No, No, No, No, No! (Fentimans Dandelion and Burdock)

Member Name: hypno06

Product:	Fentimans Dandelion and Burdock
Date:	04/06/09 (92 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Traditional

Disadvantages: Tasted like slightly fizzy cough medicine.

I am all for tradition, and I am often trying to go back to basics, or to revisit tastes, products and ways of doing things from years gone by. So when a colleague told me that he had a bottle of Fentimans Dandelion & Burdock, that he had bought as part of a "meal deal" at our local deli, but that he didn't like it......I was happy to take it off his hands. After all, I have read several 4 and 5 star reviews on dooyoo about this, and now I could have a bottle for free! Not bad!

Fentimans describe this as "harking back to a time when all soft drinks were refreshingly full of flavour".....that fits the bill nicely I think!

So, I took the glass bottle.....going back to tradition, this is one of the things we always used to have - a glass bottle. There is no 10p return on this one, though, so I need to find somewhere to recycle it locally. It looks more like a bottle of beer than a bottle of pop, with an oval glass label on the front, and a neck label - just as it is on the picture above. It looks dark and syrupy, and when I unscrew the lid, I can smell a distinctive aniseed flavour. (Note - before drinking this, just tip it upside down with the lid still on, to allow any sediment to mix in.)

Looking at the ingredients on the back, this is not unexpected, as aniseed is indeed listed, along with sugar, Pear Juice Concentrate, Dandelion strong infusion and Burdock strong infusion.

There is a slight fizz to this - nothing like you would expect from a bottle of pepsi, for example, but enough for you to know you are not drinking a still drink. I would guess that if you guzzled this one down, you would not suffer the same gassiness as you would with other fizzy drinks

So, onto the taste. Well, to me the aniseed is overpowering. I like licorice and aniseed things, but I found that this one was so aniseedy that it was too much. I know that dandelion and burdock is a distinctive flavour and is a bit of a "love it or hate it" drink, but I have always loved it and my Grandmother always had a bottle of it available when we went to visit.

My impression was that of a slightly fizzy cough mixture - not something that I really wanted to be drinking out of pleasure!

So, back the lid went, and that made two of us in our office who decided never to buy this one again.......

So, I offered it to my daughter......who had a similar nose wrinkling reaction. And the lid went on for a third time.

So, I was disappointed. I had read some really glowing reviews on this product, but mine won't be one of them.

I do give it marks for tradition, for the glass bottle (still got to find somewhere to recycle it in town though), and for the plain and natural ingredients. I also give it marks for having the right amount of "fizz". But that is where my positivity ends, I'm afraid. I will give it three stars out of five, but that is quite generous still.....

More information on Fentimans and their other brews can be found on www.fentimans.com

Summary: If anyone wants 2/3 of a bottle.....let me know!