we drank instead
Here is the part we did not expect. The break was kind of great.
We tried everything. Saratoga, the fancy blue bottle, did not do it. Too polite. Pellegrino sufficed, which is the nicest thing we can say about a water that costs that much. And then there was Minas Gerais, which we had never heard of and which, for certain drinks, we liked better. That sentence was hard to type.
But nothing beats the tried and true. Topo Chico has a bite the others cannot fake, and eight months of substitutes just proved it.
The real discovery
Somewhere in month three, bored with plain bubbles, we started building drinks. That is the actual story of the shortage, at least in our house.
Start with the Monterrey classic: a suero. Mineral water, a heavy squeeze of lime, a pinch of salt. Locals drink it as a hangover cure. We drink it at 2 pm for no reason.
From there it goes anywhere. A splash of grapefruit or pineapple juice and lime over ice is a better mocktail than anything on a restaurant menu. Tajin on the rim turns it into a michelada without the beer. And yes, two fingers of blanco tequila turns any of the above into something you should probably not be drinking at 2 pm.
We are being overly dramatic about a bottle of water. We know. We are also not going to stop.
Where the series ends, for real this time
The spring is fixed, or fixed enough. The shelves are filling back up, slowly, in Texas first, which is the only order that ever made sense. The 1877 is still stacked right next to it, and we will be watching which one moves.
If you spot a full case anywhere between Conroe and Spring, send us a photo. Blurry is fine. We have come to expect it.
