Tiro Hibiscus

Note: After drinking, reviewing and recycling Tiro Hibiscus, I realised that I hadn't photographed the bottle. "No matter," I thought, "For the love of Pizza, where I purchased this average-in-almost-all-regards soda, is just down the road, I can easily pop down there sometime this week and grab/photograph myself another." A good plan, but unfortunately FTLOP had either sold out or stopped selling Tiro Hibiscus, and I was forced to pursue other options. The best I could come up with, aside from seeking out Tiro Hibiscus someplace else (which I may have done if it wasn't such a boring soda), was the artists rendition you see above, which took me half an hour or so to draw but is far better than wasting $4.50 on another bottle or cheap online image-theft. This was supposed to be last Friday's post, here it is a few days late...

I was pretty excited to try this, I can’t remember ever even having smelled a hibiscus let alone eaten one but I guess I expected a rose-water-esque drink, at the very least something that tasted floral. The colour of the drink furthered this conception, a pink/light-red much like a Turkish delight. The smell is very much like red cordial, and with this in mind Tiro Hibiscus begins to look quite a bit like watery raspberry cordial.

The flavour is very light, pretty much just a hint, so much so that it’s hard to pin down. Tastes nothing like rosewater/Turkish delight, not even slightly floral. The taste is very much like the weak red cordial that it looks like with a vague hint of lemon. The taste itself is pretty much all in the aftertaste; when the drink is in your mouth there really only the sensation of having bubbly liquid in your mouth with a slight hint of the flavour to come (that in itself really only has a slight flavour), a flavour that isn’t really unleashed until after you swallow, whereupon it sticks around for a good 4-5 seconds. The bottle does say “all natural subtle flavour of hibiscus and lemon” I guess.

This soda’s sweetness sits at a good level where the drink tastes sweet without tasting overly ‘sweetened’- this could be due to the relative lack of flavour overall. This low level of fizz sits well with the light feeling of the drink.
Tiro Hibiscus is made by Splitrock who predominantly make bottled and spring waters, makes sense as this is more like a ‘twist of hibiscus/lemon’ than an overtly hibiscus and lemon flavoured drink. I can see the types who are into flavoured mineral waters going ape for this, I’m normally pretty turned off by that sort of thing but I don’t mind Tiro Hibiscus, although I’m that hot on it either.

Although fairly pleasant, Tiro Hibiscus is a little bit light-on everything-wise to get me very excited. The main adjective I’d use in relation to Tiro Hibiscus is ‘agreeable’. If that’s enough for you then pick yourself up a bottle, if you want more from a soda I’d suggest leaving it on the shelf.

55/100

-LC

Available at For the Love of Pizza Northcote.

F&N Groovy Grape

Smell is that thick artificial grape smell that almost all grape sodas (portello excepted- more on this ridiculously delicious grape-based soda very soon, if Riverport isn’t a household name where you come from then prepare to be wowed/I pity you) possess; no surprises there, likewise with the colour, which is dark purple to black, the classic grape soda colour I guess. Fairly decent fizz levels, based on initial visuals.

I get that it’s fermented, but how is it that grape soda is so delicious while wine is pissy and disgusting? Perhaps it’s because wine actually contains grapes? Anyhow, if wine tasted like grape sodas do I’d surely be in a different place to where I am now, most likely panhandling, purple-toothed, with my very own colony of hair lice, but thankfully most wine tastes like shit and here I am reviewing sodas for a blog and haunting grocers with names I can’t pronounce that sell things like dried anchovies and whole mock lobsters and all sorts of crazy chips and biscuits that make me wanna start a savoury snacks blog- The Wizards of Crisps perhaps? This is turning into the Wizards of Shit so I’ll move right along with the review.

The fizz is just as strong as it looks, very nice. The flavour matches the smell, grape-flavour to a tee. F&N Grape essentially tastes like any number of other grape-flavoured sodas/lollies/gum, with a few small differences:

Number One: F&N Groovy Grape isn’t as medicine-tasting as some Grape sodas I’ve had, which taste like I should’ve gotten a prescription to buy them. This is a very good thing.

