Sprite + Tea

A few weeks ago on my usual trip to the grocery store I encountered a stack of 12-packs with this bizarre new flavor from Sprite. Of course I'm not fond of buying an entire 12-pack to try a new flavor I may not like, particularly at today's prices. However, I knew if I waited a bit I'd probably see it in single bottles. Sure enough, on a recent pop into a convenience store I found it. My assumption is that this may be an attempt at something akin to an Arnold Palmer, a drink which is half iced tea and half lemonade. The difference here being that this is carbonated lemon-lime soda. I haven't heard good things about this new drink but I'm going to keep an open mind going into it, especially since I enjoy an Arnold Palmer from time to time.

The ingredients still list high fructose corn syrup and less than 2% natural flavors. Nothing specific about tea in the list of ingredients on the label, but just like regular Sprite it is caffeine free. A slight carbonation release comes from uncapping it and it has a faint hint of an iced tea aroma mixed with a little lemon. The taste is quite strong. I'm not really a tea drinker to discern the subtleties of the range of tea flavors but this seems very heavy handed in a green tea sense. When holding on the front of the tongue I get little to no flavor but the intense tea flavor come on suddenly at the back of the tongue when drinking. The miniscule lemon flavor means this is more like carbonated iced tea than anything else. I'm not a fan of this, but perhaps if you're really into sweetened iced tea you could enjoy it.

Slice Grapefruit Spritz

Slice was originally launched back in 1984 by PepsiCo as a lemon-lime soda. This was meant to replace the aging Teem label discontinued the same year as well as to try to gain market share against competitor's lemon-lime offerings. In time Slice offered a range of fruit flavored sodas, including orange and strawberry. Slice had a narrow share of the soda market in the U.S. and by the 1990's the boast of containing 10% fruit juice was moot since they removed most of the fruit juice from the recipe. The brand would undergo continued evolution in package design, various flavors and even a diet version, but Pepsi would discontinue Slice in the 2000's, most likely in an effort to consolidate some of their labels since Sierra Mist, another Pepsi-owned lemon-lime soda has been released in 1999 and was widely sold by the mid-2000's. New Slice Ventures LLC apparently bought the rights to the Slice brand sometime around 2018 for a relaunch in the U.S. and Canada with fruit-juice sweetened, lower calorie versions of grapefruit, raspberry, cranberry, blackberry, mango, and pineapple. They would launch more traditional Slice flavors in 2022 in orange, cherry, and lemon-lime. Suja Life then enters the picture and buys the rights to Slice and overhauls the recipes to jump on the "gut healthy" soda trend. Unlike the other "gut healthy" sodas I've encountered, these are listed as including "pre-, pro-, and post-biotic" ingredients. 

This can has a citrusy scent, not unlike a mainstream grapefruit soda or Fresca. It also has a very light pink color. I find the flavor a bit funny. While still somewhat citrus, it also has a sort of dull staleness about it. I'm sure the stevia, salt, and fibrous bacteria play into this. Fortunately, its still far from being the worst tasting healthy soda flavors I've tried. I could finish this can but I think the flavor would make it slow going, just taking a nip every 5-10 minutes. Not exactly my kind of taste.

Canada Dry Blackberry Ginger Ale

Canada Dry is a lifelong favorite of mine. In the past several years they've joined the bandwagon of releasing various flavor varieties, both permanent and seasonal. I couldn't find this flavor in anything other than a 2 liter bottle so I grabbed this bottle while I could. Unfortunately, the picture doesn't quite do the color justice. The soda is a transparent, light lilac color which doesn't come through in this image. I think its a good flavor. You'll still get a mostly classic Canada Dry ginger ale flavor, but it comes with a tinge of berry flavor that gives it a nice highlight. The berry taste is strongest in the aftertaste that lingers in the mouth. I think they should have made this flavor more highly available in individual sizes though. 

Bawls Cherry

It's been many years since I reviewed a beverage from Bawls. About the only place I know of that regularly stocks Bawls are the Micro Center stores selling PCs and tech gear. Bawls tends to market itself towards gamers who gravitate towards highly caffeinated sodas for marathon gaming sessions. A sugary cherry smell comes off this bottle. The guarana I think affects the flavor in a negative way. Its obviously a cherry flavor but just doesn't taste all that nice to me. I'll leave this one for the gamers. Bawls has better flavors to choose from. 

