Trader Joe's Vintage

The Pooj kicks it old school.

(Trader Joe’s, September 2010)

I was excited to try Trader Joe’s Vintage Root beer after reading all of the herbs listed with its ingredients: wintergreen birch, anise, sassafras, and Tahitian vanilla extract stood out in the roll call. For the health and/or socially conscious sugary beverage connoisseurs, it also uses cane sugar, is vegan, and is gluten free. While I can’t account for the vegan and gluten-free nature affecting the flavor (Can you even have non-vegan root beer…? And why would you ever include wheat gluten in root beer…?), I can definitely attest to tasting all of the herbs present. Initially, the sugar and vanilla hit heavy, followed by the sassafras and anise you would typically expect in a proper root beer. The wintergreen birch comes last, with a slightly minty aftertaste that eventually fades into something almost like ginseng.

This is definitely better than any other grocery store-branded root beer I’ve ever had – the flavors are rich and complex. However, I didn’t think the flavors necessarily blended together well enough to move the overall beverage from the “good root beer” to “really good root beer” class. Certainly the flavors were all individually good – all except for the lingering aftertaste, which was that ginseng-like taste that was almost bitter and barky (which would be fine were I drinking ginseng tea, but not so fine were I having root beer, which in this case, I were. …er, was…) – but it would have been better if there was more balance. To re-use my band analogy from a previous entry, I want to hear the whole band play together instead of just a series of individual solos. A better analogy within the musical nomenclature would be one of sound mixing: proper mixing should achieve balance with separation – that is, you want to blend the instruments/voices so that each member neither overpowers nor gets overpowered by the others, but you want to do so in such a way where you can still clearly hear each instrument/voice when you are consciously listening for it. Ergo, while the Trader Joe's Vintage Root Beer Band is a solid rock band comprised of very talented players, the sound engineer thinks they're an experimental noise band and so goes a little wild with the faders, cranking instruments/voices up and dropping them down at random points in the set without any resolution to the sound as a whole.

Overall though, I'd still go see the band if they're in town - I just wouldn't go out of my way to go see them since their vegan/gluten-free manager probably only books them at ironic hipster/emo joints in Los Feliz. Nevertheless, Trader Joe’s Vintage gets a favorable rating – I give it a 3.5.