TABU: Forbidden Fruit

Here is the second review of an alcoholic beverage ever done on Spine.cx. I'm not doing Baja Tango, like I said I would, basically because I didn't feel like drinking that stuff right now. I was buying some beer (Keith's has the 15-packs back for the summer), and this stuff in a curious metal bottle caught my eye. It's called TABU (complete with weird backwards and upside down letters and a funny accent over the upside down 'U'. Don't tell me I'm going to find that one in the ASCII chart :)

Despite the obvious puns I could make with the name 'Forbidden Fruit', I'm going to try and make this a serious review and give this beverage some thought.

So, anyway, the metal bottle is what inticed me to buy this. They sell it in individual 500 ml bottles for $3.95. It's 7.0% alcohol by volume. The main alcoholic ingredient is vodka. It has a bottlecap, which I thought was kind of strange. I expected a screw-off plastic cap for this kind of drink. From the look of it, it strikes me as a cooler-style of beverage.

Oh well, here we go. First impressions: It smells a bit like grapefruit or some kind of fruity punch...Definately some grapefruit in there. Tastes like candy...a little too sweet. This drink makes me think of what it would taste like if someone decided to add alcohol to one of those crazy energy drinks like Red Bull or something.

I've decided that I'm going to drink it out of the bottle because I don't want to know what color it is. Upon reading the ingredients, I'm sure it's some sort of dye anyway. The only natural thing in this drink is water, and maybe the vodka; everything else is artificial this or synthesized that. Kind of makes you wonder how they came up with this drink. Some mad scientist stirring a cauldron of stuff and when a drop of it can eat through a steel plate, he knows it's ready. Still, it's almost encouraging that they can create something that approximates fruit from scratch. What will they think of next?

It's not hard to taste the vodka if you're looking for it, but I don't think you'd notice it otherwise. All the same, I'm not even halfway through the bottle yet, and I'm kind of getting sick of it. Maybe it's the artificiality-ness of the whole thing. Maybe it's a carcinogen. Maybe I'm rotting away from the inside. But I digress...

I don't really taste anything particularly forbidden about this "taboo" drink. Kind of girly. Maybe something to sip on before you chase it down with a bottle of Boone's. Whatever the case, I don't think it's for me. It certainly is a neat bottle though. I'll bet you could use it for a candle-holder or something. I won't break if you drop it. That's good to know. At least it's recyclable.

Steve gives TABU: Forbidden Fruit Thumbs Down

Originally posted on Saturday, 2003-06-07 at 21:04:52.