Number Two: Kinda tied to the point above, this soda lacks that thick/syrupy feeling that I often worry about with strong flavours such as grape, cherry etc. Not a problem here, in fact just the opposite. This is a very good thing.

Number Three: Also tied to the previous points, overall this soda is kind of weak; it’s not so much the initial flavour, which is plenty strong enough, but rather the lack of staying power- the flavour lasts for literally three seconds, easing off after that, gone five seconds after consumption.

The first two are definitely positive, the third neither completely positive nor completely negative, two outta three isn’t bad and I feel that the thickness of grape (and cherry, and strawberry etc) is a big reason why I don’t buy these flavours more often than I do, so the fact that this isn’t a problem with F&N Groovy Grape is pretty great.

As far as packaging goes it’s pretty standard F&N fare, purple colouring to match the insides, goes well with the silver and red. I wish F&N had gone all-out with the ‘groovy’ theme and had disco balls, peace signs and all sorts of other wacky shit on the can, would’ve been pretty silly but also pretty cool. I like how F&N are resurrecting fairly dorky synonyms for great, like cool and groovy, waiting for the appearance of other classics like rad, wicked, swell, boss etc.

Overall F&N Groovy Grape lives up to its name, and is the best grape soda I’ve had due to its relative subtlety.

78/100

-LC

Available at Central Grocery .

Cherry 7-Up Guest Review

The first thing to be noticed, as you scan the fridge, is the conventional 7 UP logo spanning the can. But from there on, things get a bit unsettling.

The first assumption goes like this: 7 UP: lemonade. That’s all they’ve ever made – it’s their raison d’etere! They can get away with that because their lemonade is good – almost a touch of lemon- unlike other lemonades which say “no artificial flavour”. Bullshit, there’s flavour by the bucketload, and and it’s all sweetness. They actually think that’s a flavour.


Back to the experiment at hand – Cherry 7 UP. I call it an experiment because that word carries the inference that things aren’t quite right.. The can’s red – OK, I can handle that. Red is the colour of cherries. But also splashed across the can is the word “antioxidant”. So now I’m drinking a soda which seems to be a health food. That’s reinforced by the drink being caffeine free, but that’s just another stake in the heart for this new-comer. When have you ever tasted a caffeine free drink that’s worth the privilege of passing your lips.

Playing safe, I poured some of this soda into a glass for closer examination. I have trouble placing its colour. Is it salmon, pale orange, pissy pink? Maybe all of them, but it sure doesn’t look like what I’d expect from a cherry soda.. You can trade off such a colour for the alcohol in cheap sparlking pink wine, but this poor relative only has antioxidants and a lack of caffeine to stimulate the drinker.

Before drinking, I inhale deeply, once again to be disappointed by the fragrant yet unspecific smell. I’m even more sure that no bunch of cherries ever had much to do with the creation of this drink. The flavour convinces me of that. It finishes a little bit dry on the palate – I guess that’s the D-Alpha tocopheryl acetate. Apart from that, it offers little in the way of distinctive flavour. Coca-cola can rest easy that their cherry coke won’t be challenged in the marketplace.

The 7-Up team seems to have wasted their energy coming up with this one. Maybe they figured that if you draw a piece of fruit on the can and write a few healthy-type words then the thirsty masses would be under their spell. They needed to say it was organic and vegan as well to have any chance.

21/100

-TM

Available at Sugar Station.

Linda Pomegranate

Pomegranates are strange-looking but delicious fruits that are juicy and slightly sour, attributes that I’d think would translate well to soda, so before consuming Linda I considered pomegranate soda to be a pretty safe bet. After consuming Linda I still think that an authentic (or at least mildly authentic) pomegranate soda would be great; unfortunately, if you’re after such a thing, Linda isn’t the drink for you.

