For starters, here's the origins of the DRY Soda Company itself (Taken from the website):
"I love fine food paired with good wine. And I’m passionate about good health. I’m also the mother of four children and I spent my pregnancies eating beautiful meals without the complement of a paired beverage. My options were uninspiring - tea, club soda and sugary drinks that overwhelmed the taste of my food. I wanted a beverage that was better for me than super-sweet juice or soda. The inspiration struck me to create a beverage that tasted good and was better for my health, and the health of my family. And like that, the idea for DRY Soda was born.
In early 2005 I started to develop DRY Soda in my home kitchen where I spent hours educating myself on beverage creation and researching flavor profiles. I made batches and batches of soda, and my family helped me taste every one of them until we found the perfect flavors. In August 2005, with the help of a few of the Pacific Northwest’s leading chefs and award-winning designers, I launched the first DRY flavors: Lavender, Kumquat, Lemongrass and Rhubarb.
In the beginning DRY Soda was offered in the nation’s finest restaurants and then DRY expanded to retail distribution. Due to the success of the original four flavors, DRY Soda added Juniper Berry and Vanilla Bean DRY in 2008, and in early 2009 Cucumber DRY joined the line-up. In 2011 DRY introduced the newest flavor, Wild Lime DRY.
I wanted to create a soda that was less sweet, all natural and made with the best quality ingredients so that the flavors would shine through, and I’m proud that DRY Soda does just that. Each DRY flavor has a unique profile that makes DRY Soda a delicious beverage to sip on its own or pair with food. And because I developed DRY to use the minimum amount of pure cane sugar, the DRY flavors sparkle and enhance the taste of food instead of overpowering it.
The uniqueness of DRY flavors have inspired our customers to share with us their best-loved ways to drink DRY: paired with a favorite recipe, as a lunchtime refreshment, mixed with top-shelf spirits for cocktails or poured over ice cream for floats.
DRY Soda has gained national recognition as a soda that is better tasting and better for you thanks to the hard work and dedication of the DRY Team, our industry partners and our enthusiastic customers. The complete line of seven flavors is available in DRY’s Tasting Room and Company Store, retail stores, restaurants, hotels, resorts and boutiques throughout the United States and Canada.
I’m so thrilled that what started as an idea in my kitchen has become soda re-imagined - perfect for any occasion, any day."
I'm always a sucker for these kind of stories. It's nice, shows off an individual's entrepreneurship, and is all around very smile-inducing.
Next up is the bottle.
As you can see, it's a plain & clear ordinary bottle that sorta looks like a coke bottle, minus the styling. What is nice is the flavor label on the front, the health statistics & ingredients on the back, and the calorie count at the tip (More on this in a moment). A neat little aspect about the labels is that they each have a different color related to the flavor in question (Blood Orange is...well, orange). Not only that, the front label also has a little pattern that also related to the flavor (In the case of Blood Orange, orange slices decorate the front).
Now it's time for the health factor. Never in my entire life have I seen a soda so healthy, and so good for you! If you don't believe me, take a look at the ingredients below:
Pure Carbonated Water
Cane Sugar
Natural Extract
Phosphoric Acid
That's it, that's all there is. Only 4 ingredients make up this soda, and considering how many ingredients are in most modern soda (Foreign & Domestic), that's incredible. On top of that, the calorie count in this soda (As well as the rest of the flavors) is really low. If fact, take a look at how much is in each flavor:
Wild Lime: 65 Calories
Vanilla Bean: 60 Calories
Lavender: 70 Calories
Blood Orange: 50 Calories
Cucumber: 45 Calories
Rhubarb: 60 Calories
Juniper Berry: 55 Calories
As you can see, DRY Soda is quite healthy, regardless of the flavor. You can also see that the various flavors are rather interesting. With that said, let's look at the actual flavor & taste of this soda.
For starters, they don't lie with the name. DRY Soda is very dry: it's not that there isn't any sweetness, because there is. There is just enough sweetness that you can taste, but not enough to become sickeningly sweet and overwhelm the orange taste. In fact, it almost tastes like a orange-flavored seltzer water with a hint of sugar, which to me honestly isn't that bad. I'm not a fan of dry sodas/drinks, but this one surprised me. At least for me, there's a balance between the hint of sugar, the orange flavoring, and the seltzer feeling.
I'm personally giving this a 7.5 out of 10. The bottle looks nice, it's incredibly healthy, and it has just the right balance between three separate aspects. The one bad thing is that if you aren't used to dry sodas, it'll hit you off guard.
See you all next time. Until then, stay Otaku!
* If you're interested in the drink, take a look at the link below:
http://www.drysoda.com/
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