I’m all moved into the new place and out of the old!  Fifteen years after leaving the house I grew up in, I am back in that same town.  I am a bit weirded out to be back here on a daily basis.  Yesterday I went to the grocery store where at one time my entire family worked.  I saw seven (SEVEN!!!) employees roaming the aisles and manning the registers who were working there when I moved away a decade and a half ago.

I don’t want to talk about my move right now, however.  I want to talk about the sodas I found at the store.  Some of you are well aware that X-E’s Matt is the king of reviews for crazy carbonated beverages.  And while I will most likely never have a video as epic as Pitch Black II from 2005, I’m going to tell you about some new sodas on the shelf just the same.

Two sodas took their regular flavor and determined that they could be flavored further with fruit.  Sierra Mist is already packed with lemon and lime.  Dr. pepper is flavored with…what IS the flavor of Dr. Pepper?

The taste test began.  I tried some Ruby Splash Sierra Mist first.  It reminded me of Ruby Red Squirt, but less sweet.  It is a much more tart tasting drink.  This soda is one I would buy again, in a twelve ounce can, or maybe a twenty ounce bottle.  I cannot give it the full case commitment.   I’ll be honest, I hate Sierra Mist, and for one reason; it is seemingly replacing 7-up.  The reason I was looking in the soda aisle in the first place yesterday was to find a bottle of 7-up to match up with the bottle of pomegranate vodka I was planning to bring over to a barbecue. It took way to long to find the uncola, as it had been reduced to the same amount of shelf space as other drinks like Tahitian Treat or Caffeine Free Coke.

Pepsi Co., ditch the new guy and bring back that little red dot character.  I promise, I will buy more 7-up.

I tried it.  I am not sure I would tell friends about it’s amazing smoothness, but I did like it.  I’m a fan of cherry sodas already so Dr. Pepper was not going to have a difficult time winning me over with this new concoction.  There was a whole lot less of the Dr. Pepper flavor in here to make room for the cherry.  Good idea drink scientists.  I’d give Cherry Dr. Pepper a twelve pack rating, especially on a camping trip.  This would be great camping soda.

If you were only going to buy one soda for the rest of your life, and if it had to be one of these two, I would choose Cherry Dr. Pepper.   Unless, of course it is just before bedtime and you don’t feel like caffeine.  Even then I might not choose Sierra Mist Ruby Splash.  I’d probably just have herbal tea, or better yet a glass of red wine.

So, it goes Dr. Pepper>Red Wine>herbal tea>Sierra Mist Ruby Splash.   Got that?