Heaneyland!

It's not "Jackass", but then I don't have a deathwish

While shopping at one of our local corner stores, I was nonplussed to catch sight of this beverage on the bottom shelf of the bank of refrigerators:

I thought to myself, "It's a drink made out of trout? And it's sour? Is that a picture of a trout filet on the bottle? What the hell?" Upon closer inspection, it turned out to actually be ever so slightly more appetizing:

"Sour Sop" still doesn't really sound like something one wants to drink, but at least it's not trout. The ingredient list gives a few more clues:

"Well," I thought, "sorrel and ginger are both good. Perhaps I'll buy this for science." I had qualms, though. There are two kinds of sorrel that I know of -- both delicious -- but one is a leafy vegetable with a lemony taste, and one is a flower related to the hibiscus which is used to brew a red zinger-y tea. I couldn't really imagine either of those plants producing the big spiky fruit depicted on the label.

Turns out there's a good reason for that. The ingredient list on the bottle is completely unrelated to the drink inside. The fruit depicted is a soursop; mind you, I think that if most people, presented with the word "soursop", were asked to tender a guess as to what it might represent, "fruit" would not be on the top of their lists, but whatever. The fruit is also called a guanabana -- which would be why it tasted vaguely familiar, because I've had guanabana drinks before, though not often.

From that last comment you will have gathered that, yes, I did drink the mystery drink before figuring out what the heck it was exactly. Such is the daring lifestyle of a man with no known food allergies. Would I buy it again? No. It was too sweet, it didn't have a very distinctive flavor, the color was kind of oogy, and there was too much pulp in it (and the pulp didn't have such a pleasant texture). Perhaps the next thing I will explore in the world of things that most people I know would be happy never to drink but are nonetheless available at my corner store is kvass, which I believe is the drink that was described by a friend of mine as "bread soda".

Posted by Francis at 04:48 AM