Pepsi Raw · 2008-10-19 20:24
I finally got to try Pepsi Raw – Waitrose/Ocado now stocks it. It’s interesting to see big soft drink manufacturers trying to crack the super-premium market, and without turning to ‘healthy’ fruit juices.
The bottle clearly apes the iconic Coca-Cola bottle. On pouring, there’s a strange very stable, almost waxy foam. The taste is, well, apples, then molasses, and burnt sugar – in a bad way. There’s little complexity of flavour, compared to Coke, and it’s quite sweet. There’s also little carbonation, which goes immediately on pouring.
The ingredients list is odd. They play on the natural angle, but it’s pretty weaselly – lactic acid, gum arabic, xanthan gum. Now, I’m not against the use of chemicals in food and drink (I have a tub of xanthan gum in my kitchen cupboard), but to say they’re natural is a bit rich. The gums are also the reason for the stable foam. They’re there, I guess, for mouthfeel – but it’s a longer ingredients list than real Coke.
I don’t mind it having a different taste to standard Pepsi or Coke – there’s always a push for a new flavour to help differentiate – but I’d want a premium drink to be more complex than the standard drink, whereas Coke is an incredible rich mix of flavours, very carefully balanced, Pepsi Raw is one-note (apples), two-note at best (burnt sugar), and weirdly ends up tasting more artificial than the product it revises.