Reading Draft Black Cherry

Reading Draft began in 1921, this was just after national prohibition on alcohol began in the United States. Reading lies in the southeast corner of Pennsylvania, a little more than an hour's drive from Philadelphia. The company produces several flavors, but they say they have the "Pennsylvania Dutch taste." I'm not exactly sure what that means or how it can taste Pennsylvania Dutch no matter what the flavor of the soda is. Supposedly they utilize a slower technique to carbonation. Aside from their soda production they also sell beer and wine making supplies, but do not make any themselves.

It smells deliciously deep. It is well carbonated, but doesn't tingle at the tongue. The cherry flavor is very well balanced. It's not overpowering. This is a good dessert soda, it has nice staying power on the tongue. I think what balances it so well is there is a touch of saltiness at the finish which keeps it balanced and as I've mentioned before, cane sugar has a more rounded flavor than high fructose corn sugar. Overall this is a nice drink.

Barr's Originals Dandelion & Burdock

Barr's Originals is a lineup of old fashioned recipes from the A.G. Barr company. Although a large company today, it was started by Robert Barr in 1875. The company began in Falkirk, Scotland, a town a little north and halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. They soon grew to have a position in Glasgow as well. Barr's started selling Irn-Bru in 1901 and is still a Scotland original available in the UK. In 1959, the Glasgow and Falkirk divisions merged. In 2012 there were plans for the company to merge with Britvic, but those plans later fell through.

This is only the second dandelion and burdock soda I've found and the last one I had was long enough ago that I don't really recall the taste. For those who haven't read my previous post about this flavor... yes, dandelion as in the weed. Burdock is a type of thistle. Dandelion and burdock is one of the oldest flavors of soda so just getting to taste it should be considered a bit of a rite of passage. 

The smell is light and airy with a tiny bit of anise. The carbonation is moderate, but the flavor is like that of a chicory. The tongue has a different concentration of taste receptors in different areas, so I sometimes taste a soda by holding it in my mouth in different areas. With the front of my tongue I taste virtually nothing. The front of the tongue is strongly associated with sweetness. When I move the liquid to the the back of my mouth the areas associated with bitterness and sour come alive. The odd root-like taste of this makes the mouth water though. I personally don't care for the flavor, but I do recommend that fans of soda at least try it.

Fentimans Cherry Tree Cola

Fentimans has been featured on my blog many times as I work my way through their catalog. Read more about their history in one of my earliest posts here.

This bottle has a delicious ginger aroma when I pop the cap off. If I closed my eyes I would think I was in a Christmas shop. The flavor is less cherry than potpourri in a bottle. The flavor isn't amazing, but the scents sure are. The drink looks positively flat until it's tipped, but has just enough carbonation to make it alluring. Thankfully, they've balanced the ginger to keep it from overpowering the rest of the herbs and not to burn like a ginger beer. Again, I think the best think about it may be the smell. I'd like to get some more of this around the holidays. Definitely try a bottle of this for yourself if you can. 

Ginseng UP Cola

While this isn't the only soda infused with ginseng extract, they have been around a little while and have several flavors to choose from. Ginseng UP began in 1981, in Worcester, Massachusetts, and focuses on imbuing its products with the "healthful" benefits of ginseng and all natural ingredients, with little sugar.

While the bottle looks nice... I wish the cap was a crown top instead of a screw top since those don't make it into my collection. It has cinnamon-like notes to it's cola scent. It could use more carbonation but the taste of kola nut is a bit over powered by the flavor of tea. I'm not a tea drinker, but I've found that when cola is mixed with it, it's not terrible. In my opinion however, caffeine-free cola partly defeats the point of cola. It's a decent drink but nothing I'm going to go crazy about. 

1776 Beverage Co. Raspberry Birch Beer

1776 Beverage Co. is a product from the spice and sauce company Heartbreaking Dawns. The company hasn't been around very long and is run by married couple, the McLaughlin's. The couple shared sauces created with their locally grown ingredients with friends and family and later local events. Heartbreaking Dawns was founded in 2009 and is located in Midland Park, New Jersey. The 1776 Beverage Co. was an offshoot that came out of that company producing it's first sodas in 2011. 

