Nestled in the quiet, green Napa Valley was the Napa Valley Soda Company. They looked at all of their peaceful serenity and bounteous vineyards and thought to themselves that they should harness the power of the valley and make a root beer, and other sodas. They named them after their favorite places in the valley. Calistoga Cola, Oakville Grape, St. Helena Citrus, and Rutherford Root Beer, amongst others. According to them, “Napa Valley has long been synonymous with quality, good taste, and natural beauty. Napa Valley Soda Company has captured this essence in a … natural soda” I found this on a journey to Sacramento. The label features an areal view map of the valley with the cities and geological features after which their sodas are named marked for all to see. Hot air balloons and an airplane survey the tranquility.
The Body is weak, watery, fruity, and tastes kind of like a cola or maybe medicine. There only a very little Head. The Bite, however, is good. The Aftertaste is fruity and medicine like that left a bad taste in my mouth long after I was finished drinking it.
Yuk! This stuff is absolutely horrible. If what they claimed about Napa Valley is true, I don’t know how this root beer slipped by them. Maybe the “essence” captured is like the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones which destroys everything if you remove it from its dwelling place. Whatever the case this is one of the worst brews I’ve ever had. See how it rates against other root beers.
Another brew from my very early days of reviewing. This one, like Health Valley, was also found the the “Health Food” section of the local Safeway. It was actually the root beer I reviewed right after the Health Valley as the next day I went to Safeway to see what other glass bottled root beers could be found. This stuff was the very first product I ever encountered that listed “Evaporated Cane Juice” as an ingredient. This is a pet peeve of mine. Anyone who knows anything about how sugar is made knows that all cane sugar is evaporated cane juice and beet sugar is evaporated beet juice. All crystallized sugars start as liquids that are then evaporated. Do the people who label sugar this way believe that we think crystallized sugar is mined somewhere in solid form like salt or something? I mean, seriously, we’re not that dumb. This also has one of the highest non-sugar carbohydrate level (5g) of any root beer. I’m not sure what makes it a “draft” root beer when it’s clearly in a bottle, but that’s another rant for another day.
This was one of the very first glass bottled root beers that I ever tried. Probably the sixth if I can remember that well. The amazing thing was that it was in my hometown, a small city of around 5,000 people. It was just sitting there at Safeway but it was in the “Health Food” section. Remember back in the 1990’s before organic and all natural got all trendy? There was a “Health Food” section. I’d never thought to look for root beers there which is why I’d missed it. Granted I’d only been looking for root beers for a few months at that point so I hadn’t thought to look in a lot of places. Anyhow, it was my dad who found it and brought some home so we could try it. They also had a Sarsaparilla and it was then that I decided that if it wasn’t called specifically “Root Beer” or some close phonetic variation thereof I wasn’t going to review it. Health Valley later renamed their Sarsaparilla to Sarsaparilla Root Beer but forgot to tell me so I never got to try it. Interestingly they sweetened this with fructose which you’d never see in any “health food” nowadays. 