M&S Summer 2017 drinks review

On the hot days in May and June, I often visited the Marks and Spencer food markets in Amsterdam and in The Hague. During my visits, I discovered some refreshing summer drinks, which I will shortly review in this blog post.

Marks and Spencer spirit of summer soda cans (250 ml)

Sparkling grape, Sicilian lemon, and grapefruit: 

19% grape juice, 7% Sicilian lemon juice, 3.5% grapefruit juice, all from concentrate.

It is a mildly sweet, green grape soda with a bit of a lemon flavor, which is not too sour or sweet, and a slightly bitter grapefruit end taste. It actually reminds me a bit of the Schweppes bitter lemon, but then, a bit sweeter and fruitier. You can really tell that they mixed real fruit juices with carbonated spring water.

Sparkling Mandarin:

18% mandarin juice and 15% orange juice, both from concentrate.

I was surprised to see that this looks like an opaque orange juice, but surprisingly, with carbonated water in it. It tastes a bit similar to Fanta, but it feels more like lemonade rather than soda. There is a distinguishable fragrant hint of mandarin, but I wasn't that impressed.

Fruity still waters (1l bottle)

Lemon & lime: I loved the strong lemon and lime flavor in this!
Peach & raspberry (not pictured): The peach and raspberry was easy to distinguish, but I didn't really like the flavors together.
Strawberry: Although the strawberry flavor tasted a bit artificial, this one personally tasted the best out of the three, as it was able to cover the slightly bitter sweetener flavor the best. 

Diet soda (1l bottle)

Diet Bitter lemon (not pictured): it tastes like bitter lemon soda with real lemon juice, but the (double) bitterness was even for me a bit too much to handle.
Diet Sparkling mango and passion fruit: I liked the surprising new fruit flavor combination for a soda, as it is a winning combo, but the bitter sweetener flavor at the end ruined it for me.

What do I think?: 

Out of all the drinks I tried, I liked the can of sparkling grape, Sicilian lemon, and grapefruit the most. But it wasn't that amazing that I would recommend you to make the long trip to The Hague or Amsterdam just to try it. Also, it is a really personal thing, but I rarely drink soda or diet sodas, so I am not accustomed to the bitter sweetener flavor. That's why, I didn't write a lot of good things about the fruity still waters and diet sodas. If you can look past that, the fruit flavors were really nice and not artificial tasting. The fruity still waters are also a lot better than the fruit water without sugar that I tried from Sourcy in mini carton boxes with a Disney print on it. Those tasted like water with a tiny drop of fruit syrup and because it had no sugar, it tasted quite odd. I really wondered if children would like it.