This drink won't make you Tango but it might make you shake! (Orangina)

Member Name: Stripery77

Product:	Orangina
Date:	13/07/09 (25 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stunning when chilled and fizzy

Disadvantages: It loses the fizz-factor fast

Always with an eye out for a deal I spied Orangina being sold at £1.50 for two 2 litre bottles in my local Somerfield. Now being partial to a bit of fizzy orange I thought to myself that'll do nicely.

I used to love Orangina as a kid and remember the ads singing out "Shake the bottle to wake the drink" which has now been shortened to "Shake it to Wake it". On the bottle it states that "Orangina brings you a taste of the mediterranean through its natural and authentic taste with real orange pieces" - and I'm always up for that kind of escapism!

Aside from the price and the memories I was also pleased to note on the bottle that this contains NO artificial colours, flavours or sweetners which is a hatrick of goodnews in my opinion.

A 200ml serving contains 84 calories and a whopping 20.4 grams of sugar which is 23% of your daily allowance. Now I am not one to hold myself to a daily regime and the other day we came in from a particularly harsh walk on a humid day and me, my husband and the kids polished off a chilled bottle of this in under 10 minutes - it was LUSH and I'm not afraid to say so.

So how does it taste?.....

Well there's a satisfying whoosh as you open the lid and when you pour it out it is a really nice natural orange colour. If you have remembered to shake it then you'll also find a generous dispensing of orange pulpy bits. If you haven't shaken it you'll still get some bits but not as many. If you don't like bits in your drink then you simply won't like this - even though it is UTTERLY delicious.

I was interested to note that in the ingredients this drink also contains other citrus juices from concentrate including lemon, grapefruit and mandarin for I can't taste these, I just taste orange - but then maybe my tastebuds are defunct from all the pickled onion crisps I eat?

So are there any downsides?...........

Well actually yes there are I'm sad to say. This drink just doesn't work if it is not chilled and I don't know why. It becomes claggy and syrupy and definitely loses it's refreshing edge which is why you'd drink it.

Also, it loses it's fizz really quickly and if you don't intend to down the whole 2 litre bottle in ten minutes which is my usual desire for my familys consumption of carbonated sugar, you can find that you have a chilled but flat drink, again taking away the edge that this drink has when fizzed and chilled.

My husband is one of a strange breed of individuals that likes his drinks flat and he actively shakes up our coke and lemonade much to my great horror. Yet I find that chilled flat lemonade or coke are at least somewhat palettable - Orangina however is not. It can lose it's fizz as quickly as opening it a few times from the fridge and that is downright rubbish.

Final thoughts......

This was cheap in our Somerfield and is often on offer when I go in there. Subsequently I always buy it and am drawn into this cycle of initially being extremely impressed coupled with my dissapointment at how short lived the orange magic lasts.

This gets four stars because on a hot day there is nothing better than this chilled fizzy delight but I have to knock off a star for the Poor Fizz-Factor. I think that's why this drink has never really taken off over here and probably why it's always on special?

Finally I have to say that I am gutted to have not been transported to the Med! Surely that's not asking too much of a product?

Summary: A bitty orangy bubbly fizz fest