Ski

The other day I made a trip out to a little town in southern Illinois called Breese. Here in this small town sits the Excel Bottling Company. Excel is a soda bottler in the good old fashioned sense. Locals here put down a deposit on a wooden crate of 24 bottles which they can mix with whatever combination of flavors they want. When the bottles are empty they return the bottles for a refund on their deposit or pay for another round of full bottles. The empty bottles are washed and refilled with any of a number of flavors. Not many bottlers exist like this anymore. I've personally tasted most of their offerings. Among flavors such as grape, root beer, pineapple, orange, cream soda, and strawberry, Excel licenses and bottles regular Double Cola as well as the Double Cola-owned Ski soft drink. 

Ski has a fanatical following and was created in 1956 by the Double Cola company. I will have to address Double Cola on its own entry someday but Double Cola began in 1922 as the Good Grape Company in Chattanooga, TN. 

Ski has a unique citrus flavor and is made with orange and lemon concentrate, a little of which is visible in the bottle. The taste of ski is one of those which is difficult to describe. It smells like lemon and orange and has a good carbonation level in that it tingles when held in the mouth. The lemon flavor is more noticeable than the orange. I think some of the difficulty in describing the flavor comes from the confusion that it looks like the lemon-lime flavors most people are more familiar with so when their palate gets a hold of Ski it doesn't quite know what to make of it. The orange in it is what I think lends the "frosty" overtone to it. What I mean by that is that there are some new drinks out there of various chemical origins which have "ice" or "frost" in their name to smooth the flavor and this soda reminds me of that albeit with natural flavors. Ski is primarily made by smaller, regional bottlers like Excel to the point that some think their local area is the drink's origin, but in fact it's just a highly regionalized offering. So if you stop in a small town in one of the Southeastern states look out for Ski signs, I definitely recommend giving it a go.