Francis Hartridge’s Celebrated Root Beer

i do so love getting emails about sodas i have never had. particularly when they are accompanied by an offer to trade me for it! although trading with other countries gets quite pricey with postage as glass bottles of soda are quite heavy. oh well, just make sure you click those ad links kids so i generate enough income to pay for this stuff!
the fellow i traded with to get this was an ex-pat American missing the root beer that only the good ole USA makes. he told a tale of his wife finding this stuff newly at the supermarket and excitedly trying it only to be let down. thus already my hopes are not high. not to mention that my previous tastes of English root beer have been honestly mostly awful.
the design of this reminds me a lot of the Australian sarsaparillas i recently reviewed, very high end looking. they seem to try to appeal more to an adult audience and are more like whiskey bottle design than most soda designs. they are quite unclear on just WHO is celebrating this soda but it makes it sound more olde tyme this way i suppose. it is described as “sparkling sarsaparilla flavoured soft drink with sugar” on the read label which makes it fit even more in with the Aussie sarsaparillas.
i am actually surprised by the flavor (oops, flavour) of this. it is not bad. i think it is one of those things that could go either way though. kind of like that girl you thought was REALLY pretty but who had a sister who looked a lot like her but oh so slightly different so she was REALLY not pretty. at all. i think they found a good balance here in this drink of that medicinal, very herbal tasting thing which a lot of sodas try for but very much fail at. other people may pull a ‘strike that, reverse it’ sort of thing and agree with the opposite. it is definitely something i think would appeal to someone seeking a less traditional root beer taste. i wish i could better pinpoint the flavors in here. what i think of as sarsaparilla, a kind of lightly bitter, earthy taste, is prominent. i seem to get a little bit of an anise touch in there too. other herbs are behind it and mixed in but i can’t place them so well. the carbonation level is pretty low here, as is the sweetness. overall i like it. i would get it occasionally i think if it were available closer to me.

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Ingredients: sparkling spring water, sugar, malt extract, citric acid, natural flavors including natural sarsaparilla flavor