Shirley Temple Soda by Saranac

I picked up this cute little 'mocktail' soda pop at Cybercandy recently, along with an armful of more bottled pops from North America--they really do have a ton, way more than I had ever seen at one shop in the USA, let alone in the UK.  Quite impressive! I'm looking forward to reviewing all of them, it gives me a good excuse to drink soda--something I've been weening myself off of for the last year. Whoops.

Shirley Temples are something I'm pretty familiar with- because while I'm not much of an alcohol person, I'm very much a soda person.  My mom would make them, along with other sundry 'kiddie cocktails' for me up until well...last time I asked her to make one, I suppose!

Now, grenadine is allegedly pomegranate flavored, but in all my years of drinking Shirley Temples and grenadine-spiked coke, I've thought it was cherry flavored. This probably comes from an early bit of misinformation, but even now tasting this soda all I could think was delicate but super-sweet cherry.

The taste to me was very similar to a well-mixed Shirley Temple--grenadine syrup and lemon-lime soda. It reminded me a bit of  SweeTarts, and my husband was reminded of Refreshers, both of which are pressed sugar discs with slightly tangy, fizzy flavors. Truly it is a special relationship.

The color was very cute, very pink and fairly opaque. It wasn't too fizzy either, it was fairly smooth--not as smooth as, say, an artisan root beer, but smoother than a Sprite.

I'd buy this one again, but with something like 300 'weird' sodas to try at Cybercandy, I don't think I'd get around to it anytime soon.

I'd give this to a kid, but...interestingly, this soda has both aspartame and high fructose corn syrup, so while soda is never healthy, this one is particularly...risk taking. It doesn't bother me, but if you're sensitive to aspartame be on the look out. Indie sodas like this usually use real sugar, so I was a bit surprised to see both of those ingredients on the label.