A Holiday Soda Breakdown

Winter Spiced Cranberry Sprite, this could have been your moment

At some point in December 2019, I picked up a cinnamon Coke, not particularly confident it would be worthwhile. The best Coke flavors, in my estimation, are those with a fruity or citrus-y note for balance.¹ Anything else can feel… overcomplicated. I figured cinnamon might either blend into the taste of the soda too much, or go too far in the other direction, or even taste like some kind of cinnamon-sugar-y concoction. (No thanks.) But I felt compelled to try it all the same, because it was new, and because if there is just one thing I have established in this newsletter so far, it’s that I’ll keep drinking that garbage. Which meant I had to try cinnamon Coke, introduced that winter with designs on “spicing up the season,” per the marketing copy. And you know what? It was actually pretty good! Not a regular Coke replacement, certainly, but a fun seasonal treat. I did not seek out another one in 2019. But I had a loose, abstract idea that I would enjoy a cinnamon Coke the following December, and the one after, and the one after, presumably forever.

I was wrong! Cinnamon Coke is now gone and does not seem to be coming back. There was no official announcement, but we have now seen multiple holiday seasons without it on the shelves, which means blogs have begun assuming its demise. (In the United States, that is. Cinnamon Coke seemed to have a longer run in Europe, where it debuted before coming to the U.S., and where it remained available at least in the Czech Republic through 2022. I hope this guy who tweeted about drinking one at a McDonald’s in Prague last year had a great time.) This is a bummer for me and my long-term dreams of seasonal soda, obviously, but it’s more than that.

The death of cinnamon Coke leaves a gaping hole in the mainstream holiday soda landscape!

It means that virtually every remaining holiday soda on the market is cranberry. Yes, I know there are smaller, specialty sodas with more niche holiday flavors, which is lovely. But in terms of national sodas you can pick up at any supermarket in December? All cranberry! Which is… fine. I get it from a business perspective: Cranberry is similar enough to pre-existing fruit flavors that it’s already familiar to consumers and probably easy to produce. It’s holiday-ish without being too aggressive about the whole thing. There’s a lot to like about cranberry! But what a sad, monotonous holiday soda world it is when cranberry makes up every offering. Whither the cinnamon? (Dr Pepper… this seems like it could be up your alley.) What about ginger? (You can make a ginger Coke on a freestyle machine!) Think of all the pointless, weird holiday products that flood grocery shelves in December. Is there really no corporation using that as a reason to sell a (probably terrible) peppermint soda??? Instead, we have only cranberry—simple, practical, safe cranberry.

Which does not mean cranberry is bad. It can actually be quite good! As seen in the following holiday soda review:

Winter Spiced Cranberry Sprite: So I quite like this. But I really, really want to love it, and I can’t. It delivers on the cranberry, which goes nicely with Sprite, a pleasant fruity note to pair with the zingy base. Yet where is the promised winter spice??? There’s the slightest hint of flavor here. Maybe someone whispered the word “ginger” in the bottling facility while it was being made. (Is that even the spice they were going for? I can’t tell! The marketing copy describes it only as a “blend of spices.”) The result is just fine. But there was a real opportunity for something a little more exciting here! Alas.

Cranberry ginger ale: I picked up a Canada Dry here, but I feel like all the ginger ale brands go in on cranberry now, Schweppes, Reed’s, whatever generic is at your grocery store. I do not drink too much ginger ale generally. (Unless I’m sick or on a plane.) But I love cranberry ginger ale. It has exactly the right level of sweetness. The first time I had it was as a freshman at a college pre-game. (The other benefit of cranberry ginger ale: Great mixer!) And I went out to buy some for myself the very next day. It was the first time in my life I’d gone to got a 2-liter bottle of soda for no one other than me and no reason other than wanting to drink a lot of soda. (The night before had ensured I was not interested in drinking anything other than soda for the immediate future.²) “This is amazing,” I remember thinking as I brought it back to my dorm room. “This is the freedom afforded by college. You can just go out and buy yourself a party-sized bottle of seasonal soda without explaining yourself to anyone. This is what adulthood is all about.”

I stand by that.

Regular Coke in a Christmas can: “This is not a holiday soda,” you might be saying. “In fact, you just addressed the fact that there is no holiday Coke, not since the demise of our dearly departed cinnamon, and what you are showing us here is just regular Coke in a Christmas can.” That is true! But I have good reason for including it—a can design critique. This looks fine. Appropriately festive. Coke and Santa go way back. Coke even helped create our modern idea of Santa. I get it! And he does look very charming on this can. But come on. Coke has an even better wintry mascot. Return to the cans with the polar bears! These were so charming. So were these. I realize Coke has moved away from the polar bear a bit in recent years. (This New Yorker article from 2014, headlined “Should the Polar Bear Still Sell Coca-Cola?,” includes this incredible quote: “When people think of polar bears, they are thinking of a drowning polar bear—and that is not a happy polar bear.”) But speaking strictly in terms of can design? The polar bear is just so cute. It offers so many possibilities. It’s wintry but is not tied to a specific holiday, it’s nostalgic, it’s adorable. It’s perfect.

Coca-Cola, I beg you, if you will not bring back cinnamon Coke, please at least bring back a seasonal polar bear can.

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Enjoy whatever cranberry sodas you might drink in the next few weeks. And thank you so much to everyone who weighed in last week about why they drink 1.5 L Diet Cokes!!! So fascinating to learn about your world.

1. Don’t worry, I do have plans for a future issue on the virtues of the Freestyle Coke Machine.

2. The party in question was busted by an RA, and the resulting disciplinary report made note of the fact that I had been drinking peppermint schnapps at the moment of the bust, which has to be among the most embarrassing things you can be caught drinking. I had to complete an online module on the dangers of underage drinking for peppermint schnapps. Humiliating.