Another day, another Sprite variant to review ahead of a national release coming later this year. Last week, I reviewed the decades-old Sprite Tropical Mix which, per our own Tyler “Bad Taste in Mountain Dew” Bowers, will hit shelves nationwide in March. This time, I’ve got my hands on a pretty simple concept: Sprite Cherry. This Sprite variant has only been available from certain chains in select areas for a while now, but that all changes later this year. We’ll see Sprite Cherry (in bottles and cans) in stores across the nation in August. Since I live in the Midwest, I was able to get my hands on a bottle of Cherry Sprite pretty easily. (The corn-based lifeforms around here are very similar to the bad guy from the first Men in Black: We just want our sugar water.) So, let’s get into it.
- Sprite Cherry
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Pros: I think you can guess what this tastes like. It’s Sprite with cherry! The cherry flavor goes back and forth between artificial and good-artificial. And it softens a lot of the bite you usually get from Sprite’s carbonation and citrus elements. If you think Sprite can be a little punchy, Cherry Sprite might be the soda for you.
Cons: Did we actually need Cherry Sprite? We already have the cherry-lime Sprite Chill on shelves indefinitely. I know Sprite Chill was divisive, but I don’t think it was so divisive that we now need two different lemon-lime-cherry sodas from the same brand. I definitely prefer Sprite Chill to Sprite Cherry. If you really want to get the Sprite Cherry experience early (without hitting up a Coke Freestyle machine), drop a cherry cough drop in a Sprite and wait an hour.
Credit: Liv Averett / Instacart
