New York Seltzer - 4 Reviews

Companies have been flavoring their colas with various things for decades and we no longer bat an eye at cherry, vanilla, or even lime cola, this may be the first berry cola I've come across. More than likely I have and it's slipped my brain. I mean I do get dumber by the day and find myself forgetting normal words I use all the time. I will choose to believe that my brain is not malfunctioning this time and say that it is my first cola of this variety. I have to say, I'm into it. I do wish it had a stronger cola flavor, but what is there pairs great with the berry. It's similar to a cherry cola, but with a little twist. Is it better? I can't say. It is different though and that makes it stand out to me, and that is a hard thing to do these days.

While this isn't what I think of when I think of seltzer (They are right. I am wrong.), this still has possibly the smallest ingredients list I have come across for a soda. It's simply carbonated water, cane sugar, citrus acid, and natural flavors. It's simple, it's clean and it's delicious.

I'm pretty sure that everyone in the world who remembers New York Seltzer from its original run was excited when they heard that it was coming back (if they heard that it was coming back). I'm also pretty sure that 99% of those people who actually got their hands on one twisted it open, took a sip, and thought “wow I remember these being a lot better.”

Has the world changed, or is it just our tastes? Is this the exact same recipe that people enjoyed back in the day? If so have our taste buds just evolved? This tastes like an average peach soda. The flavor isn't overly strong, but it's there and it's sweet. I want something special from this and it's just not there. There is nothing horribly wrong with it, but I want it to be spectacular and it's just not.

Unfortunately I think this company is running on nostalgia and not much more. I for one was more excited than I should have been when I heard that new York Seltzer would be hitting the shelves again after a long absence. The thing is that when I used to drink it, I didn't have much of a relationship with soda outside of the big names and store brand. This seemed special at the time, but now it just tastes average. This is like someone took a survey of what a hundred people thought root beer tasted like and used the results to make this soda. It definitely has a root beer flavor, but it comes off as generic. This is a lighter soda version of root beer barrel candies.

I didn't mean to come off so negative with this review. There is nothing bad about it, and I would happily drink it again. It's just a little too on the nose, when I had expected so much more. Nostalgia will be the death of us.

For those of you too young to remember this company was everywhere in the late 80's/early 90's. Back when corner stores and bodegas did not have a large selection of beverages this was always right alongside the Coke and Pepsi. I don't know if this was the case all around the country, but in Western New York, we loved our New York Seltzer. Now I have to be honest with you, I don't know if I ever actually tried one of these back in the day. By the time I was of age to be purchasing my own beverages I was far more interested in straight up soda and Mistic (they looked like wine coolers and made you feel cooler than you were, because you know wine coolers were always the thing the cool kids drank). Perhaps it's because of similar choices made by the youth of the 80's that caused this beverage to disappear from the shelves and production to grind to a halt. I will choose to believe that because who doesn't want to think that they had that sort of power as a pre-teen?

Here we are over twenty years later and New York Seltzer is back in business and cranking out six of their classic flavors. We really should have gotten to this earlier, as we like to review the classic drinks when they come back, but for some reason I hadn't been able to find it until I was in Michigan of all places. Strange times.

My first thought as I took a sip of this was, “What the hell there is sugar in here!” I had always thought that seltzer was just (possibly flavored) carbonated water with no added sweeteners. A quick look online informed me that any carbonated water beverage is considered a seltzer and even soda falls under that umbrella. In fact in my world this is just a soda. There is 31g of sugar in this 10oz bottle, and well it tastes like a raspberry soda. It's a little on the light side, but it's a fruity soda through and through. To be honest, I feel a bit cheated, but it's solely because I was uninformed. It's a decent soda and I just need to get in the headspace for that kind of beverage.