Mr. Fitzpatrick's Superior Black Currant Cordial

Well this was an interesting find. Perusing a gourmet food store on my recent trip to the Orkney's I stumbled on a range of different cordial flavors from Mr. Fitzpatrick's. The brand has been producing botanicals beverage products for over a century. While there were a lot of options I selected this black currant bottle. As mentioned in a previous post, black currant flavoring is very popular in the UK.

Now, based on the bottling and my limited knowledge of cordials I thought they were alcoholic beverages like an aperitif. Cordial apparently has a slightly different meaning in the UK. The shop staff told me they weren't alcoholic, but I later learned cordials require a mixer. They are essentially just a concentrated syrup. Although I've never reviewed a cordial before on this blog, I already had the beverage and it's still a soda as an end product so why not? 

I eventually located a bottle of sparkling water and chilled both the sparkling water and the cordial in the fridge. The syrup was quite thick so I ended up mixing about three parts sparkling water to one part syrup. The flavor was not heavy, but you could always just adjust the amount of water used to make it stronger I suppose. I think this ratio worked pretty well and is refreshing with a nice currant flavoring but the taste dies off pretty quickly. This means there is no real aftertaste lingers, but some folks that like this flavor my find it disappointing to have such a short lived taste. All around I find it made a nice sipping beverage. 

Tango Dark Berry Sugar Free

Another Tango flavor makes its appearance. The last flavor featured was their flagship orange soda. Here I've found a bottle of what they've named "Dark Berry", which is really more of a black currant. The UK is pretty wild about black current flavored everything, from drinks to jams and more. Probably the most well-known is a competitive beverage named Ribena that is ubiquitous in shops around the UK. 

The can did not release a great deal of carbonation upon opening. Opening it released a pleasant smell like that of black currant jam. Noting that this is a sugar free soda, the sweeteners listed are sucralose and acesulfame. It actually tastes like a rich jam as well. For those unfamiliar with black currant, its like a robust grape; very deep and definitely keeping with the black currant flavor profile. I find this to be quite nice to drink.