Manzanita Sol Apple

While visiting my brother in Phoenix, I came upon this soda at a gas station. This is an example of why I always look through all of the refrigerators when I stop at gas stations when I travel. Manzanita Sol is an apple flavored soda bottled by Pepsi. I'm sure it began in a board room since I can't really find any sort of history on this beverage. And while that means it doesn't have the soul of some of the old family brewed sodas... it still tastes good. 

The bottle carries a very crisp apple aroma and has a rich amber color. The carbonation is extremely light, though I don't think it subtracts anything from this particular drink. It tastes very much like an apple cider you'd expect to find in the Mid-West during any given autumn but without the small amount of apple pulp left behind. It's flavor is refreshing and that light touch of carbonation gives a snap to the tongue. It literally makes my mouth water. I give this a high recommendation. It would go well as both a non-meal accompanying thirst quencher as well as a nice dessert drink.

Jarritos Mexican Cola

As the first Jarritos soda to appear on this blog, you may already be a little familiar with it since you can find it in many U.S. supermarkets among the Mexican foods. The name Jarritos, means "little jugs" and was so named because the water, flavored with fruit, popular in colonial times was served in clay jugs. Jarritos was founded by Don Francisco Hill, a chemist by trade, in 1950, in Mexico City. 

Strangely, the first flavor they came out with was a coffee flavored soda. Yes, there are other coffee sodas out there, but this seems like an odd choice for the first product of a new company. So Don Francisco created a process of extracting juice from the Tamarind. For those not acquainted with it, the Tamarind is a tree native to Africa that spread to other countries with similar climates because the ugly pods it produces as fruit were used in cuisine and medicine. Again, not my first choice for a new beverage but Jarritos, armed with its new extraction process started bottling a tamarind flavored soda. They were smart to subsequently also release a list of several more traditional fruit flavored sodas as well. In 1988 Jarritos began exporting to the U.S. Today they produce around eleven flavors.

Other than being a product of Mexico, I don't know that there is any real difference between this "Mexican Cola" than any other cola. It smells very refreshing though. Interestingly it's cola flavored but it has a sweetness to it like that of candy. It reminds me of those little candies shaped like soda bottles with cola flavoring. It's sweet and nice, a nice break from many of the colas I'm accustomed to. Although I can imagine drinking too much of it might get sickeningly sweet. I would definitely classify this as a dessert drink, ideal for a light treat after a cookout.