One of my favorite delights of living in another country is to experience other-world flavors created by familiar brands. As I think about it, there are rarely special flavors of soda available back home, and, while Coca-Cola has come a long way since Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs, the folks back home will never know.
Sparkling Tea Royal is one of these delights. Although misspelled due to translation (there is no “V” sound in the Japanese alphabet), the “nable orange” is tartly recognizable upon first taste, followed the delicious roundness of tropical pineapple with a perfect black-tea finish.
Best of all is the understated carbonation in this drink that makes this beverage both a tea and a soda.
The combination is sort of what you’d expect if a bottle of delicately bubbled Gerolsteiner made love to an exquisitely flavored summer tea, blended so perfectly that consumers would argue over which parent their child resembled more.