Hotlips Soda

I discovered Hotlips Soda while at a volleyball tournament in Seaside, OR after the whole brand was recommended by the owner of a sandwich shop near the beach. Turns out it’s kind of a local thing (the bottle says «Portland, OR 97 214» without a full address) that’s caught on in quite a few places, including my neighborhood coffee shop in NorCal and the famous Galco Soda Pop Stop in Highland Park, LA, CA.
Basically, it’s soda with only about 4 ingredients (depending on the flavor), and those ingredients include real fruit (and its pulp!). I’ve tried four of their flavors:
— Blackberry and Black raspberry were super sweet and hard to distinguish from each other (or any other sweet carbonated beverage for that matter), but…
— The Marion Berry and Boysenberry were both magical! You could actually taste (rather unique) real fruit flavor without being overwhelmed by tartness or sweetness. Good job, team.
I haven’t tried their other flavors yet, but the Galco guy said it made sense to skip
— strawberry (I think, even though I can’t tell if they actually make that from their website) and
— cherry
because «lots of other companies make those flavors pretty well already» or something to that extent. That leaves:
— cranberry
— pear, and
— raspberry.
According to their site «Cranberry + Pear are all fruit; they have zero added sugar» which sounds kind of awesome. Guess it’s time to go drop another $ 3 per bottle to find out.