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A quick review of a delightful Asian drink.

A Chance Encounter

This weekend, I’ve been to D.C. a lot to see my Significant Other, which has been quite a blast. One night, we went to the grocery store so I could pick up some food to take with me to eat at work when I left and drove back home. While wandering the aisles with her, I came across something wonderful in the Asian food section: two cans of “Sac Sac” juices. Bottled by Lotte, the drink comes in Orange, Grape, Coconut Jelly, and Pineapple flavors. Unfortunately, the store only had orange and grape.

The packaging is what first attracted me. Short and stubby, the cans were made out of thick aluminum more reminiscent of American soup cans than American drink cans. Their labels were bright. The pictures on them were delectable. Most intriguingly of all, the ingredients included something called “sacs.”

What are these mysterious sacs? I wondered. Can you taste them? Are they sweet or tangy? Or bitter?

I purchased a can of the orange drink. Later on that night, one way or another, I knew my questions would be answered.

A Taste Sensation

Had I known of the company’s website from the beginning, I could have found the following description before purchasing the drink, which might have helped prepare me for the experience:

Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. The site really is a heady mixture of bad English and wonderfully incoherent marketing speak. If you’re unable to locate a Sac Sac beverage, I recommend reading the Lotte website instead. It is a Sac Sac feast for the eyes, so to speak.

In any case, at work Friday night I shook the can (as instructed), opened the fellow up, and took a drink. Imagine, if you will, the act of drinking an orange. That is exactly what it was like.

No, not eating an orange. Drinking an orange. ‘Twas the texture that did it. Instead of fibrous bits of pulp, the Sac Sac drink had…well, little orange sacs in it. Tear-drop shaped, mechanically separated, structurally intact pieces of orange so small they were easy to swallow, but much larger than the typical American experience pulp experience.

It was amazing. I still don’t know quite how to describe it. Everyone should try a Sac Sac drink at least once. But as for me, I knew one time could never be enough. I needed more than that. I needed… a Sac Sac grape drink.

And the following night I got it.

Some Things You Just Can’t Prepare For

I thought I knew what I was getting into tonight at work. After all, just the other day I drank a whole can of Sac Sac orange drink. What surprises could a Sac Sac grape drink hold for me after such an eye-opening experience? I was ready, I told myself, to feel the smooth glide of the grape bits sliding down my throat. I was ready to be refreshed. I was ready for my thirst to be quenched.

That is what I told myself, but I was wrong. Like a seventeen-year-old soldier fresh out of boot camp, I wasn’t ready for real action. I wasn’t ready for anything.

My first sip went well enough. The drink was sweet, and I detected a hint of a bit of carbonation–very subtle, like a Riesling sparkling wine gone flat. As I went to drink more deeply from the can, however, I discovered something odd. The flow of liquid had ceased. Something was stopping up the hole.

Live dangerously, I thought, and so I did. Pausing not at all, I slurped down the offending opening-blocker. It slid down my throat like a cool, sweet, raw oyster or mussel. It sent shivers throughout my body–odd shivers that I were neither good nor bad, but simply strange. And freezing-cold. Hesitantly, like a virgin psyching himself or herself into going all the way after his or her lover’s first touch, I put the can back to my lips. Eventually, I continued to drink.

Again and again the opening became blocked, and again and again I drank until I could no longer force myself to continue. I brought the can to the bathroom and very carefully poured the contents of the can into the sink until another little grape-mussel appeared at the lip of the can’s opening. I fished it out. I felt it resting as limply as a spent balloon in my hand, and I gasped.

This was no grape piece, I realized. It was a whole grape–a naked grape. The skin was peeled off entirely. All that was left was a quivering sack–excuse me, sac–of semi-solid, translucent fruit, reminiscent of the worst images contained in the movie Seven. That idea stayed with me, clouding my sight, and it was only when my coworker, peerless when it comes to her powers of observation, mentioned the old classic of a bowl of peeled grapes at Halloween masquerading as disembodied eyes that I realized the truth of what had bothered me about the beverage: drinking the Sac Sac grape drink was exactly like drinking eyes.

At last, I thought to myself.

(Highly Recommended)

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1. Some things simply were not meant to be.- Our Adventrous Song on December 21, 2006