New York Seltzer Raspberry Soda

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.