Saranac 1888 Shirley Temple

While primarily a beer brewery, Saranac crafts several flavors of sodas as well. Saranac 1888 is owned and operated by the Matt Brewing Company, purportedly the fourth-oldest family-owned brewing company in the U.S. Francis Xavier Matt was a German immigrant to the U.S. in 1880. Having worked at the Rothaus Brewery in Baden, Germany, his skills were applied as a brewmaster for breweries in Utica, New York. He created The West End Brewing Company out of the remnants of the Charles Bierbauer Brewery. Like many breweries in the U.S. during the prohibition era they relied on brewing soft drinks to keep the lights on. Utica Club sodas made by the brewery offered non-alcoholic malt drinks and ginger ale. Post-prohibition, Utica Club became a label for a primary line of beer. The brewery eventually changed names again to the Matt Brewing Company producing beer under the labels Utica Club and Saranac. In 2000, the Saranac label began bottling soft drinks again. 

This soda has a very sugary cherry-pomegranate smell. The flavor is truer to a pomegranate taste, which is much more true to the use of real grenadine used in a true old-fashioned shirley temple. It has a little zing at the end of a swig as well. Decent effort overall.

Sparky's Fresh Draft Root Beer

This root beer comes from Knox Brewing in Pacific Grove, California. Interestingly, among the cane sugar on the label, honey is also listed among the ingredients. There's a crisp, slightly wintergreen scent in this bottle. I find this particular bottle to be a little flat in terms of carbonation but I cannot find a date printed on it. While sweet, this root beer also comes across as a bit medicinal in nature. Nonetheless, it's a decent small batch root beer and at least better than some smaller brand root beers I've had. 

State Fair Kettle Corn

This bottle is from Blue Sun Bottling's lineup of State Fair themed sodas. This is in the same lineage as the State Fair Mini Doughnut soda reviewed in my earlier post. While the Mini Doughnut flavor was a delight, many strange novelty flavors can go awry. Hopefully this one is on the good side, but I get nervous before sipping on some of these inventive selections. 

The drink itself has the amber color of a ginger ale. A whiff from the top of the bottle knocks me back a bit. The aroma from this is very strong. It felt like I'd just stuck my face into an industrial sized popcorn popper. The scent is strongly wired in my brain to summon the images of walking through the halls at the Indiana State Fairgrounds as a kid. I was rarely there for the State Fair itself but there were many other events there year round and the food stands always had plenty of popcorn and hotdogs filling the expo halls with smells. This has a tad different smell though likely because our own fairgrounds didn't make kettle corn at their food counters, but you could get some from food trucks at the State Fair proper. Tasting it, it's just incredible how they can capture such flavors into a soda. It really does taste like a bucket of kettle corn. There's a slightly butteriness, but not sickening like a soda I reviewed once that shall not be spoken of again. There's also a sweet, caramel taste that is very pleasant. I've really got to try to visit these folks on my next trip to Minnesota. Definitely give this a try if you find a bottle. 

Maine Root Ginger Man

A follow up to my first post about Maine Root, found here, this "ginger man" soda is also made with fair trade cane sugar. This should be interesting because the artwork makes me want to think this will be flavored like gingerbread or a ginger snap cookie. But it could end up being more like a ginger beer. A pop of the top quickly reveals the wonderful holiday aroma of gingerbread. I also pick up a faint hint of something along the lines of a molasses or maple syrup. Sadly the taste doesn't quite match the hype of the olfactory sense for me. The taste of gingerbread is present but I find it to be a tad thin and watery. I would have liked for a stronger punch of that gingerbread man flavor which I think could probably still be accomplished with natural flavorings. I hope to continue to find some of Maine Root's drinks to try in the future though. 

Hosmer Mountain Black Cherry

I first introduced readers to Hosmer Mountain Beverages in this previous post where I reviewed their Sarsaparilla. I've come across a bottle of their black cherry soda this time around and I'm always jazzed to taste black cherry sodas. This 12 oz bottle comes in at 180 calories and uses cane sugar. The scent is not very heavy but definitely a black cherry aroma. I like the carbonation level. I think the taste of this is biased a little more toward a traditional cherry soda rather than a black cherry. The flavor is just okay, not as deep and rich as I'd prefer and I find that the finish comes across syrupy like that of a cough syrup. This is pretty disappointing as black cherry sodas go but still good enough to drink without hesitation. 

Mountain Dew Baja Cabo Citrus Zero

This new flavor from Mountain Dew is available in both regular and zero sugar versions. I was only able to secure this bottle of the zero sugar version yesterday. Despite having zero sugar, the bottle still lists 5 calories per serving and still contains caffeine. It has a sort of orange red color reminiscent of gummy worms. When I opened the bottle there was a nice crack of released air and it actually smelled like candy gummy worms. It has a standard amount of carbonation for a Mountain Dew soda. The taste comes across as orange-citrus at first then a taste I would describe as Live Wire blended with cough syrup. Finally, there's a lime flavored finish. I think the non-sugar sweetener affects the flavor too much and would probably be better with the full sugar version. It's not undrinkable but isn't great either.