Dr. Pepper has tried out a lot of different permutations in the last few years, including Cherry Vanilla, Berries and Cream, and the rather woeful Cherry Chocolate (reviewed in the 3/31/08 episode of the old podcast). I actually liked Berries and Cream pretty well, but the others ranged from "hardly different from basic Dr. Pepper" to "pretty horrible." Maybe the problem was they were just trying too many flavors.
The front of the bottle of Dr. Pepper Cherry that I picked up actually has the tagline, "It's so amazingly smooth, you have to try it to believe it!" on the front. Ordinarily I would say this was incredibly hubristic, but you have to give to Dr. Pepper here - they're right. I'm not sure how I would explain it - the cherry flavor, much like in the old Cherry Vanilla variety, is hardly strong. But the undertone that is there does just enough to make the regular Dr. Pepper flavor easier to drink. I'm not sure it's "amazingly" smooth, except that it is kind of amazing that just adding cherry flavor could actually make your soda taste smoother.
On the other hand, Cherry Coke is one of my favorite sodas ever, and it's certainly smoother than regular Coke. The irony is that I'm not even a huge fan of cherries or even cherry flavor most of the time. In soda, though, I really enjoy it for whatever reason. I guess I would say that it's a good complementary flavor - I don't want to eat an entire bowl of cherries, and I thought that Cheerwine was pretty good, but not great. However, you take that mild, sweet cherry flavor and mix it with the strong, rather robust flavor of cola or Dr. Pepper, and the combination manages to mitigate the few harsh aspects of the original soda's taste. (Just don't make the mistake of trying to pair it with yet another flavor.)
So if you like Dr. Pepper, put Dr. Pepper Cherry on your list. It's at least as good and possibly even better.
No comments:
Post a Comment