Red Berry Mix. The title alone intrigued me. What were these red berries they were speaking of and in what proportion had they been mixed?
I’m a big fan of the berry. On cereal, crushed and put in a smoothy, pulped and in juice or au naturale, plucked from a prickly bush and eaten while on a lonely walk, the berry has style. Sweet, sharp, blessed of bulbous protuberances, high liquid content and distinctive taste, berries are beloved of the flavour maker.
Add to that, my previous excursion into berries and SodaStream: Blackcurrant flavour had gone rather well. Definitely one of my favourite flavours, so what of the eponymous Red Berry Mix?
I cracked the bottle of flavouring and was instantly delighted by the sweet aroma that drifted up. Pure sweet shop magic. The hint of Percy Pig, a note of rhubarb and custard and a dash of cherry drops. Mixing the bottle produced a lightly tinted drink along the lines of blackcurrant and apple which initially filled me with fear. Could this be another wasted anti-flavoured health drink?
Fortunately no, a quick sip and an explosion of flavours ensued. The fine smell of this flavour translated on the tongue into a sweet, but strongly accented berry flavour. Clean, strong, but also highly fizzy and mightily refreshing. Wash it down and you’re met with a pure one-note aftertaste which leaves you picking up the glass to gulp down more.
Yes, there are definitely berries here. Quite which kind I’m not sure though the packaging does make some oblique ingredients claims to containing 1.2% of elderberry juice concentrate. This pretty much convinces me that what we’re talking here is berries of the synthetic variety, but lets not complain about that, invention is the daughter of necessity. If I had to pin it down I’d say our synthetic berries consist of flavours of blackcurrant, raspberry and a note of something sharper like the sloe.
To compare with a commercial flavour I cast my memory back to varieties of Tango and Fanta I’ve drunk, but both of those examples though pleasant are a little bit more synthetic tasting and sweeter than this flavour. The main comparison I will draw will be on my next testing of the Blackcurrant flavour, but I reckon Red Berry is definitely in the running.
Well, either way this is a very tasty beverage. A good compliment to any meal and talking of running, definitely a gulpable source of hydration after you’ve been forced to run for a bus or chased down an errant traffic warden. Sweet, fizzy, berry goodness. Good work SodaStream berry inventing scientists, another winning combination.
