Abbondio Vintage Edition
IT’S A half-hour wait for a four-top at your neighborhood bistro, so you saddle up to the bar for a round. The bartender suggests a glass of the house Champagne, a dry martini or - a lavender-infused soda.Welcome to the age of the cocktail-hour dry soda. Small-batch fruit and herbal infusions, classic juice-based sparklers, even wine-flavored sodas are showing up at wine bars, cocktail lounges and specialty supermarkets.These lightly sweetened, naturally flavored carbonated drinks hover somewhere between sparkling water and classic soda pop - light on the sugar and with distinctive flavors.If only figuring out what makes a good dry soda were as easy as popping open a few cold beers. “I’m not sure exactly how to describe them because they’re so unusual,” admits Mike Olson, beverage manager at BottleRock, the Culver City wine bar that also serves sparkling kumquat, lavender, lemon grass and rhubarb dry sodas. “They’re less sweet than regular soda and have a unique flavor - I think of them more like a nonalcoholic alternative to wine.”The best, such as the Seattle-based Dry Soda brand served at Bottle Rock, are fruit and herb infusions with a delicate complexity almost like a sparkling wine (and not surprisingly, these low-sugar sodas typically have fewer calories than regular soda). Others, including the GuS (Grown-up Soda) line of fruit-juice sodas, are heavier on the sugar but still retain the sweet-tart balance of a well-crafted cocktail.John Nese, owner of Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in Highland Park, attributes the renewed interest in natural sodas (those made with cane sugar and natural flavorings) as the catalyst for the dry soda market.“Unfiltered natural sodas with fresh fruit and not too much sugar have been around a long time, but people are noticing them again.”.
Nese regularly stocks lower-sugar sodas from companies including Fentimans, a 100-year-old British producer, and such makers of classic fruit-juice-based Italian sparklers as Pellegrino and San Benedetto.He’s also seen a rise in artisan fruit soda producers, such as Portland, Ore.-based Hot Lips. In May, Hot Lips launched a line of unfiltered sodas made from Oregon blueberries, blackberries and boysenberries.Although on the sweeter side, many of these fruit juice sparklers are balanced enough for quaffing during cocktail hour. Fentimans’ Mandarin and Seville Orange Jigger is delicately spiced with ginger root and juniper berries; San Pellegrino’s Chinotto does double duty as a substitute for a bitter aperitif like Campari.Many are so well-dressed you could serve them straight from the bottle. Some are designed elegantly enough to pass as petite wine bottles, others take a more casual but no less creative approach: 1940s pin-up girls mug for the camera on Abbondio’s shrink-wrapped, candy-colored “vintage-edition” soda bottles.But in the quest for a dry soda, labels can be deceiving. “By my fourth pregnancy, I had missed out on wine for almost six years,” Klaus recalls. “I was desperate for something sophisticated and balanced enough to pair with food.”Finding that sugar-flavor equilibrium in a dry soda requires patience.
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Nese of Galco’s recently began making a line of lighter sodas with a Romanian producer in natural flavors such as cucumber and hand-pressed rose petal, but says he “hasn’t gotten the sugar balance worked out quite yet.”This fall, Dry Soda will release two new flavors, vanilla bean and juniper berry. Of the latter, owner Klaus says she’s been trying for years to mimic a gin and tonic, her favorite cocktail, but “it was the hardest to figure out how to get right.”If Klaus has nailed the flavor, balance and complexity, bartenders may soon be serving up juniper berries all night long - only without the lime. Or the hangover.-(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX). Taste-testing dry sodasWe TASTED more than three dozen sodas to find the driest, most aperitif-worthy substitutes. We tasted only chilled sodas from glass bottles (to avoid the metallic taste of cans) and sipped them in Champagne flutes. Sodas were judged for flavor, sugar content and carbonation style (whether the bubbles were light, like in a sparkling wine, or intense, like in a classic soda).Of the preferred sodas, two categories emerged.
