It’s been a good year anyone who enjoys different flavour offshoots of the standard Coca-Cola brands. Cherry Coke Zero seems to be back again in limited quantities (for how long?), the Diet Coke line has been relaunched with a bunch of strange new flavours (more on that in an upcoming post, most likely), and there have been at least three different variant Coca-Colas on the market: vanilla, raspberry and orange sorbet.
Yep, sorbet. Because plain old orange would just be too pedestrian, right? Is it more enticing because it references a fancy iced dessert? Is it just orange, but with a gussied up name? Like labelling something “wild cherry” or “black cherry” when all you need to say is “cherry”? Lord knows there’s not a single damned “wild” cherry in any pop on the market. (What makes a cherry wild, anyhow? Does it come from a tree in the bush that nobody planted, cared for, cultivated and tended to? But I digress.)
The same ultra-specific flavour thing happened way back when we reviewed Blueberry Muffin Mini-Wheats, now seemingly consigned to the dustbin of culinary history. They legitimately tasted more like blueberry muffins than just plain blueberries.
So, then, can you taste the sorbet in the Orange Sorbet Coca-Cola flavour? It shouldn’t be creamy, as sorbets are traditionally dairy-free (so says my Larousse Gastronomique), meaning it shouldn’t taste like an orange Creamsicle.
However, when you crack open the bottle and taste it, it does indeed have a creamy side. It’s not the dominant flavour, but it’s there, and it really wish it wasn’t. It’s cloying with a vanilla angle, like I’d made an ice cream float with Coke, Fanta and vanilla ice cream. It’s drinkable, sure, but it doesn’t add anything beneficial to the Coke flavour experience. While it doesn’t taste like orange cleaning solution (yay?), there’s also nothing that makes me think of a cold glass of orange juice when I sip it.
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The Details
Price: $2.35 at Winston’s, the little convenience store in the base of Commerce Place in downtown Edmonton.
Availability: Widespread, though not everywhere. It’s still clearly a limited edition product.
Nutrition: It’s pop, so no redeemable nutritional value. 200 calories per 500 mL bottle.
Verdict: Nope. Not my cuppa. If it was a nice juicy orange flavour mixed with Coke, I might be interested. But this isn’t that, so no thanks.