For the record, a single serving of Crown Royal Canadian whisky contains 96 calories and zero grams of fat or carbohydrates.
Crown Royal is now the first alcoholic beverage shipped in the U.S. that features nutritional information on the brand’s packaging. The move comes more than a decade after parent company Diageo pushed the federal government to give it permission to print those facts.
The world’s largest liquor company said Tuesday it began shipping Crown Royal cases with the labeling to distributors, who will then sell them to retailers. The cases are rolling out to stores in the New York City and Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas, with a plan for most Crown Royal sold across the U.S. to feature the nutritional info by 2016.
As Fortune reported earlier this year, Diageo has led the charge to change misconceptions about what can be found in alcoholic beverages. The U.K.-based company says it wants to add nutritional information—including protein, fats, calories, and carbohydrates—to labels in the U.S. following the U.S. Treasury’s Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau’s (TTB) 2013 decision that serving facts could be included. Previously, the TTB had not given alcohol companies permission to do so.
“We are grateful to the TTB, who are allowing the industry to give consumers the information they have been asking for,” says Guy Smith, executive vice president of Diageo North America. Diageo has cited a 2014 study that found 86% of U.S. alcohol consumers agreed that serving fact labels would provide useful information.
The company says U.S. Dietary Guidelines set the standard drink size at 0.6 fluid ounces of alcohol. For an 80 proof spirit like Crown Royal, that size would equal a 1.5 ounce shot most consumers are familiar with. Diageo has provided serving facts information about its brands on www.DRINKiQ.com since 2006 and intends to add the nutritional info to labeling and packages on all its labels. Its spirits portfolio also includes Smirnoff vodka, Captain Morgan rum, and Don Julio tequila.
