My Soda Pop Snobbery

I'm not a huge soda drinker, but when I do buy a soda, it's likely to be something offbeat. I like trying out new flavors. The last two times I bought soda were both Watermelon Cream, the time before that was a Cucumber soda. (Before that was just a Cherry Coke - but, hey, I was at a movie theatre, so gimme a break.)

• Oogavé-brand Watermelon Cream is amazing - probably the best soda I've ever had. As the name implies, it's like a Cream soda with Watermelon overtones. Instead of Corn Syrup or even cane sugar, the Oogavé brand uses agave nectar. The result is smooth. Compared to it, other soda feels watered down. I don't mean that Oogavé is sickeningly sweet - it's about the same amount of sweetness as most sodas - it just has more body. It feels different in your mouth.They actually talk about that a little at the Oogave website, it's not just something crazy I imagined. I can't possibly recommend their Watermelon Cream too much, anyone who likes soda will probably get a kick out of it.
  
  
• Dry-brand Cucumber soda, on the other hand, is a unique experience that I really enjoyed, but is probably not for everyone. I really like the Dry sodas, but the first time I tried one it was a shock. They're not sugary at all, and have a very... well, dry flavor that's a tiny bit like a flavored mineral water. Dry is to cola, what fine wine is to budwieser. It's soda for connoisseurs with refined palettes, if you'll forgive a little snobbery on my part. Within the brand, the Cucumber is probably my favorite, followed closely by the Rhubarb soda. The Cucumber is this rich, multi-layered flavor. You swish it around, and the flavor changes as it hits all the different taste receptors scattered across your tongue and the corners of your mouth. The Rhubarb soda takes me back to my childhood, and munching on stalks of fresh rhubarb in my grandparent's backyard. Some of their other flavors are, to be honest, a little too weird for me (lemongrass? juniper berry? kumquat?), but my wife loves their Lavender soda. Dry Soda website.

I pick both of those up at my local market here in Seattle, but according to their websites, both companies are available in most of the country.

It's probably a good thing I don't live in L.A.. If I were within a reasonable distance of Galco's Soda Pop Stop, I'd definitely be a regular customer, and probably work through his 500 flavors of soda in just a few dizzy sugar-rush-fueled months. I saw this video today about the store, and thought it was awesome. (It's a 13 minute interview about obscure soda pops, so perhaps it's not for everyone, but I found it really enlightening.)



The guy inherited his father's corner grocery store. One day, while negociating with Pepsi over pricing, he realized he couldn't compete with the big chain stores down the street, and told Pepsi to take a hike. Instead, he brought in 25 different weird little microbrewed soda lines. Then he started getting customers who were coming in because his store was the only place in town that carried their new favorite drink. Let's face it, the modern marketplace doesn't favor the corner grocery store - but being the place with the crazy sodas was a niche he could adapt to. The guy stopped carrying other groceries, and just became the obscure soda specialist.