Widely adored, but not by me (Appletiser)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Appletiser
Date:	28/05/09 (13 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Non alcoholic, family friendly alternative to proper drinks

Disadvantages: Smell, bubble size and taste in my opinion

Having seen the other dooyoo reviews here I suppose it should be no real surprise to me that many people actually seem to like this stuff, since it is quite widely available and has been around for years, but I'm afraid I'm really not one of them.

I do encounter 'Appletiser' quite regularly however, as it is the only drink fairly regularly available in pubs that a particular one of my teetotal relatives will touch. When she comes for a meal at ours we always have a bottle or two in reserve in the fridge and there is one such (previously unopened) bottle left over from the last visit. It's on the shelf now, just taking up space, and while I notice it several times in passing every single day I can't really bring myself to drink any of it - or to just get rid by pouring it down the sink. Since I paid just under two quid for a bottle of, this basically faintly apple-flavoured pop, and for not much more money I could've gotten an admittedly bottom of the range bottle of red wine instead.

Almost everything about this stuff annoys me - even the name. For years I thought it was called 'Appletise' - a nice crisp, direct sort of title for a product I thought, but no. Recently I found out it is what my relative's quite rightly always insisted on calling it - the name's drawn out with that wishy-washy whiny 'r' sound that doesn't mean anything on the end instead. The drink is an annoyingly wishy washy colour of champagne yellow too - which, I must admit, if it was on any other product other than this I wouldn't nearly so much object to. It tastes faintly sour-sweet and the bubbles in it are too small - it doesn't even have the decency to be a properly fizzy drink, with proper, brashly fizzy bubbles, like, say, 7up or coke. And the glasses stink after they've had Appletiser in them - they smell like stale alcohol, as if whoever's been drinking from them has had a proper drink - despite Appletiser being non-alcoholic, its residues smell to me like stale cider dregs. And the price! Where do they get off, charging about £2 a bottle for what's basically, mass-produced pop? If it's £2 for a soft drink, I expect that drink to be made from sustainably farmed organically grown elderberries, hand-pressed using traditional methods by a community of artisans in Herefordshire, or some rot like that, at the very least.

I suppose the bottle itself is an all right shape and pleasing shade of green but I don't like the logo or the way 'Appletiser' is written in feebly loopy script. I'm aware that my response to this product might be slightly disproportionate. But what can I say? It really rubs me up the wrong way, which until now I'd've thought was impossible, for a fizzy drink.

Summary: For people who like Appletiser, that is the sort of thing they like