XED Beverages has partnered with supermodel Jordan Barrett for the launch of its new ready-to-drink cocktail line, HAPĒ SAKE SPRITZ.

The second release from XED, following the debut of SESH last year, HAPĒ follows the company’s vision of better-for-you cocktails with a new line made from premium Junmai sake, fruit juice and tea. The product (4.5% ABV) is available now in 12 oz. cans in three flavors — Grapefruit with Elderflower and Ginger, Green Tea with Yuzu and Lemon and Lemonade with Hibiscus and Lemongrass — exclusively at hapesake.com and will enter retail stores in 11 states by next Spring, the company stated.

With Barrett, who has graced campaigns from haute couture icons like Moschino, Versace and Tom Ford, HAPĒ enters the market with an elevated public profile. But as co-founder and creative director of the brand, the Australian model is eager to put his personal stamp on the relatively sparse category of RTD sake-based beverages, including the decision to donate a portion of sales proceeds to mental health organizations.

“While I am intricately involved in every aspect of this brand, it is not a traditional ‘celebrity’ brand like many others out there,” said Barrett in a press release, adding that the brand “redefines the ready-to-drink and spiked seltzer categories.”

He continued: “This exciting new brand, which is the first to use premium Junmai sake, real fruit and real tea, is all about positivity. We aim to bring HAPĒness and joy to a vibrant market who want to enjoy alcohol but also want to be mindful and healthy when doing so.”

After launching “cocktail meets seltzer” line SESH last year, XED Beverages co-founders Zeke Bronfman and Nate Medow are following a similar path with the company’s second release, which had been teased since the announcement of a $4.5 million seed round in July. While longtime friends Bronfman and Medow are the public face of XED, the company counts power players like former Goldman Sachs investment banking chief Bob Hurst, former Seagram’s CEO Edgar Bronfman, and Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick as either investors or advisors.

“Rather than developing new concepts for the next generation of legal drinking age consumers in a focus group, we develop concepts through lived experiences as part of this generation,” said Medow. “All of our concepts are dynamic and create new categories within beverage alcohol and occupy white spaces that are informed by data and trends.”

According to Bronfman, sake is poised to “explode” similarly to how tequila ascended over the past decade, but the spirit is still heavily leveraged in Japanese restaurants. HAPĒ, he argued, will help give the spirit an identity with which it can transition to the broader RTD space.

“HAPĒ will be the first relatable brand, in an accessible and mainstream format – the spiked seltzer – that will bring sake outside of the on premise setting and into our everyday lives,” Bronfman said in a press release. “Just like tequila and vodka based seltzers have been rapidly gaining market share over the last two years, sake seltzers are about to be the next frontier in the evolving RTD landscape.”