(Part Two in the British/Irish soda reviews. Mind the gap.)
Name: Club Rock Shandy
Alleged Flavor: "Orange and Lemon Soft Drink with sugar and sweetener" Also states "real fruit bits"
Actual Flavor: Tart Lemonade with orange peel mixed with seltzer
Color: Polite Description: Murky Tang. Impolite Description: time to see a urologist
Tasting sample was from: 330 ml. can, poured into glass
Shandy is another one of those British things that never quite made it in the states. Simply put, shandy is a beverage made mixing lemonade and beer. Never made it in the states? I know, real shocker. Yet Weiss beer with lemon made it here at least on a limited level, so maybe shandy will still have it’s day.
Club Rock Shandy is a soft drink twist on the traditional shandy, and I guess mixing lemonade with various sodas is popular in Germany and South Africa as well. This one originates from Ireland and contains "real fruit bits", otherwise known as citrus pulp. It’s 5% Orange Juice, 1% Lemon Juice and has both sugar and saccharin in it. Sugar is right behind carbonated water in the ingredients list, but you could’ve fooled me. This stuff is TART. Which in my book is very good. I recently discoverd San Pellegrino’s Limanata and Aranciata, which are sparkling lemon and orange beverages (respectively) from Italy. They are damn tasty- they’d be my soft drink of choice if they cost the same as Coke. But they are darn expensive, as is Club Rock Shandy- which tastes like a half and half mix of Limanata and Aranciata with a splash of artificial color, sweetner and pulp. That might not sound like a high endorsement, but if you combine two of the best soft drinks I ever had and mess it up just slightly, you still have a darn good drink on your hands.
Oh, and as I finish my review, I realized my can has passed it’s best before date about a month ago. So maybe it’s better fresher, before the real fruit bits take a turn south.
Rating: 8 out of 10