A fairly average can houses bright red liquid of garden-variety fizz, which looks a whole lot like raspberry soda. Looks can often be deceiving (and the flesh of pomegranate is very similar in colour to a raspberrys), however in this case they are not- Linda ‘pomegranate’ tastes just like a raspberry soda. While this isn’t a bad thing per se- raspberry soda is, when done well, delicious and refreshing- the labelling of Linda as pomegranate-flavoured is a little deceiving and gives the prospective drinker a skewed idea of what they are in for. This aside, Linda has a solid and refreshing raspberry-esque taste with an aftertaste that is essentially the little brother of the main taste, so no nasty surprises there.

Not much else I can say, pretty tasty but essentially just a raspberry soda, I’d drink and enjoy Linda again but will look elsewhere for a carbonated pomegranate fix.

55/100

-LC

Available at Abbout Falafel House Coburg.

Fanta Strawberry

An Indonesian can of Fanta Strawberry, apparently one of Fanta’s ‘Big Four’ flavours in America, the other three being Orange (pretty much all you can get in Australia outside of specialty stores and limited promotions, a staple in post-mix fountains and vending machines all over the country), Grape and Pineapple. Considering this is produced in Indonesia, I wonder how similar it is to the Fanta Strawberry that’s available in the US? The same perhaps, or completely different? The flavour is listed as “Rasa Stroberi”, which Google translate leads me to believe means “Shaven Strawberry,” somehow I doubt it but who knows.

The can is pretty terrible (not quite fruit-punch terrible), bright red and featuring some strange-looking humanoids messing around with bottles of Fanta. Can designers of the world take note: cluttered, gaudy cans are doing you no favours, keep it simple, less is more. While I’m on the subject, Fanta’s 600mL bottles are a disgrace, and the same logic applies as above.

Although I was initially turned-off by the can design, the soda itself- a rich, deep red in colour, with above-average fizz- restored my hopes for a satisfying drinking experience. The flavour is pretty great, sitting somewhere between artificial raspberry and artificial strawberry (feels kind of cheap using this sort of comparison, but anyone who’s ever eaten candy should be familiar with these flavours, and trying to describe ‘generic artificial raspberry flavour’ is like trying to describe the colour blue or something. All I can really say is that neither of them taste like their real-world counterparts), although it tastes nothing like the only other strawberry soda I’ve had (Welch’s). In a blind test I probably would’ve said that this was more raspberry than strawberry, but Fanta feels otherwise and who am I to argue. Either way, this is a pretty delicious soda, and I’d safely say that it’s my favourite of all the Fanta flavours I’ve tried so far, Orange included.

The aftertaste is good, light and sweet and lasts the normal/pleasant amount of time. The only gripe I have with this soda is that it is a little bit thicker-feeling than I’d like, although this isn’t really that pronounced (it’s not like drinking syrup or something), and it doesn’t leave a gross snail-like coating on the tongue like some sodas do.

Not much else I can say, a pretty solid offering (especially coming from Fanta) and kind of a curveball as far as strawberry-flavoured sodas go, not that I think I’ll find something better but this has made me pretty darn eager to try the rest of Fanta’s non-Orange flavours, horrendous can-art or no.

72/100

-LC

Available at Central Grocery .

Dr. Pepper Cherry

I'm always a fan of a soda in a black can and the design on this has got me pretty good. Whilst it does look very 1992, the big red cherries and Dr. Pepper logo have got my mouth watering for this one. The can also includes the line "amazingly smooth" which I sure hope isn't a false promise. High hopes.

The taste is great, it starts off with that famous "no one knows what the flavour is" Dr. Pepper flavour then moves on to a rich cherry taste that cuts off fairly quickly leaving no bad aftertaste. It's a good deep cherry flavour without any chemical overtones that normally haunt cherry sodas. Amazingly smooth wasn't just Mr. Pepper boasting, this tastes as if there is actual cream present. The aftertaste is really creamy and delicious.

