<— This photo represents the precise opposite of the conditions under which I last drank Natakhtari tarxun. Rather than sitting politely at a table, I was half-faint from heatstroke atop West 8th Street station. And rather than being poured into a glass, the contents of my bottle were exploding and leaking all over my belongings, hands, sidewalk. The not-twist-off bottlecap had given way to the day’s heat/pressure, and had come undone sufficiently to dump A LOT of the tarxun. But not undone enough to let me at the remainder. And I was thirsty. And I was not carrying a bottle opener. And it was a genuine scene of suffering and hardship.

——-WE INTERRUPT THIS captivating STORY WITH AN AD FOR «Georgian Bread», located at 265 Neptune Ave. Brooklyn, NY. —– Natakhtari™ fizzy drinks are sold there. Many (two) flavors on offer! Not to mention the excellent shoti, lobiani, etc. Baked fresh daily! DON’T MISS OUT. PAY «Georgian Bread» A VISIT TODAY! THAT IS ALL.——-

So there I was trying to unseat the bottlecap by smashing it deftly against any 90º angle I could find. There are disappointingly few solid, sharp corners around the platform of that subway station. Complaint letters to follow. After a while I abandoned finesse and resorted to force; I (…accidentally) broke the bottle at the neck. The glass was jaggy and sharp, but somehow I enjoyed the little remaining tarxun without butchering myself. It was only then that I began to appreciate the view from where I had been standing:

Towne Club P[a:]p. ‘What a Delicious Bargain!’ Why drink Faygo? This sixteen fluid ounces of kill-you is just as good, and much more economical! Let’s us use that x-tra ¢¢¢ to buy way too much Wonder Bread.

Three good-enough, small-town, fruity sodey pops.   Jackson, Wyoming (pop. under 10K);   Janesville, Wisconsin (pop. under 60K).

Vile.   Like stirring Flintstones Chewables™ into the hot water that’s used to rinse an industrial drip coffee-maker, then gently carbonating the resulting solution.   I like it.

Centuries ago, I tried all the other flavors. I liked them. Seems I waited too long to try the blueberry though; Maine Root went and changed the recipe.
Before & after:

Can you spot the missing element? Correct. Blueberry juice. I guess it got rolled into “spices”. This minor omission may explain this soda’s unmistakable notes of slushie.

Yeah. Kool-Aid Man.

In case you read Chinese, you will see that this pic is not only (grimly) funny, but beverage-related.

If you call that stuff a ‘beverage’.

The bag lists the ingredients as: “High Altitude Organic Arabica Coffee and Piñon Nuts – May Contain Flavoring” (Germanic capitalization style theirs)

But it should read: “High Altitude Organic Arabica Coffee and Flavoring – May Not Contain Piñon Nuts”

This is such a let down. I was really excited for the idea of roasted piñon in my coffee.

But, no. This is just typical flavored stuff… the likes of which can be found oilily auto-dripping at half past eight on Thursday morning under the shrill whine of flickering fluorescent lights that reluctantly illuminate the slightly soiled, threadbare cubicle walls of an insurance agent’s inner suburban office in a half-abandoned strip mall.

Mundane is what I mean. Not delicious – and, critically, NO PINE NUTS IN EVIDENCE. And I dug around in the bag as if for a Cracker Jack prize.

I won’t hold it against you, New Mexico.

Oh! It’s supposed to resemble a battery! I see it now!
A 24 ounce battery full of corn syrup and other questionable ingredients. Yes.

I drank it in one sitting. Not from enthusiasm over the flavor. I miss Jolt’s more honest ’80s formulation, though not necessarily its ’80s fanbase.

[First image stolen w/ permission from boklomy, the second stolen from The Past™.]

To learn about the real mauby drink, read my previous entry —> here.

Then file this one under “how could it possibly fail?“. (Take the Ali G./Chomsky interview as another example).

This “Mabi”™ branding of traditional mabi/mauby is part of a shameful attempt to popularize the nichey Caribbean drink. Naturally, if you want to remake an already amazing product, you simply add a lot of corn syrup. Then you pasteurize it. Ta-da! You’ve lost all that “Authentic Caribbean Flavor” you mentioned in your slogan, but you gained a saucy bikini model somehow…

This Delaware Punch must’ve been really something, once upon a time. People still pine for it, and chase it down by keeping track of who currently stocks it – even though it’s a widely-acknowledged shadow of what it once was. People import it from Mexico, despite the allegation that it contains a potentially harmful colorant (it’s banned by the FDA/US Customs).

People order Delaware Punch concentrate so they can make it at home!

Some crazies even bottle a replica drink in light of the lack of availability/quality of the ‘official’ beverage.

The descendants of the creator of Delaware Punch maintain a freaking fan website.

W T F is going on here ? !

Look at that logo. Wow.

