Death Valley

The Pooj stares down death.

(Whole Foods Market, February 2011)

Here’s an interesting question: does better water make better root beer?

Death Valley Root Beer is made from natural artesian water from the Indian Wells Spring here in my home state of California (not too far from Death Valley, for which this brew is named). I don’t usually pay much heed to craze for “natural” bottled waters, since paying heed usually entails paying money for what I can essentially get out of the kitchen tap. Despite what some people insist, once you pass that stuff through a Brita filter, in most cases I can’t taste the difference between tap water and bottled water (I can, however, state that there are several bottled waters that taste like they were scooped out of my neighbor’s swimming pool…). You would think that once the water, wherever it is sourced, gets brewed into a nice root-y beverage and gets shot with some carbonation, virtually any taste difference in the water would, pardon the pun, evaporate. So it is with Death Valley Root Beer.

Now that’s not to say I didn’t like the root beer, because I actually did like it. The carbonation is pretty hard from a freshly opened bottle, so that pretty much drowned out any flavors for the first few sips. Once I let the carbonation dissipate a little, the flavor becomes a much more pronounced licorice. As I continue to drink, the flavor builds into a nice rich herb-iness. There’s a noticeable lack of wintergreen in the initial flavor, possibly because it’s covered up by the strong licorice taste, but there’s more of the wintergreen in the aftertaste. The missus brushed her teeth prior to her sip, which in her opinion added some wintergreen essence, but since I did not mix my root beer with toothpaste (?!), I can’t say the same.

Overall, I still did like Death Valley – the flavor is rich, so perhaps the spring water does make a difference in flavor and texture (can't really say for sure...). But since I generally prefer a better balance of wintergreen to licorice, with even perhaps a little heavier of a wintergreen and sassafras flavor, it’s not one of my favorites. Nevertheless, Death Valley gets a high 3.5.