Talk:Clamato

Ingredients
Apparantly it's neither fresh juice nor reconstituted, exactly. My can (product of USA, packaged for Canada) says:


 * Ingredients: water, tomato paste, glucose-fructose, monosodium glutamate, salt, citric acid, seasoning, spices, dried clam broth, colour.

Great article, everyone.

&mdash;Michael Z.

Natural colour
"USDA Red 40 to maintain a natural tomato colour." If it's maintained by USDA Red 40 then how can it be a natural tomato colour? Jimp 19Dec05
 * I think the point of the dye is to aquire the colour associated with natural tomato juice, not that the final colour is natural. Perhaps a better way to phrase it would be, "USDA Red 40 to acquire a natural tomato juice colour."? Dyed red or not, it's a helluva drink. ;) - Dharmabum420 06:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

with a dash of high fructose corn syrup, and USDA Red 40 to maintain a natural tomato colour

This sort of dry, matter-of-fact treatment of food modification is excellent. Vranak 03:13, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Bias
Kevin Rector "made corrections to info on the bloody ceasar based on info at Mott's website." He changed

"Its formula is also similar to the base recipe of the alcoholic bloody caesar, commonly regarded as the national cocktail of Canada. Many recipes of this drink now specify Clamato rather than the original ingredient of mashed clams."

to

"Clamato is the base for the alcoholic bloody caesar, commonly regarded as the national cocktail of Canada. More than 200 million bloody ceasar's are sold each year."

With all due respect to Kevin I don't understand how we can expect the information at a comercial website to be the more correct unbiased version. The edit survives in the following form.

"It is also the base for the alcoholic Caesar, a vodka cocktail invented in Alberta and commonly regarded as the national cocktail of Canada. While the original Caesar, invented the year Duffy-Mott introduced Clamato, was made with tomato juice and mashed clams, Clamato is now the common base for the drink."

I'm going to do a little rewriting of this to make it less biased. Jimp 19Dec05

12-ounce bottles
Are these Canadian (i.e. Imperial) ounces or American ones? If we're talking Canadian bottles and Canadian ounces, then we should give the volume in millilitres first with the Imperial units in brackets. Why? The reason is simply that Canadian bottles are labelled in millilitres. Canadian bottle sizes may be based on Imperial ounces but they are standardised according to the metric system. Thus it's the metric units which can be regarded as correct with the Imperial ones the approximation. 12 Imperial ounces are just a little less than 341 ml. Jimp 19Dec05

French and English
"The Canadian package artwork includes English and French languages." notes the caption under the picture. This is wholely unsurprising for a product sold in Canada. All products prepared for sale in Canada on a large scale are labelled in both French and English. But I s'pose someone who's never lived in Canada may not be aware of this. Jimp 19Dec05

History
Not easy to find any reference to the invention of Clamato in California in 1969. Mott's web site says they acquired the name in 1966, and then apparently reformulated the product.

Military use?
People have often said to me (I know it's not a reputable source or anything but I was wondering whether anyone here knew the truth behind this) that Clamato is used by the US military as an emergency ration for high energy properties or something like that. It does not seem likely (perhaps it is unofficial) but does anyone out there have any sources on this? --Hydraton31 08:26, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Doubtful, that shiz is expensive. A bottle of tomato juice 4 times its size costs the same.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.122.63.142 (talk) 17:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure the US military would have no problem with the price, but no canned drink is going to have a very high energy content, and nobody will want to carry it in case of emergency! Simonmckenzie (talk) 22:15, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't taste like seafood.
It might be worth mentioning in the article that, although it is a "seafood blend", there is absolutely nothing about the flavour of Clamato that is reminiscent of seafood. I myself hate clams, oysters, and scallops - the most similar flavours in the seafood family - and even hate tomato juice, but love the taste of Clamato, most likely due to its many other seasonings and ingredients (especially the high-fructose corn syrup, I'd bet). Anyone have any ideas how, outside of my own opinion, no-one I've ever met thinks it tastes anything like seafood and could add that to the article with decent attribution? dharmabum 07:26, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Food and drink Tagging
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Huh?
This article states: "It is also referred to colloquially as "clamato juice."" Uh, how is this noteworthy? There's clam juice. There's tomato juice. So, why would calling the combination "clamato juice" be worth pointing out? Jmdeur (talk) 22:16, 29 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Why wouldn't it be? It's like pointing out that a lot of people shorten 'vacuum cleaner' to just 'vacuum' despite that being a totally different thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.77.60.53 (talk) 15:31, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

"debate" over the countries of origin (page vandalism). Unfounded and pretty much disproven claims of mexico being the birthplace of the Clamato.
The page has been vandalized a couple of times in the last year by some anonymous users claiming that Clamato was invented in Mexico. I have counted 2 attempts in the last year(2021) one on Jan 26 and another on Nov 15. I also found one attempt to change it to Canada on May 17 2019. There were likely early attempts but I didn't bother going back that far.