The HFCS leaves a bit of a film on the back of my tongue but its not gluggy and not as bad as some. It has a nice light carbonation that suits the creamy taste.

About halfway through the can I started eating my lunch and the soda didn't fare well when coupled with food. It lost a lot of creaminess and just flavour in general, one to be had alone. Congrats Dr. Pepper, a really good venture into cherry territory that even stands up next to Jones and the other good cherry sodas out there.

87/100

-DM

Available at Supa IGA Brunswick.

Bubble Up

Alright this review was a bit of a wild ride, so I will try and get the whole experience in here. I first tried the soda a while ago and started writing the review but never finished. Here is the beginning of that piece -

"I gave this soda the best chance possible to impress me, I really did, but like trying to find holocaust justifications it's hard to find anything good about Bubble Up, and at least the Nazis were efficient."

Hmmm, pretty harsh. I didn't have high hopes for this one when it came round to sampling it for the second time. But something had happened, this time it tasted much much better. It was like a better version of Mountain Dew, a lemon-lime type citrus taste that was really fresh and flavoursome. I would prefer this over Mountain Dew, a version of it that's not so thick or sweet but just as nice flavour-wise.

But then the soda did a flip on me, back to its old ways. After only about 15-20 seconds of the really good taste, a horrible dirty aftertaste started to creep in, getting stronger and stronger. As much as I wished it away it wouldn't abate and then all of a sudden I had gone from a tasty Mountain Dew variant to a dirty, chemically dime-store lemon drink. For the rest of the drink it was just as bad as I had remembered, cheap and nasty, and I ended up throwing it away at about the 3/4 mark. It just has all your average bad soda problems, strong chemical taste, everlasting bad aftertaste, big bubble carbonation, just not a nice soda in any way.

Whilst not as bad as I remember the orginal tasting being, it turned out to be pretty disgusting. It's flavour inconsistancy, whilst exciting, is probably not a good thing. Pick one up if you want 15 seconds of great citrus soda and then a disguting dirty aftertaste that doesn't fully go away for about 3 hours.

31/100

-DM

Available at Hayat Hypermarket, Brunswick.

Hansen's Kiwi Strawberry

After the Mandarin Lime I drank previously I was really looking another soda by Hansen’s Natural. This one smells a lot like strawberry candy, it seems to be a common factor among nearly all sodas that they smell like the candy version of their flavour rather than the actual fruit/vegetable/spice/whatever but I don’t mind that.

I would describe the flavour as a lighter version of the Welch’s Strawberry soda with a tiny bit of Kiwi flavour at the end of the taste. It would be great if someone could really nail a strong, sour kiwi soda but I haven't found one just yet. It has a great mouth taste but then it fades away and the flavour disappears, with no real aftertaste at all. I have mentioned this light (almost lack of) flavour in my other Hansen’s review and this time I think they might have gone a little too far with not enough flavour. Despite this, the lightness makes for a delicious summery soda that doesn’t need to be ice cold to be refreshing.

I don’t feel sticky or gross after this soda which is partly due to it not having an aftertaste and mainly due to the no artificial products approach Hansen’s take towards their sodas. The light, refreshing, real sugar, natural method should be a model for other soda companies.

76/100

-DM

Available at Munchies & More Coburg.

Shani Fruit Flavour

Beautiful can design. The colours- a nice shade of red, along with yellow and purple-work beautifully together. The logo, a visually appealing retro-looking design, sits above twin strawberries, raspberries, and a few bunches of purple grapes.

The soda smells like a berry-type drink, and it is dark red in colour, similar I guess to portello. The fizziness level sits around the average, quite pleasant and ‘just right’ I suppose. The soda itself manages to simultaneously taste like each of the individual fruits/flavours depicted on the can as well as an amalgam of all three: there’s a raspberry flavour much like the Schweppes raspberry or raspberry cordial- that classic ‘raspberry’ flavour; there’s a slight grape flavour, although (thankfully) this has more in common with portello than something like Welch’s grape; as well as all this is a taste uncannily similar to pink marshmallows (!!), something that it took me quite a while to pinpoint but was seemed so obvious once I did. The pink marshmallow flavour is especially strong in the aftertaste- it is left hanging around in your mouth long after the other two have vacated, although this is more than welcomed if you ask me.

