Zevia, post-makeover

You may remember some of my previous Zevia reviews as being, well, less than sparkling – particularly the “Natural Twist” flavor.  It didn’t have any real flavor or sweetness to it – it was like drinking club soda with a milligram of sugar and a 1/2 drop of lime.  Well, it turns out that the guys at Zevia were listening, and they revamped their entire product line, including the drink formulas.  They were good enough to notify us about this, and they sent us a box of the new drinks for review.

A note to our readers – while we always like receiving sample products from companies for review, this does not entitle the company to preferential treatment in our product rating.  The only thing we offer these companies is first priority in the review queue.  (i.e, in exchange for the trouble and expense of shipping out the samples, we guarantee that we’ll review them first, before any of our own drinks that we had lined up).  That way you know the people sending the samples actually believe in their products.  So with that said, get ready for a big batch of Zevia Reviews!

OK, first up: Black Cherry.  I am hit by a strong, tart, cherry scent from the second I crack it open.  It smells like “sugared” Black Cherry sodas that I’ve tasted in the past, even though it’s sweetened with Stevia and erythritol.

I take a sip, and find a deep, tart-sweet cherry taste.  The cherry flavor lingers for a while, and finally disappears into a light, dry finish.  It has a slight overtone of the stevia/erythritol flavor.

As you know, we don’t review artificially-sweetened drinks, but both the stevia and erythritol in this are natural.  Barring any findings that they cause brain hemorrhages or something, they have our support at Better Libations.  The flavor of these sweeteners definitely differs from sugar, but it’s much better than your sucraloses or your aspartames or anything else artificial that I’ve tasted.  It is mostly non-intrusive.  In this particular entry, it isn’t very noticeable at all due to the strong cherry flavor – a few sips in and you won’t be able to tell.

Rating: 4.5/5 – A refreshingly complex, natural, sugar-free soda.

-Danithius-

**WiseGuise Review Rebuttal!**
I’m afraid I have to disagree with my comrade on this one.  On the cloying cherry soda smell he is correct, but on the false-sugar flavor, my palette say otherwise.  It has an almost diet soda-y taste, which attempts to hide under the cherry sweet/sourness.  The aftertaste is not nearly as bad as a regular diet soda, and the sweeteners are natural, but the combination may be causing the odd pseudo-sweetness taste.  Still not too bad, as diet sodas go, you get used to the taste.
Score: 3.5 out of 5.

User Rating: (6 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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