Noodlepie has a ranking of Vietnam’s 18 top soft drinks. AsiaPundit endorses the number-four ranking soursop juice and regrets that he has not had access to soursop juice since leaving Southeast Asia (soursop mixes very, very, well with gin.).
Beverage: Nuoc Mang Cau/Guanabana Juice (Soursop Juice)
Ingredients: Water, 35% guanabana (soursop juice), sugar, citric acid
Appearance: Ooh… this chap looks like a ready to go Ricard only with a more viscous body. I like.
Aroma: I’m getting a 1970’s punk-era cornershop sweetshop in Macclesfield, shelves behind the counter stacked with sweet jars. One kid in red bondage trousers is ordering a quarter of rhubarb & custards while his accomplice, decked out in a Siouxsie and the Banshees Happy House t-shirt, is stealthily nicking a bag of fizzbombs, a sherbert fountain and a pack of Chocolate flavoured HubbaBubba bubblegum.
Taste: Sits squarely in sweet territory, but fruity, syrupy sweet, not over sacharine yukko, barf, barf, sweet. The sheer thickness of the liquid is slightly off-putting. This might work better diluted with water, but it’s the fruitiest quaff I’ve sampled thus far.
If this drink were a politician it would be… Kenneth Baker. A bit slimey.
Our survey said… 7 out of 10 points. That’s 6 points for the promised-on-the-label 35% fruit goodness in a can and 0.5 bonus points because the name guanabana sounds like birdshit banana. I’ll award a further 0.5 points as, by rights, soursop should be dictionary defined as:
Soursop - noun, derogative 1. That filthy soursop from Accounts stank the whole bleedin’ place out. Someone who has just farted long and loud and without apology mid-way through an important meeting to discuss the relocation plans of a medium sized, Norwich-based, IT Consultancy. Non-farters present are commonly observed shuffling photocopied agendas, fondling cufflinks and checking PDAs. The soursop remains placid with a stoney expression that belies an inner feeling of immense relief.
Cost: 3,600VD or sod all.
Check out the numbers 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 (again), 3, 2, 1.
Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, vietnam, southeast asia
March 28th, 2006 at 4:51 am
I’ve probably tasted most of the fruits of Southeast Asia, but Guabano is among my favorites, along with durian. Last time I had the fruit was on the beach at Cebu City (Mactan, actually) and it was an amazing mixture of high-end cirtus, like eating a grapefruit straight, and sweet, earthy greenish flavor, and almost overwhelming. Kinda like a durian, but without the smell, but with all the punch. Guabano is very difficult to find in SE Asia, but it’s a wonderful fruit, though I doubt the bottled mixture has any relationship to the real thing.
March 28th, 2006 at 9:28 am
Cheers for the link, guanabana is a winner. But I haven’t ranked them. The numbers are confusing I guess. I just review them as and when I find new ones and number them. In fact there are three more unlikely sounding specimens on my shelf awaiting inspection.