Is this drink the Red Bull killer?

MOVE over, Red Bull. This is being billed as the healthier version of the popular energy drink. Celebrities are tweeting about it and hipsters love it.

MOVE over, Red Bull. This German upstart is being billed as the healthier version of the popular energy drink. It’s called Club-Mate, and it doesn’t taste very good.

But celebrities are tweeting about it, foodies are raving about it, and after years developing a cult following among techies and all-night partiers, the hipster drink is going mainstream.

Club-Mate, pronounced “Club Mat-eh”, is a caffeinated carbonated drink made from the South American yerba-mate plant, brewed by the Löscher Brewery in Germany.

“It tastes like a soft drink, but not as sweet,” the website explains. “It features a unique combination of caffeine and tannins, it’s stimulating but doesn’t make you fidgety.”

It’s become a fixture at hipster bars in fashionable US cities, where patrons drink down to a specific point on the bottle neck, which is then topped up with spirits.

Club-Mate has been around in one form or another since the 1920s, but began to take hold in the late ‘90s and is now “Berlin’s most famous soft drink”.

US singer and actor Sky Ferreira recently Instagrammed a picture of Club-Mate to her more than half a million followers, describing it as the “best thing to come to the USA since The Beatles”.

Australian distributor Benjamin Ansell of Melbourne Beverage Group has begun importing the drink, wholesaling to a number of bars and clubs around Melbourne and Perth. Mr Ansell says it should be available in Brisbane and Sydney within the next month.

“Our first order from Germany sold far quicker than we expected,” he said. “The next order we’re brining in close to two containers. We’re also trying to expand it into cafes since there’s a huge caffeine culture here.”

So what does it actually taste like? “It’s hard to explain unless you’ve actually indulged in one. It’s a lot less sweet than any other stimulant drink — it’s got quite an earthy flavour, almost like an unsweetened, carbonated iced tea.”

Club-Mate contains a different strand of caffeine that doesn’t agitate the senses as much as coffee or synthetic stimulants, he says, allowing people to stay out longer. “After you’ve had three or four, it really starts to play with you. You can’t put them down.”

Mr Ansell says it’s a “massive call” to describe Club-Mate as a Red Bull killer, but argues people are looking for an alternative to “synthetic energy products”.

“People are more concerned about what’s going into their bodies,” he said. “I don’t think for a long time it will be any competition to Red Bull, but it’s definitely a growing part of the market.”

According to market research company IBISWorld, the overall functional beverages category, which includes sports drinks and energy drinks, is worth $600 million in Australia and growing at an annualised rate of 5.5 per cent.

IBISWorld senior industry analyst Ryan Lin said a new product like Club-Mate would have a lot of catching up to do against established brands.

“It does seem to be positioned somewhat as a niche within a niche,” he said. “It’s pivoted more towards bars and sold over the counter, which will give it an alterative route to penetrate the market.”