Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
Nostalgia is one hell of a drug. Especially for millennials currently caught up in any generational malaise.
That’s why we’ve seen a lot of the 1990s come back into focus lately. We brought back Dunkaroos. We adapted Legends of the Hidden Temple for adults (it went poorly). Now we’re doing the same for Sunny Delight.
“Sunny D,” as its known to friends, was and remains the nebulous sweet, slightly goopy orange drink that arrived in our childhood refrigerators in bottles shaped like whac-a-mole mallets. It was orange juice without pulp or bitterness and, somehow, less sugar than the actual thing. It was great and kinda awful and despite those fond(ish) memories I hadn’t had it in any form in roughly two decades.
Until this week, because Sunny D now comes in a boozed-up version. Behold, Sunny D Vodka Seltzer.
Sunny D Vodka Seltzer: A
But as far as I can remember neither was Sunny Delight, so we’re sticking to tradition. The can suggests there’s some real juice in there — along with the nebulous “natural flavors” line, but since we’re looking at 95 calories, it’s gotta be pretty minimal.
You know what? That’s not a problem. The first sip is loaded with orange-adjacent flavor and not a single indication there’s alcohol involved. This tastes closer to a stevia-flavored orange soda — the kind you’d pay $8 for a six pack of — than a hard seltzer. And that carbonation lasts. Once you take a big sip you’re host to an array of tiny fireworks in your mouth. It’s like listening to a rocky beach as the tide goes out. Or, if you’re landlocked, a little bit of Pop Rocks snuck into a Pixy Sti(ck).
This is just stupidly easy to drink. It is, fortunately, not as thick as its namesake and the seltzer side of the bargain is doing a lot of heavy lifting with that effervescence. But the orange flavor is still much stronger than you’d get from a White Claw and even outshines High Noon, which had been my vodka-soda standard when I first had it (last year. I understand I am a seltzer neophyte).
I don’t know if I feel cool or sad holding a can of this in a public place. I think … cool? I feel like this is a conversation piece. But more than that, it tastes pretty damn good. Well, hats off Sunny D. You make one of the best vodka seltzers around.
Would I drink it instead of a Hamm's?
Welcome to a new feature on these reviews; a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I drink a Sunny D Vodka Seltzer over a cold can of Hamm’s?
Oh no doubt. I’m sad they sell this in four-packs. I want a pony keg to bring to my daughter’s pool. I’d be a hero amongst dads.