The overall effect of the mixing of these three fairly closely-related flavours is very pleasant, and it’s pretty cool that there’s a soda on the market that tastes like pink marshmallows. The place I got this and a few other sodas from - Abbout Falafel House - is, in this humble reviewer’s opinion, home to the best falafel in Melbourne, I strongly suggest you hit it up and grab a Shani while you’re in there.

78/100

-LC
 
Available at Abbout Falafel House Coburg.

Fanta Pineapple

It definitely doesn’t smell like real pineapple but it smells like what I have come to know fake pineapple smells like. The taste you get while drinking is pretty good, nice and strong pineapple flavour, but then it all fades away. As soon as you stop pouring the drink the flavour just disappears, it kind of feels like it slips away from you so I chased it with another sip but you just can’t catch it. The flavour and aftertaste are nearly non-existent.

One thing I did notice in the aftertaste is a bit of the stinging cheek sensation you get from too much citric acid. I like sour sodas and one time the Wizards tried to make our own sodas and ended up putting in so much citric acid we were stuck on the floor laughing with cheek cramps.

The soda really lacked any kind of carbonation at all, this seems to be a common theme in these different flavoured Fantas (different flavoured Fanta in Australia means anything that isn’t orange). Just give me some good bubbly soda that isn’t just like drinking a sweet syrup.

A really lacklustre soda overall, despite a cool range of cans (this one included) Fanta really needs to make some changes before I become a fan.

38/100

-DM

Available at Central Grocery .

Tasmanian Holiday Sodas

A few weeks ago my girlfriend and I went to Tasmania for the weekend. The trip was her birthday present to me for my 22nd birthday (what a gal!), and in between exploring all that Tasmania has in the way of beautiful scenery, food etc, I managed to sample a few of the Apple Isle’s carbonated offerings. For anyone who isn’t aware (overseas readers??), Tasmania is a small island just south of mainland Australia, can be accessed by ferry or airplane (we chose the latter), and is a state of Australia with a population of around 500,000. Tasmania was once home to the fabled Thylacine aka Tasmanian Tiger, is currently home to the Tasmanian Devil (which looks less like the Looney Toon and more like a snarling dog/wombat hybrid. We only saw one the entire trip, ran out onto the road in front of our hire car, thankfully it escaped the incident unscathed). The capital city is Hobart, and this is where we stayed. Enough geography for now, onto the sodas...


Spuma Bionda



Cryptically described on the (fairly impressive) soft drink menu at the Hobart restaurant we ate at on our first night as “a little like a ‘drinkable’ creaming soda??”. I still don’t understand what was meant by this, all I can come up with is that the author confused cream soda with spiders/floats?? Nevertheless, this was the first soda that I drank on our trip, and by far the best.

This is an excellent tasting soda. Golden in colour, and with a charmingly retro-looking logo, I knew I was in for a treat the second I saw it.

The flavour is a light brown-cream soda taste, almost like cream soda mixed 50/50 with lemonade. I love cream soda, and I love Spuma Bionda, but the thing that sets it far above the back of creaming sodas vying for the soda-drinking public’s love and consumption is the sweetness level. Unlike many sodas, which mask a bland or unpleasant taste with near-saturation levels of sugar, Spuma Bionda is pleasantly un-sweet. Not to say that it lacks sweetness at all, but the subtle, tasteful level of this soda is something of a rarity and a large part of the reason, I think, why I like it so much.

Having had only a mouthful since returning to Melbourne, I can’t really remember any specifics regarding carbonation, aftertaste and the like, but considering that I bought 3 or 4 more bottles of the stuff over the remaining two and a half days of our stay, I think it goes without saying that I was at the very least satisfied with these aspects of Spuma Bionda as well.

