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Ready to drink means a finished drink sold sealed, and the trade counts three groups of it.
A ready-to-drink drink, shortened to RTD, is a finished alcoholic drink sold sealed in a can or a bottle. Nothing is left to add. The Wine and Spirit Trade Association counts three groups in its figures: canned spirits and mixers, canned and bottled cocktails, and hard seltzers.
The Spirits Business reported on 26 May 2026 that the association’s Sip 2 report, using NIQ data, put UK off-trade RTD sales at £704 million for the year to 27 December 2025. That was up 17% in value and 12% in volume, and it counts sales in shops and supermarkets, not bars.
A reader holding a can has the questions a bottle of spirit already answers. What is in it, how strong is it, what does the label guarantee, and how do you serve it? The answers sit in the label, the duty rates and one sum.
A canned gin and tonic is a mixed drink, and its name carries a condition.
A spirit drink, as Regulation (EC) No 110/2008 defines it, has a minimum strength of 15% ABV. A can at 5% ABV cannot be one. A bottled cocktail at 15% ABV or more may meet the definition, and where it does, Article 9 gives its name as spirit drink unless a defined category fits.
The name of a spirit is a different matter. Article 10(1) bars a category name in a compound term, or an allusion to it in the presentation of a foodstuff, unless all the alcohol comes from the spirit named. A gin and tonic whose only alcohol is gin meets the condition. One that carries gin in its name and something else in its recipe does not.
Article 9(7) closes a second door: a drink outside the defined categories may not be labelled with words such as like, type, style or flavour beside a category name. We have found no Trading Standards guidance that applies Article 10 to a canned gin and tonic, so read the rule as written, not as a ruling.
Duty is charged by band, and the bands decide how strength is taxed.
Alcohol Duty falls on the pure alcohol in a drink, at the rate for the band its strength falls in. GOV.UK’s rates, last updated on 1 February 2026, set nothing at 0 to 1.2% ABV and £9.96 a litre of pure alcohol from 1.3% to 3.4%.
From 3.5% to 8.4%, spirit-based products and wine pay £26.61 a litre of pure alcohol. Beer pays £22.58 a litre, and cider other than sparkling cider pays £10.39 a litre. From 8.5% to 22% the rate is £30.62 a litre, and above 22% it is £33.99 a litre.
Take a 250ml can at 5% ABV. It holds 12.5ml of pure alcohol, which is 0.0125 of a litre. At the spirits rate that is about 33p of duty. At the beer rate it is about 28p, and at the rate for cider other than sparkling cider it is about 13p.
Strength moves the sum twice. A 250ml serve at 4% ABV holds 10ml of pure alcohol and pays about 27p at the spirits rate. At 10% ABV it holds 25ml and, in the 8.5% to 22% band, pays about 77p. The stronger drink carries two and a half times the alcohol and nearly three times the duty.
The gin in a Field Manual Gin and Tonic, 50ml at 40% ABV, holds 20ml of pure alcohol. In the band above 22% that carries about 68p of duty, against about 33p for the whole can, so the spirit in a bar serve is taxed at a higher rate than the alcohol in a can. Duty is a tax charged before VAT, and it is not a shelf price. It does explain why a band edge matters to a producer. A 330ml spirit-based can at 3.4% ABV holds 11.22ml of pure alcohol and pays about 11p. At 3.5% ABV it holds 11.55ml and pays about 31p, because it has crossed from the £9.96 band into the £26.61 band. The same is true at 8.4% ABV and 8.5% ABV. The base matters as well, because the same page lists spirit-based products apart from beer, cider, wine and other fermented products.
A can is blended, carbonated cold and filled under pressure.
A processing-equipment maker’s webinar page, dated 9 December 2021, names the stages of making a ready-to-drink cocktail as receiving and blending high-proof spirit, adding flavours, carbonating, pasteurising and filling.
Carbonation is the hard stage. Food Republic, in April 2024, explained that canned cocktails are usually carbonated by forcing carbon dioxide into the liquid with specialised equipment, and that the liquid has to be cold for the gas to dissolve. It adds that a high sugar content makes carbonation harder, so sweet cocktails are less often bubbly. The carbonated liquid then moves from a tank into cans through pumps and pressurised chambers.
A best before date marks how long the producer expects the drink to keep its quality, and any storage conditions belong beside it. Article 24 reserves the use by date for foods that turn dangerous after a short time, and says a food is deemed unsafe after it. A can with a best before date is in the other group.
The label must give the name, the strength, the volume, any allergen and the business.
Article 9(1) of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 lists what a food label must show. For a drink above 1.2% ABV that means the name, any allergen, the net quantity, the date where one applies, any storage conditions, the name and address of the business, and the actual strength.
Article 16(4) removes two items from that list for drinks above 1.2% ABV: the list of ingredients and the nutrition declaration. A can may therefore carry no ingredients and no sugar figure. A producer can print them anyway, and nothing obliges it to.
Annex XII sets the strength format. It is a figure with at most one decimal place, then % vol., and the figure may be preceded by alcohol or alc. Annex XII has carried the option of % alc/vol after the figure since 2023 in each part of Great Britain. The strength is measured at 20°C, and most drinks above 1.2% ABV may differ from the printed figure by 0.3% vol either way. The tolerance is 1.5% vol where fruit or plant parts have been macerated in the drink.
