Review - Cranberry Sierra Mist

Bottler: PepsiCo

Calories per Ounce: 10.5

Caffeine: No

Aaron's Comments: Cranberry flavored sodas are a staple of the Christmas season, but I happened to find a bottle of Cranberry Sierra Mist still sitting on the shelf at my local supermarket and I figured that it would be a decent idea to see if it was worth drinking even without the accompanying holiday cheer. The soda tastes pretty much like it is advertised, with a lemon lime base and an overlay of cranberry flavor. This mixture works fairly well in Cranberry Sierra Mist, as the cranberry flavor is prominent enough to give the soda a fairly satisfying tartness. Ice mutes the cranberry flavor, leaving behind something that tastes a lot like ordinary Sierra Mist, which seems to me to be a step backwards. Unfortunately, ice cream almost completely washes away any of the cranberry flavor, leaving behind a fairly ordinary tasting lemon-line soda float. By itself, this is a mildly interesting variant, but when one adds almost anything to it, the variant nature is hidden, leaving just a fairly ordinary Sierra Mist behind.

Review - Cranberry Sprite

Bottler: Coca-Cola Company.

Calories per Ounce: 12

Caffeine: No

Aaron's Comments: Some time around September, it seems that every soft drink manufacturer who makes some sort of lemon-lime or ginger ale type soda puts out a cranberry flavored version of their drink. The Coca-Cola Company's entry into this field is Cranberry Sprite, which doesn't really work as well as one might think. Sprite itself has a pretty dominant lemon-lime flavor, and to make the added cranberry noticeable the manufacturer had to really make it overpowering. The result is a drink that is very lemon, very lime, and very cranberry all at the same time, which is a melange of flavor that is just barely tolerable. Ice seems to mute the cranberry flavor, leaving behind something that mostly just tastes like regular Sprite, which is something of a disappointment. Adding ice cream simply overpowers the cranberry flavor, leaving behind nothing but a regular Sprite and vanilla flavored ice cream float. This isn't bad, as a Sprite and vanilla flavored ice cream float is still pretty tasty, but given that this is supposed to be Cranberry Sprite, it is pretty disappointing.