Spuma Bionda(did I mention it is Italian?) apparently translates to ‘the foam blonde’ (although the label features a brunette). There were two other sodas manufactured by the same company (Paoletti) with similar logos, a lemonade and a chinotto. Enamoured as I was (am) with Spuma Bionda I didn’t try either of these two, and I figured that if Hobart had them in such abundance then Melbourne (which unless my geography is wrong is actually slightly closer to Italy) must be swimming in bottles of the stuff. Not so- although I haven’t looked too deeply, I haven’t seen a single bottle since I got back, save for the one I brought back with me. However, a little bit of research has revealed that a company in North Melbourne- Sapori International - imports the three sodas mentioned so far in this review as well as a number of others. They can be contacted via the link above.

87/100


Tasmanian Chilli Beer Company

I got these two sodas, along with a few different ginger beers (I hate ginger beer, gave one to Darcy who may review it in the future, my girlfriend drank the other- also made by Tasmanian Chilli Beer Company- and as far as I can tell she enjoyed it), from Salamanca market. Tasmanian Chilli Beer Co. had a tent set up amongst the sea of body wash/knick-knack/book stalls where they offered free tastings and sales. From memory there was another flavour available aside from these two and the Ginger beer, can’t remember what it was and I guess the fact that I didn’t buy it must mean something. Apologies for the terrible quality of the following photographs.


Raspberry sparkling



Smells very strong of raspberries, the real thing not flavour, “Organic Tasmanian Raspberries” are the third listed ingredient (after water and sugar), when we bought these the woman emphasised that the berries were grown locally and organic, seems to be the case for most boutique beers/sodas/foods etc these days.

Completely devoid of fizz, however the fact that ‘sparkling’ makes up 50% of the name leads me to believe that this is due to the fact that it was carted all around Hobart in a backpack, taken inside the pressurised interior of an airplane and across state borders rather than a lack of fizz when manufactured. From memory the liquid in the shotglass sampler we tried before buying these sodas was carbonated but as to the level I cannot say, buy one yourself if you really must know.

The taste is a little more subtle than the smell, pleasant but nothing to rave about. I guess it just tastes like raspberry cordial (this likeness is increased by the lack of fizz), although the “hint of chilli” is a nice touch, creating a sensation much like the ‘zing’ of ginger beer- a tiny, tiny kick right as the drink is swallowed, creating a highpoint that the aftertaste (not that great- tasting like the drink itself but with the ratio of raspberry flavour to chilli flavour flipped) creeps out from under.

Not an amazing soda, would definitely have benefited from being fizzy (my fault not Tasmanian Chilli Beer Co’s). Chilli is an interesting and unique touch, all natural for you health nerds.

58/100



Lime Sparkling




My first impression is that it smells like ginger beer- a bad sign. The taste is like an overly-strong lime cordial (the kind that comes in a glass bottle, not Cottees), especially bad in the aftertaste which is about 2x as strong as it should be. This lime kick overrides the chilli kick which is probably for the best considering that the lime is so strong.

Didn’t finish the bottle, barely got below the neck, not for me. After drinking even this small amount I got an acute belly-ache, possibly from the chilli (I drunk the two Tas Chilli Beer Co. drinks back-to-back, with about an hour or so in between), or possibly from the fact that anything above moderate sugar consumption has made me feel ill lately.

Similarly un-fizzy, for the same reasons I’m sure.
If you really, really love lime (Muller I’m looking at you) then I’d say give this a go, otherwise stick to the raspberry or, better yet, go for a walk and find a place that stocks Spuma Bionda.

44/100



Spuma Bionda was the clear winner of the trip, I cannot stress enough how great of a drink it is. I’ll definitely be looking into where I can get it in Melbourne (will post any details I find on the blog), and I suggest that anyone serious about soda in general and especially creaming sodas do anything they can to get their hands on a bottle.

