A few months ago Nick mentioned that Fizzy Fruit may be introduced into some schools. Well many years before it made the news I tried my hand at making my own fizzy fruit at home. I had heard about the idea a few years earlier from people in the brewing industry when I was an assistant brewer during grad school in Seattle. It's pretty easy to do. I used an empty soda syrup keg, filled it with assorted fruit, added CO2 under pressure, and chilled it overnight. This carbonated the fruit, the same way soda is carbonated, so that it fizzed with tiny bubbles like champagne when you ate it.

Looking back, it was fellow blogger Joe D who taste tested that first batch with me in the winter of 1996/1997. Personally I didn't think much of most of the fruit. They all tasted good, and the fizz was fun, but except for the grapes, the fizz was more annoying than anything else. With the grapes it was actually enjoyable. I guess because they were small, sweet and tart, and you could pop whole ones in your mouth. I never thought the idea was going to go anywhere, but I guess it has.

Coca-Cola is hoping that the UK release of Coke Zero, nicknamed "Bloke Coke" because it targets a young, male audience, will help reverse a decline in the sales of carbonated beverages in the country. When Coke Zero was launched in Australia with a similar marketing strategy, total sales skyrocketed 19% in only two months. Its marketing campaign, which included a fake blog and other tricks that were decried by media watchdogs, worked well and didn't seem to put consumers off, meaning that Coke actually has its strategy down well for selling Coke Zero.

Coke Zero is, if you haven't had it, a calorie-free soda that is meant to taste more like regular Coke and fill a gap in the marketplace left by Diet Coke, which some perceive as a girly product.

Speaking of girly vs non-girly, Coke Zero was released with black cans and labels in Australia, but white in the US. Which is it in the UK?

 

I have to admit that I had mixed feelings about tasting Coca-Cola Blak. After I mentioned its release a few weeks ago, the amount of hype seemed to go through the roof. People loved the idea or people hated the idea; there was no middle ground. I assumed that I would not really like it before I tried it. After all, a drink that was hyped as much as Blak couldn't be good - could it? The thing that I failed to take into consideration is that I love coke and I love coffee. I also really liked Coca Cola Blak.

Let me say that it is definitely not a soda for everyone. I almost felt like I was cupping a coffee, which is the process where you sip and sniff and seek out all the underlying flavors in a sample of coffee. The coffee flavor was strong enough that I automatically looked for flavor notes, which I found. The drink tastes quite strongly of caramel, or perhaps burnt sugar without any bitterness, and there are similar fruity notes to the ones I like in my coffees. There was a good amount of bubbles - not so much as to be distracting, but Blak still fizzed like mad when poured into a glass. The only negative is that it is quite sweet. I wouldn't mind a small reduction in sweetness, but overall, they did pretty well with this drink.

Did it taste like coca cola? Not really, but it did taste good.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]