I did a quick lookup trying to understand why people were vandalizing the page and found a couple of different websites* claiming that Clamato was invented in the 1960s in the capital city of the Mexican state of Baja California, Mexicali in the Hotel Lucerne's bar the Acueducto.

I looked up the hotel and they do claim** that they are the birthplace of "El Clamato" and that it was invented in their bar in 1966, the thing is though the bar wasn't around in 1966, and likely for the rest of the 60s as they apparently bought and then upgraded the property to house 64 rooms in 1966-67 according to their own written history. Also, their own written history doesn't even talk about the creation of the Clamato, it's only mentioned on the page talking about the bar. I tried to confirm the date the bar was built or when it got its liquors licences or when it was registered as a business to confirm or disprove the story definitively but hit a brick wall as Mexico's digital records are nonexistent.

In all likely hood, there is a combination of white lies in play with the biggest being that the hotel invented the Clamato. by the website's own admission the original version of their "clamato" wasn't even made with Clam broth but abalone broth and as mentioned by the secondary sources the original name for their product was "curacrudas"(also seen it called Mata crudas (hangover killer in English apparently)). I furthered my search by targeting Mexican websites***, finding mostly the same as the English websites just learning a couple of extra bits of information. according to a couple of websites, I have read the "Secretaría de Turismo de Baja California" (Baja tourist board) even endorses the Clamato claim, though I couldn't fact check that. and apparently, the clamato with beer was invented in 1972 in another border town.

I think this is sufficient enough evidence that their claim is just advertising, the most you could say is they converged on the recipe like the Canadians did when they made the Bloody Ceaser around the same time Motts made their version of the recipe. All this is moot though as even though they may have started making it around that time there is documentation showing Americans have been producing it all the way back in 1935.

It would appear that Mexico (at least the Baja) truly loves its Clamato as a quick google search brings up at least a dozen bars and restaurants that have Clamato in their name.

For the most part from what I have observed it's not even straight-up Clamato they care about but rather an alcoholic clamato drink that goes by many different names like Chavela, Clamato con Cerveza, Clamato con Chela, Clamato Michelada and Michelada con Clamato. with this attachment to Clamato, lots of people want to claim some ownership of it even when there is clear documentation to the contrary, whether it's the Canadians with their Ceasers or the Mexicans with their Chavela. It doesn't help that said documentation for the longest time was hard to come by.

It doesn't help the rumours of Motts stealing the product seeing as they claim the product was invented in California pretty much right next to "clamato" ground zero in Mexico.**** thought this doesn't seem to be mentioned by people when telling the story of the alleged theft.

A counterargument to this point I'd like to make is what difference does the location make? The Albertans (Canadians) made an alcoholic Clamato and they're hundreds of kilometres from the border. Another question I have to ask is really how pervasive was clamato in Mexico back when Clamato was being invented, it took until 1972 for someone to make it alcoholic, in Canada it took to 1973~ for the Ceaser to become mainstream in only Alberta.

Another aspect is cultural, I believe the Mexican people have been screwed by America and its people so many times through out their culture they refuse to look at the facts and just think. "another one of our cultural treasures is being appropriated by the Americans." without questioning whether it's inherently theirs because the sad fact of the matter is it usually is. Hell, it's a known fact that the guy who started [| Taco Bell stole] the hard crust taco recipe from his local Mexican restaurant a couple of decades before Motts Clamato came into existence. To claim the same of motts isn't unfounded. The fact that an American company controls so much of their beloved drink to the point their brand name has replaced the local name for the product must drive their nationalists mad. The-Clamato-A-Baja-California-Invention-and-the-Perfect-Cure-for-a-Hangover (published 2017/08/23) https://www.discoverbaja.com/2018/04/02/mexicalis-hotel-lucerna/ (published 2018/04/03 (has image likely sourced from the hotel website with the claim that clamato was invented there) https://www.craftbeering.com/clamato-beer-recipe/ (published 2019/08/08)

https://hoteleslucerna.com/grupo-lucerna (history page) https://hoteleslucerna.com/gastronomia/ (clamato page)

https://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2017/08/20/1182778 (originally posted on https://www.vice.com/es/article/wjjx89/clamato-el-origen-del-famoso-curacrudas (published 2017/08/20) https://web.archive.org/web/20080919181237/http://clamatosla20.com/html/historia.html (published at least Sept/19/2008) https://adriw.com/c-mexico/clamato/ https://www.animalgourmet.com/2017/07/13/clamato-con-cerveza/(Published 2017/07/13) https://www.clamatouk.com/our-story

All links have been preserved on the Wayback Machine.

Overall I think my research is fairly accurate and as good as it's going to be but I would appreciate a different perspective as I may have missed something or someone else may have a different take on this. Ultimately, I think the only thing we can do is revert the page whenever it's vandalized and stick to the facts. ATCkit (talk) 01:55, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation
The IPA key says the second A is the same as the vowel in cat. Where is that from? It should be either cluh-may-to in North America or cluh-mah-to in Mexico and the UK, no? Alexandermoir (talk) 08:08, 14 July 2022 (UTC)