Jones Soda Christmas Pack: Christmas Ham

Happy New Year! The Jones flavor for today is Christmas Ham. Yikes!

I'm listening to a randomized selection of Christmas music to put myself in the right mood for it. And yes, it is still Christmas. For those who don't know the old tradition, the Twelve Days of Christmas begin on Christmas Day and end on Epiphany. Thus, today is the ninth day of Christmas. Leaving aside the nine drummers drumming (or the nine ladies dancing, depending on which version of the song you prefer), let's get on to the soda.

The Christmas Ham soda is murky any muddy pink in hue. It is more or less the color of baked ham, but somehow it seems a bit off, rather like the (Caucasian) "flesh" colored markers and crayons that never quite look right. It is a profoundly unpleasant color for a liquid.

The picture on the bottle is a close up of a green ornament nestled in a white artificial tree, reflecting the spangled small white lights like stars.

The message under the bottle cap reads, "A distant romance will begin to look more promising." First of all, I have no romances, distant or otherwise at the moment. Second of all, I am so gun-shy about internet romances that I will not let myself get into that situation again. I'm not that desperate. So this fortune is a strike out, at least for me.

I haven't even brought the bottle near to my nose for a good whiff yet, and I can already tell the smell is nasty. I find myself leaning away from the bottle. But now I must force myself closer for a proper analysis of the scent . . .

Whatever it smells like, my brain is not registering "ham" on any level. It's sweet, cloying, and a bit chemically. The smell actually makes me want to throw up.

Okay . . . I can not convey how much I do not want to drink this, but I'm going to take a sip so I can describe it here for you. For you!

Oh God.

It is unspeakably vile. It's worse than 2005's Brussels Sprout flavor and 2006's Pea flavor. I get absolutely no sense of "ham" from the taste. The only taste I can compare it to is this one time back in college when I ate a sweet frozen fruit bar while I had the flu, then vomited it up a half hour or so later. And I assure you, the taste of sugar-laden barf is actually somehow worse than the taste of regular barf.

I'm going to pour the rest of it in the toilet now. I'm sure as heck NOT going to drink it.

And then I'm going to brush my teeth and gargle with Listerine as many times as it takes to scour this taste from my palate.