This Is What I Drink: 84

More Galco

I've talked a lot about Galco's, the amazing soda store already, and here are a couple more offerings from that store that I bought and tried.

Manhattan Special Black Cherry

Don't let the picture fool you. I didn't actually buy the entire line of these, though I would have liked to. I've had the vanilla cream soda from the same company in the past, and it was one of the best that I had ever tried, so I figured that their black cherry offering would be good as well. Black cherry is a really tricky flavor. It can veer into "cough syrup" territory pretty easily. Lots of poor quality black cherry sodas I've had can be nearly undrinkable. Fortunately Manhattan Special know what they are doing. Sweetened with cane sugar and natural flavors, this one tastes right. There's nothing extraordinary about it in that it didn't redefine the category for me like their vanilla cream did, but it was crisp and clean. No reason to double check that you might be swigging from the medicine cabinet.

Double Cola

I pretty much knew nothing about this brand going into the store and that's fine. Every good sampler pack of soda needs a cola or two and this one sounded interesting. Considering the product goes back all the way to the 1930's I was surprised that I hadn't seen it often or much less heard about it. That said, of course Galco's has it, like they have everything. Anyway, the cola is just okay. It uses cane sugar (I wouldn't have it any other way) and has a good basic premium cola taste to it. It's way better than Coke or Pepsi of course, but it didn't bring anything bold or exceptional to the flavor profile. I actually found it pretty similar to Trader Joe's fairly bland store brand "vintage cola." Good, but not anything special.