The soda has a rich amber color with a mild birch beer scent. The smell of raspberry is lingering in the background, but you really have to search for it. However, the flavor is all about the raspberry. It is a mild raspberry though, not tart or as strong as biting into a fresh berry. Raspberry flavoring in sodas is pretty rare so it makes for a very interesting taste. Amazingly, this sugar cane sweetened soda is surprisingly low cal. The entire bottle is marked at just 130 calories. The taste isn't mind blowing, but simply because of the uniqueness of it, I recommend giving it a try if you find a bottle.

India Uva

India is a generic brand equivalent from Puerto Rico. While there is little on the company website regarding soda brewing and bottling, this particular bottle was manufactured by Compañía Cervecera de Puerto Rico, best known for it's beer and Malta India.

It smells of Dimetap cough syrup. It's also rather flat, but that may owe more to its age since plastic bottles are permeable to gasses. Other than that it's an typical grape drink, with nothing remarkable about it. You could probably mix soda water with one of those cheap grape drinks in the little grenade like packaging kids have in the summer and get something similar.

Idris Fiery Ginger Beer

While the name Idris still appears on the label, Idris is only a subsidiary these days. In 1873, in a part of London called Camden Town, Thomas Howell Williams began bottling mineral and carbonated water. The tale goes that Thomas was so enamored with the Idris mountains of Wales that he changed his name. They added flavored drinks to their line in 1880. Idris was producing a ginger beer as early as 1922 as well as ginger ale and a drink by the name of Koolime. Today, Idris falls under the Britvic company, one of England's largest beverage producers. Britvic acquired Idris in 1987. Like many other beverage company's Britvic grew substantially during the 1980's through the 2000's by simply buying out several other company's. 

My regular readers know that I'm no fan of ginger beer, which is why I usually put off trying new ones. I haven't ever seen this in a bottle, but a can will do for this experiment. The aroma is more like a liniment lotion or topical antibiotic than a food or beverage. The flavor isn't hot, spicy or "fiery" at all in my own opinion. If you wait long enough between sips, it does bring a warming sensation to the tongue. But it tastes more like a medicine. I don't find this pleasing at all. It is neither tasteful or quenching. You might as well drink a glass of chilled Bactine. 

Spring Grove Soda Pop Lemon Sour

Spring Grove is a small town of a little more than 1300 people in the far Southeast corner of Minnesota near the Iowa and Wisconsin borders. As with many sodas this story begins with a pharmacist who came up with their own concoction to start bottling. You can read more of my early blogs about how the soda industry evolved heavily out of the pharmacy industry intended as health elixirs. The pharmacist in this case was G.G. Ristey.

While the recipes are said to have remained largely untouched over time a quick scan of the label shows both can sugar as well as high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup was not introduced until the late 1950's and wasn't widely used in foods and drinks in the U.S. until the mid 1970's. There is also artificial flavor and coloring added. So the recipe you're getting isn't an old fashioned, traditional brew. However I still appreciate small production, local products. Traditionally the distribution of Spring Grove Soda has been an area about 100 miles from the town of Spring Grove. In recent years though, they've gained distributors able to sell their sodas in many states. The next time I'm in the area I will try to find some of their other flavors.

Opening the bottle releases a fresh scent of icy lemon. It is immediately reminds me of Ski, a soda I've featured here before. The carbonation isn't heavy, though visible through the glass. The liquid itself has a pucker inducing tartness to it. The tartness isn't a thirst quencher... but 30 seconds after washing through your mouth it begins to water. It's a nice change of pace and is like drinking an Italian lemon ice dessert. While I generally refrain from mentioning alcohol on this site I feel this would be a good mixer. I've mixed some vodka for a taste and it does work well as a mixer. The tartness rounds off with the vodka added. Either way you wish to try it, it's a nice little soda I could find myself drinking during the summer months.

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.