-LC

Hansen's Mandarin Lime

First up, this can lists some pretty interesting facts you don’t normally get on a soda; no caffeine (fine with me), no preservatives (good work), no sodium (I have no idea what this does, probably a good thing?) and all natural flavours (makes me think of a lemon sparkling mineral water or something but alright let’s do it).

As far as I know all Hansen’s Natural Sodas are clear which I think is really cool. A see-through soda is just really exciting and not often done, especially in Australia. It has the exact smell of sour mandarin gummys, which are pretty close to real mandarins, it’s a delicious smell and my mouth is watering again now thinking about it.

The taste starts off with a strong burst of mandarin, it’s really tasty and true to the real fruit. The flavour then moves towards lime which is really good too but more like soda lime flavour than real lime flavour. The flavour overall is fairly light, verging on lacking, but this means it is really refreshing. It wasn’t too sweet or syrupy and went down easy. There was no real aftertaste either which I don’t mind, again it means it was a lot more refreshing and doesn’t leave any thick taste in your throat.

The more I think about this soda the more I like it, the flavour was so tasty and the light refreshing bit was something that I have really been craving after the thick, sweet drinks that we are constantly exposed to. The all natural approach is a plus too and I can’t wait to try all their flavours. Is it too early to suggest that Hansen’s is the news Jones?

91/100

-DM

Available at Munchies & More Coburg.

Crush Orange

The bottle is a beautiful dark amber in colour, shaped like a rocketship or a building out of The Jetsons or something- retro-futuristic, very very nice. Sadly the tacky Crush logo is slapped right in the middle, almost but not quite ruining the rest. Like Thums up, Limca, EGB, and possibly a bunch of others, this bottle is Indian in origin and of the ‘drink and return’-type. For anyone who isn’t familiar with the concept, from what I understand once the soda is drunk the bottle is returned to where it was purchased to be sent back to the company, where it is cleaned and refilled. Often the bottle will show evidence of multiple uses in the form of scuffs etc, pretty cool. I always feel bad after drinking one of these and having nowhere to return it to. Yes I recycle it, but that’s nothing compared to the kind of recycling that it would have in store for it if consumed in India- while here it will be washed, melted down with a bunch of other glass bottles and other assorted rubbish and turned into god knows what post-consumer piece of garbage, in its homeland it would be washed, refilled, recapped and put straight back onto the shelf.

The soda itself is very orange, Fanta-coloured I guess, and smells pretty similar. Pleasantly fizzy. The taste surprised me- I was expecting to write a sentence-long review that either said ‘tastes like Fanta’ (thus awarding the drink a score somewhere between 60 and 70) or ‘tastes like Pakola Orange’ (giving the drink 7 or even a zero for the added lack of originality)- Crush Orange, however, sits somewhere in the middle of those too, although thankfully more like Fanta than Pakola Orange.

The initial taste of the drink is fairly flat and a leaning towards that of an orange sports drink (though heavily carbonated) or cheap supermarket orange soda, however the sweet lemony aftertaste (which kicks in pretty quickly, depending on how fast you swallow) is delicious, and saves the drink from being yet another sub-par entry to the orange soda market (which, to be honest, has got to be nearing saturation point). The aftertaste is slightly bitter, which is a negative in this case, and in most cases in fact. A bottle-full disappeared pretty quickly, I didn’t moan with pleasure after every mouthful but it went down pretty smooth and was refreshing and light.

Overall not too bad, I wouldn’t go seeking it out but if you stumble across it somewhere (and that somewhere doesn’t sell Pakola Ice Cream Soda) then by all means give it a go.

Post-review research led me to discover that Crush do a bunch of other flavours including, aside from more the traditional ones, blue raspberry, chocolate(!!), ‘fruity red’, sour peach, strawberries and cream, wild cherry and loads of other flavours. Expect to see more from Crush on these pages very soon.

58/100

-LC

Available at Hayat Hypermarket, Brunswick.

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