Yeah, cola with artificial lime isn’t the best. But cola with fresh squeezed lemon and lime is great. It can even make Diet Coke taste like something more than malted battery acid (though Coke Zero and any Diet Pepsi product is great). Two things I don’t get:
Why a restaurant will stock just Diet Coke when any similar alternative is better. This is very common.
Why if you ask for lemon or lime, they think you want a piece of citrus floating in your drink for some reason. You needs to squeeze it to free its preciousssssss goodness….
Perhaps consumer preference in terms of old habits die hard? I don’t know, but I actually prefer Diet Coke to Coke Zero. The latter does taste much closer to actual Coke, for sure, but I still enjoy the former more.
Sure, some prefer Diet Coke. But that is not necessarily a reason to just stock it. I’m talking about the sort of place with a display fridge with mixed cans or bottles from many different companies. Not some place serving fountain drinks, or with contracts to a specific company.
Ah, Shasta. Back when I was a starving college student I would buy six packs of Shasta from Big Lots for 99 cents each. I pretty much bought it because it was the cheapest soda I could find. I honestly don’t remember it being that bad, but I didn’t exactly have discriminating taste back then, and it’s not like I compared it side by side with Coke.
Maybe Cragmont was strictly a NW or very regional phenomena? Growing up as a kid in the 70s/80s, we thought Shasta was great (I loved some of the flavored version - black cherry for example), but we all hated Cragmont. Could’ve been influential bias though. Cragmont sucks, Shasta is great. I still remember camping vacations and being excited about Shasta.
Hopefully others have memories that date back that far. As I posted back several posts, our little league team uniformly hated Cragmont but loved Shasta. Of course, that was the opinions of 10-12 year olds. But, Shasta still exists while Cragmont does not. Anyone want to support Cragmont Cola?
I mostly remember Shasta for being the last brand to switch from steel to aluminum cans. The theory among fourth graders was that they were still selling off stock made a decade earlier.
A possibility that didn’t come up yet, and just popped into my head
Caffeine Free Coke, NOT the diet version. So it’s not diet, but the lack of caffeine IMHO leaves the taste just . . . off. And it isn’t particularly expensive or hard to find.
And losing the caffeine also takes out one of few benefits of soda. So just off-tasting sugar water.
Decades ago when Coke was expanding around the globe, they wanted to tap into the lucrative Indian market of gazzillions of thirsty people.
The Indian government insisted they share the recipe. Coke refused. India then came up with Kampa Cola. I’m here to tell you it was beyond awful. Way, way beyond. Def THE worst cola. EVER!
Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a success. And I believe real Coke is everywhere now.
Very surprisingly, I just read an article about a nostalgic push to reintroduce Kampa Cola. It’s pretty hard to believe, to be honest.