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We're Just Dumb Enough To Do It:
What would possess six relatively ordinary people to drink 92oz of soda each on a hot afternoon? Well, we had collected a fridge full of the damn things and they weren't getting any more consumed just sitting there. So there was nothing to do but have a test tasting. We Van Gogh-Goghs finally sat down and, over the course of 2 or 3 hours each tried 46 different doctor sodas. The first thing wrong with this idea is that, unlike a wine-tasting, you don't get more drunk, and hence more happy, as the tasting goes on. Quite the opposite. We all got more and more twitchy, bloated and miserable. The second thing wrong with this idea is that 92 ounces of soda doesn't sound so bad until you do the math and see it's almost EIGHT whole cans of soda.
But we saw it through to the sickly-sweet end. The big surprise was that not only could we not pick the original, Dr Pepper, out of the crowd, but that we all mercilessly panned it when we did get to it. The other big surprise was the icy realization that we had only tasted roughly half of the doctor sodas known to exist, leaving the door open for a sequel tasting. And we can chill those sodas in Hell on the day of that tasting what ain't fricking happening.
The Facts:
Forty-six different sodas were administered to us orally in a random order in a blind taste test. We did not know which soda we were trying so we would not be influenced by brand names or shiny, pretty cans. The properly refrigerator-chilled (no ice) sodas were served in two ounce paper Dixie cups and regulation Zesta brand saltines were used to cleanse our palates in between sodas. In the interest of full disclosure, we must disclose that the pouring and serving was done by Charles' wife, Kelli, who did a great job and didn't complain, despite the fact the whole scene was totally chauvinistic and that towards the end we all started to unfairly resent her as the source of our misery. Thanks Kelli!
The Reviews:
Sodas were reviewed for bouquet, color, taste and also assigned an overall point score from 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. It's important that you experience the tasting as we did. So we present the sodas (and our comments) in the order that we reviewed them, to highlight our mounting misery and insanity as the tasting wears on, soda after soda after soda.
Begin!
© copyright 2000 The Van Gogh-Goghs