The first was made up of light, flavor-infused sodas more akin to sparkling wine; the second were fruit juice-based sodas that could double as cocktails. Sodas from the brand Dry Soda were the overall favorites because of their delicate, floral flavor, vibrant bubbles and truly dry finish. The remaining sodas each had their strengths but were noticeably sweeter.Sodas are listed by brand in order of preference and are available by the bottle or in four- or six-packs, depending on the soda and retailer. Several are available at local wine bars and restaurants, including Dry Soda (BottleRock in Culver City, Craft in Century City and BLD in Los Angeles), Vignette Wine Country Soda (Il Grano in Los Angeles and Akasha in Culver City) and Fever-Tree (Craft, Comme Ca in West Hollywood and Father’s Office in Culver City).Dry Soda Flavors tasted: kumquat, rhubarb, lavender and lemon grass. The hands-down favorite with truly dry, subtle flavors and floral aromas, these would make great wine substitutes before or during a meal. Available at Beverages & More stores, www.bevmo.com; Mel & Rose Liquor & Deli in Los Angeles, www.melandrose.com; and selected Whole Foods markets, www.wholefoods.com.
About $7 for a four-pack of 12-ounce bottles.Stirrings Cocktail Sodas Flavors tasted: tart cranberry and pink grapefruit. True to their name, these sweet-tart sodas would work as cocktail substitutes with their good balance of fruity flavor and bright bubbles, though the cranberry had a somewhat artificial aftertaste. Available at Beverages & More stores; K & L Wine Merchants in Hollywood, www.klwines.com; and selected Whole Foods markets.
About $6 for a four-pack of 6.3-ounce bottles.Fentimans Flavors tasted: Mandarin and Seville Orange Jigger and Victorian Lemonade. Plenty of fresh pulp and vibrant bubbles made these naturally carbonated (through fermentation) cocktail-style sodas a standout for one taster, a “little heavy on the sugar” for another. Available at Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in L.A.' S Highland Park neighborhood, www.sodapopstop.com.
(In October, it will be produced for the first time in the U.S. At a brewery in Pennsylvania and should have wider distribution later this year.) About $3.50 for a 9.8-ounce bottle.GuS Flavors tasted: Star ruby grapefruit and dry pomegranate. These tangy sodas with a hint of pulp were well-balanced with refreshing, light bubbles like a nice sparkling cocktail but the flavors were a bit standard. At Beverages & More stores; Vicente Foods in Brentwood, (310) 472-5215; and select Gelson’s markets, www.gelsons.com. About $1.50 a bottle or $5 for a four-pack of 12-ounce bottles.Vignette Wine Country Soda Flavors tasted: Rose, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Although they were back-porch sippable with pleasant flavors, tasters thought that characteristics of the grape varieties did not come through and the carbonation was weak.
Abbondio Vintage Edition For Sale
At Bay Cities Italian Deli, in Santa Monica, www.baycitiesitaliandeli.com; Surfas in Culver City, www.surfasonline.com; and the Wine Exchange in Orange, www.winex.com. About $2.25 for one 12-ounce bottle.San Pellegrino Flavors tasted: Sparkling Aranciata, Limonata and Chinotto. Although these sodas are on the sweeter side, the Limonata (lemon) was nicely balanced. The Chinotto (a bitter cousin of blood orange) was deemed “the perfect nonalcoholic bitter aperitif substitute” by one taster, while another found it too bitter. Available at Beverages & More stores (Aranciata and Limonata in cans only); Galco’s; and well-stocked supermarkets. About $6.50 for a six-pack of 6.75-ounce bottles.Fever-Tree Flavors tasted: tonic water and bitter lemon.
These artisan British cocktail mixers are pleasantly bitter with a bright, complex flavor, although on the sweet side when imbibed without spirits (a splash of soda water might sub for the alcohol). Available at Beverages & More stores ( www.bevmo.com) and selected Whole Foods markets. About $6 for a four-pack of 6.8-ounce bottles.Jenn Garbee-Times staff writer Amy Scattergood contributed to this report.