All this ruckus, and the stuff isn’t even carbonated. Now it’s owned by Coke, and its flavor reflects that fact.
Not impressed.

Available only in a couple of the Gulf states. Woo.

In a further attempt at understanding the travails of the digestively impaired, I tried a lactose-free, cocoa-flavored rendition of this popular beverage. Not for the first time, but definitely for the last.

Imagine (in order of appearance) corn oil + corn syrup + ‘vitamin taste’ + cocoa powder.

I know that this is a helpful little “chocolate shake”… but I’m sure that anyone who must drink the stuff for any duration becomes quickly oblivious to the vexing falsehood of Ensure’s slogan.

Not much to say, but EFF YES – B A N A N A S O D A .

Years ago, when I was in charming Cheboksary, Chuvashia, the maid at my little hotel calculated (by how many ‘empties’ were cluttering up my room each day) that I had fallen in love with the local banana soda. Thenceforth, she left a new bottle on my pillow every morning. Such a sweet lady! Little did she consider the deleterious day-glo, Soviet-era petrochemicals that made up the recipe. No bananas.

Now, again – with no banana trees anywhere in evidence – Cretans can safely peddle a similar soda as “banana flavour” without contest. This bolsters Epimenides’ paradox some (“Κρῆτες ἀεί ψεύσται“) as well as providing an unfortunate aftertaste – but I don’t care about all that. I LOVE IT.

Can’t you tell?

There are these ‘Taste of Mediterranean’ chips I see around, with really pandering flavors like “oregano” and “olive oil” and “feta” and “tzatziki”. Read the back and see the PEPSI logo. Similarly, you have Tsakiris chips, which are wholly owned by Coca-Cola. It’s like the cola wars all over again, but crunchy. I won’t take a side – I can’t stand either chip.

At my favorite market-cum-hotel lobby, I wind my way through about one hundred glassy-eyed, Ukrainian HERBALIFE devotees to find the same old lame chips, but a new drink on the shelves!

The LAGI website is downdead (naturally) so here is a screenshot:

Direct from Tbilisi for all the local Caucasian help, this bottle of Lagi lemonade promises that it’s a “GENUINE PRODUCT” right on the label.

It tastes like perfume and is almost undrinkable, but I don’t care.

A cached version of the website says about Lagi beverages: “They are made with new individual receipts and Georgian ancient traditions.” (sicsicsic)

Like the ancient Georgian tradition of going out of business?

Alright!!!

Schweppes brands it, Coca~Cola bottles it, no idea who imports it (from South Africa!).
I bought it at a painfully neglected Pan-African restaurant somewhere in that hyper-homo town at the end of Cape Cod.

…

Provincetown!

Yeah, so many pandering, stripy flags… I bet that place just sold taffy and bottled water before the niche marketing kicked in. Now they sell a lifestyle. Anyway, The food at this resto was excellent! And I took some drinks home with me.

Granadilla is just a fancy-foreign way of saying ‘passion fruit’. There are a lot of passion fruit sodas available in my neighbourhood these days, so I guess I’m not bowled over. However, Granadilla Twist has one thing that the others do not have:

CARMOISINE!

Then I drank the flavor called Yup – for a similar reason. No idea what a “Yup” is, or why it’s called that. Tasted like lemon, by which of course I mean “lemon”.

I saved the most anticipated Squamscot Soda for last: MAPLE CREAM. Why no charming photo? Well, according to the December 31st, 1969 issue of the Boston Herald – ‘Maple Cream’ is Squamscot’s newest flavor, and, as such, hasn’t found its way to their website just yet.

Annnnd that was the end of the Squamscot six pack.

:-(

As mentioned previously, I am again drinking more Rosinka sodas.
The “Limon” is a pretty fair rendition of a carbonated lemonade.

…But then there is this strange but pleasant sugary mess of a soda, called “Krooshon”:

The ingredients don’t really begin to describe the flavour accurately (“…grapes aroma, lemon essence, vanillin…”).
Can certainly compete with Vanilla Pepsi in pure sugar content and fake vanilla aftertaste,
but then add fruit and you’ve got TOTAL CHAOS. Damn. That’s weird stuff.

Speaking of weird, searching for “rosinka” or “росинка” via google usually brings strange results…

I’m not really embarrassed that I got around to this drink over a year late.
Only slightly embarrassed.
Like, “internet embarrassed” (i.e. *embarrassed*).
In the same way that ROFL isn’t real, neither is my embarrassment.

It isn’t horrible tasting, but it isn’t striking either.
It definitely isn’t black – and neither are grapes.

Worthy of note… when you search for images of the drink, this comes up:

???

Everybody has seen this soda. The bright green can. On one side it’s got some bucktoothed, freckley white boy chomping on a giant slice of watermelon. The other side: a girl of unknown (dark brown) racial background, also smiling and eating a giant slice of watermelon. It very strongly resembles the racial-caricatures of the early 20th century, but I doubt it carries all that unnecessary baggage down in the Caribbean – where this drink is bottled.