Allergens stay on the label despite Article 16(4). Where there is no list, Article 21(1) says the allergen is shown as the word contains followed by its name from Annex II. The annex covers cereals containing gluten, eggs, milk, nuts, and sulphur dioxide and sulphites above 10mg a kilogram or litre. Local food authorities enforce this under regulation 9 of the Food Information Regulations 2014, and regulation 10 makes failing to give the allergen information an offence.
Units come from the can by one sum.
The NHS gives the sum: strength in ABV, multiplied by the volume in millilitres, divided by 1,000. A 250ml can at 5% ABV is 1.25 units. A 330ml can at 4% ABV is 1.3 units. A 500ml can at 7% ABV is 3.5 units, which is more than the NHS figure of 2.4 units for a 440ml can of lager at 5.5% ABV.
The same sum covers a bottle. A 70ml pour from a bottled cocktail at 20% ABV is 1.4 units, and the whole 700ml bottle is 14 units. The NHS gives the Chief Medical Officers’ advice as no more than 14 units a week, taken regularly and spread over three or more days.
Units on the label are the producer’s choice. The labelling annex of the Portman Group’s Code lists unit content per container as voluntary guidance, and says the annex is not part of the Code’s requirements. Where a label gives none, the sum gives it. Because Annex XII allows 0.3% vol either way on most drinks, a can printed at 5.0% vol. may sit anywhere from 4.7% to 5.3%, which moves a 250ml can by about 0.15 of a unit. How to read an RTD can takes a label through that sum line by line, and ABV vs proof explains the scale underneath it.
Bar serves set the scale, and a can can sit below, level with or above them.
The Field Manual prints its measures, and the ABV on each ingredient page gives the units. A Gin and Tonic and a Whisky and Cola each carry 50ml of a 40% ABV spirit, which is 2.0 units. An Aperol Spritz holds 90ml of prosecco and 60ml of Aperol, both at 11% ABV, which is about 1.7 units. A Negroni of 30ml each of gin, Campari and sweet vermouth, at 40%, 25% and 16% ABV, is about 2.4 units.
A 250ml can at 5% ABV is 1.25 units and a 330ml can at 4% ABV is 1.3, so both sit below a bar serve. A 500ml can at 7% ABV is 3.5 units and sits above it.
A bottled stirred cocktail is a spirit-strength drink with no date to read.
Take a 700ml bottle of a stirred drink such as a Negroni at 20% ABV. It falls in the 8.5% to 22% duty band, where GOV.UK’s rate is £30.62 a litre of pure alcohol. A 700ml bottle holds 140ml of pure alcohol, so about £4.29 of duty on the bottle before VAT.
At that strength the label needs no date, because Annex X leaves out beverages of 10% ABV or more. The producer’s storage line still matters, and it is the producer’s own statement. A 60ml to 90ml pour over ice in a rocks glass is 1.2 to 1.8 units at 20% ABV.
Five checks turn a label into a decision.
Read the name, the strength and volume, the allergen line, the base and the date, in that order. Each is one line on the can, and how to read an RTD can goes through them with the Article behind each. The strength and volume give the units. The allergen line is the one piece of ingredient information the can has to carry.
The Field Manual holds the recipes a can copies.
A Field Manual Gin and Tonic is 50ml of gin at 40% ABV with 100ml of tonic water. The can that copies it puts the same flavours in a different amount of alcohol, and the label is the only place to see how much.
The same comparison works for the other drinks cans copy. The Paloma, Moscow Mule and Espresso Martini print their measures too, so you can add up the units of the original and set the can beside it.
The mixers behind the spirit-and-mixer cans each have a page: tonic water, soda water, cola and ginger beer. Vodka has one too. The honest middle between a can and a fresh build is a stirred batch in a bottle, which how to batch cocktails sets out. Understanding cocktail balance explains why sugar and dilution decide how a made-ahead drink tastes.
A hard seltzer is read the same way as any other can.
The Wine and Spirit Trade Association counts hard seltzers in the same figure as canned cocktails, and the label rules above apply to them without change: name, strength, volume, allergens and date. What differs is the base. GOV.UK lists spirit-based products in their own table, apart from beer, cider, wine and other fermented products, so the base decides which table applies to the drink. The label might not say which, and the producer’s website is the place to ask.
The Portman Group’s Code limits what a can may claim.
The Portman Group’s Code of Practice is an industry code, now in its sixth edition. It applies to the naming, packaging and promotion of any pre-packaged alcoholic drink above 0.5% ABV. Rule 3.1 says the alcoholic nature of a drink should be communicated with absolute clarity.
Drinks at 0.5% ABV or below sit outside that Code, and GOV.UK’s duty tables charge nothing up to 1.2% ABV. What alcohol-free and low alcohol mean on a UK label covers what such a can may say.
Rule 3.2 says a drink and its packaging should not give higher strength undue emphasis, have a particular appeal to under-18s, or suggest therapeutic qualities or an ability to change mood or behaviour. A can that looks like a soft drink or promises a lift is the kind of case the rule is written for.
Serve it in the glass the recipe names.
A spirit-and-mixer can suits the glass of the drink it copies. A highball glass over ice suits the Paloma and the Whisky and Cola, and a wine glass suits the Aperol Spritz. The recipe page names the garnish as well, and it is the quickest way to make a can taste like the drink on its label.