The first Route 66 themed root beer I ever encountered. It was one of the three from that Seattle Mariners game when I was in high school and one of the first probably 20 root beers I ever had. Interestingly, this was made in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is most decidedly not on Route 66. They say that they created it as a tribute to that road, but still, Virginia just seems out of place to have such a thing. That’d be like me making a Jamestown Root Beer up here in Washington as a tribute to the original American colony. Sure I could do it, but it wouldn’t make a lot of sense. Anyway I think they really just made it because the pun was too irresistible. Some people just love their puns, myself included, and will go to great lengths to create the appropriate context to use one that they find especially clever, despite the fact that the vast majority of the population does not share the sentiment. We pun-ishers are such an under appreciated lot. So someone at Roadside Beverage Company (the company that makes this) loved the Root 66 root beer so much that even though he was in Virginia, he figured it was his only shot to send his pun to the world. I thank him for his determination.
This has a complex Body with too much Bite. Head is ok. The Aftertaste could use vanilla.
A lot of the complexity came from the chicory root, sweet birch, and sarsaparilla root they added in addition to the other natural and artificial flavors. It had too strong an anise flavor though, which was not appreciated. This was the only root beer with a stong anise flavor in it that I could at all stand at the time of reviewing, there have been some others since then though this was the first. It’s not a bad brew, but not anything outstanding. See how it rates against other root beers.