In other news, the soda is pretty disgusting. Artificial watermelon flavor is fine, but this has that distinct bubblegum taste to it that is so loved across Latin America. Unless it’s a mix-up at the bottler’s between the watermelon flavoring and the bubblegum flavoring? They’re both pink.

Thanks to oblietta for this contribution. Even if he is a duplicitous, guileful sociopath whose machinations and platitudes are as transparent as the boy is tall.

Everyone says this, but I’m forced to agree: It tastes like a liquefied, carbonated green Jolly Rancher. Okay?
591 millilitres of sour apple Jolly Rancher. Mmmmmm. What you’ve always wanted!

EDIT:

I found one photo here:

Where’d I get it? Ohh, THIS EBAY AUCTION. Bid carefully! They want $2.49 US, plus shipping.

But then there’s BEN’S SPECIAL®, described on the menu as
“…a combinations (sic) of the choicest true fruit flavors and other pure ingredients blended with utmost care. $1.95.” Sounds good, eh?
Well, despite the glowing recommendation written on the menu (nevermind the big handpainted promo sign on the wall!) the old server behind the counter recommended against ordering BEN’S SPECIAL®!
Naturally, I took it anyway – with a straw in an 8 oz. glass.

It’s red.
It resembles neither “true fruit”, nor any other kind of fruit.
It resembles liquid bubblegum.

Anyway, aren’t their slogans old-timey and quaint? Oh dear, yes. Here’s what the place looks like inside.

This is soooo new, I can’t find pics to steal from the internet !
I mean – I’m not going to post my own photo. Everyone will pirate me.

So, 7up Cranberry… What is there to say?
I’m sure this was market-researched all to hell,
and the result is this mamby-pamby sort of drink that doesn’t taste very strongly of anything in particular.
I guess it’s cranberry-ish, but the overall effect is not striking.
It has a great, new label…

It means admitting that I went to Taco Bell to write this, but when I was in the US several weeks ago – well – you realize that’s all they eat there right? When someone offers to take you out to dinner, they mean Taco Bell. So, from the fountain, I got this “Baja Blast” flavor Mountain Dew. Supposed to taste like lime, but it’s a weird, fluorescent aqua color. It has that same melted sno-cone taste that’s so hip wit da kidz. The funniest snippet from the Baja Blast press release is more interesting than the beverage itself:

”Over the years, Taco Bell has helped grow the Mountain Dew brand to the point where Taco Bell customers and Mountain Dew drinkers have become kindred spirits,” said Dave Burwick, SVP and chief marketing officer for Pepsi-Cola North America. “They are active, energetic, and constantly looking for something they can call their own.”

As if you care, here’s the flash-y website for the stuff – watch out for too many moving parts.
Don’t tell them I sent you:

http://www.bajablast.com

I think it is awful. It has 24G of sugar in a 1/4 liter bottle! It tastes like a slushy where the flavoring has been left to boil in the heat! It tastes like bubble gum cough syrup… oh I forgot to say it is bubble gum flavor. It tastes like shit! I think it should be taken out of stores!

Cotton candy flavor tastes like crap. Oh it is crap! One gram less sugar, twice the bad taste! I think any one who drinks it will get diabetes! Its name does tell the truth, it will make you chubby!

This is my last review. See you sometime.

Hanna E.

Erm.

…Except that chacha isn’t wine, per se, but highly distilled alcohol derived from grapes – like grappa. Chacha is often called “Georgian vodka”, but I find that comparison politically annoying.

The formerly independent kingdom of Kakheti is in eastern Georgia, and is probably the world’s first “winemaking region”. After 8000 years of wine I suppose Kakhetians got bored and decided to run moonshine on the side, resulting in chacha! Using the skins, seeds, and who knows what-all in the process, this poison is fermented to at least 50% alcohol (for the commercial varieties) up to 90% (for the barnyard varieties). The brand of chacha I found comes in 1/2 litre bottles, and three flavors:

Original flavor – surprisingly grapey tasting considering the extremity of the purification process and the paint-thinner overtones.

Peach flavor– Possibly artificial peach flavoring plus the grape of the original. Very confusing combination, but more difficult to get bored of. My favorite!

Oak barrel flavor – The most unpalatable of the three. Definitely not aged in oak barrels, this weird, sugary, oak-like flavoring is added, forcing the final product to taste like the cheapest, most bottom-shelf whiskey imaginable.

I suspect that chacha is more fun to drink when you are actually partying in rural Georgia – not at home convalescing, playing online strategy games. One website I looked at mentioned that chacha is perfect for flambé dishes!
Well, that’s one way to lower the alcohol content, anyway.

Here’s a nice, big photo of a bottle – not the brand I drank.