Original New York Seltzer Kicks The Coconut Ass-Can Of LaCroix

As much as I love LaCroix, there is one flavor I've never been able to stomach. Even worse to me than the blue "nothing" flavor is LaCroix coconut. It sounds like it should be tasty and satisfying, but in fact tastes like the tincture of suntan oil brewed over the La Brea tar pits. Every once in awhile I forget and will find a can laying around at work, and think, "oh, I should try this again." Every single time I regret this decision. A better descriptive name on this can than "Coconut" would be "Tropical Dirt."

So I was somewhat understandably wary of another coconut flavor that recently crossed my desk, from the Original New York Seltzer Company. But these guys get it. I have a fondness for LaCroix Key Lime flavor because it somehow tastes like cream pie. All the New York Seltzer flavors are like that. The orange tastes like a dreamsicle, and the coconut is what I wished the LaCroix coconut would have been. It's like a coconut cream pie in a can: creamy, sweet, and somehow completely indulgent when it doesn't have a single calorie or carb. (Even its more indulgent Vanilla Cream Soda tastes like an egg cream.)

As it's Dryuary, and I am on my now-annual search for excellent non-alcoholic beverages, New York Seltzer would be at the top of my list, and its coconut flavor would be at the top of that list. Maybe with a splash of lemonade? A shot of mango juice? Sure, but it's also dessert-worthy enough on its own self, right out of the can, with solid coconut flavor that tastes more like a macaroon than soil from the inner layers of the earth.

Maybe this stems from my teenage past as a high school lifeguard, but there's something about coconut that evokes summer, spring break, and tropical climes, which makes the flavor a continual draw for me, beverage-wise—especially during this bleak time of year. Short of a piña colada (even a virgin piña colada), Original New York Seltzer Coconut fits the bill perfectly, at a beverage height that LaCroix Coconut, stuck in its muddy tar pits, can only dream of reaching.