Boots Beverages Dewberry Soda
/I tell people that my favorite dessert is blackberry cobbler with ice cream. That’s a lie. My favorite dessert is dewberry cobbler with ice cream. I say blackberry because most people don’t know what a dewberry is. They taste very similar to blackberries. So much so that I probably couldn’t tell the difference if they were baked in a cobbler.
Twist thought it was Boo Berry Soda. DIBS ON THE IDEA!
The reason I prefer dewberries is a sentimental one. My family used to pick dewberries on the side of the road on occasion. It was a very rare occasion, but it occurred at least three times in my life. I’m pretty sure they were wild dewberries on no one in particular’s land, but we picked them just the same.
So it made me especially happy to see a dewberry soda and then thrilled me even more to find it was made by Boots Beverages. I’ve never even heard of Boots Beverages, but they hail from my home state of Texas, Bellville Texas to be exact. The label is adorned with the face of a kid known as “Mark Kristen”. There’s a story along with his name that I’ll relay to you now:
“Mark was 5 when sorting returned bottles… barefooted of course. At 7, he ventured a tad from the family soda business. He picked dewberries along the Santa Fe tracks and sold them on Hwy 36. He gave his first $14 profit to Deedie so she could buy a poodle puppy. Deedie later sold Mark her interest in KDC. Mark suggests you be real sweet to your mother.”
Well that was fun. I hope every Boots Beverages has a story. I also hope these are delicious sodas because I want to like them so very much based on character alone. They’re sweetened with sugar so it’s already off to a good start.
A powerful aroma easily glides its way out of the mouth of the bottle. It’s a candy like dewberry scent, so I doubt we’re going for realism here. That’s fine. If you can make a delicious soda I don’t really care how you do it.
It’s sweet and a little tart. The candy scent I took in translated almost exactly as a taste. It’s very much dewberry with plenty of sugar. Carbonation wise it holds small amounts of tightly packed bubbles. They’re fierce when you feel them, but they back off fairly quickly.
I like the flavor quite a bit, but I really wish the tart sting of a dewberry had more of a presence. That’s what I don’t really understand about raspberry, blackberry, and dewberry flavored drinks. So often they have the sweet side taken care of, but they rarely hold the bite that keeps me coming back.
This is just fine though. Perhaps since they removed the tart, like so many upstanding saloons before, they could add some cream. Dewberry Cream Soda would be pretty dang good. I’m not drinking that though. I’m drinking a pretty good dewberry soda that relies a bit too heavily on the sugar. Still a fun company though.
~A
This soda was purchased at an HEB grocery store.
