I'll admit it, I love soda. I'm certainly not saying this is a good thing. There is nothing healthy about soda but there is also nothing better than the cool, refreshing sweetness of Mountain Dew hitting your lips, sliding past your teeth, teasing across your taste buds, and finally finding its way to your awaiting gullet. Mmmmm mmmmmm. Delicious! Of course, soda is bad for you and is chocked full of terrible chemicals. You know that police officers carry Coca Cola in their vehicles because the chemicals in Coke help to dissolve blood that may have hit the pavement after and car crash (this is not confirmed through research of any kind and may just be something I made up)? Unbelievable.

Well if you don't want to destroy your kidney's with the caramel coloring used in soda, consider destroying your liver with a the sparkling, alcoholic beverage, mead. Is it beer? Not exactly. Is it wine? Well, its not that either. Let us consult Wikipedia (the bastion of all knowledge in the 21st century because we all know that if it is on the internet then it has to be true) for our description of mead:

Mead (/ˈmiːd/; archaic and dialectal "medd"; from Old English "meodu") is an alcoholic beverage created by fermenting honey with water, sometimes with various fruits, spices, grains, or hops. (Hops act as a preservative and produce a bitter, beer-like flavor.) The alcoholic content of mead may range from about 8% ABV to more than 20%. The defining characteristic of mead is that the majority of the beverage's fermentable sugar is derived from honey. It may be still, carbonated, or naturally sparkling; and it may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet.

Specifically, I recommend you give Black Fang from B. Nektar Meadery a try. This mead is brewed with blackberries, clove, and orange zest. The beverage is carbinated and gives the impression of a classy, organic, fancy-pants soda. The flavor and mouth-feel (could I sound more like a douche using a term like "mouth-feel"?) reminds me of Dr. Brown's Black Cherry soda. If I didn't know better I would have assumed this was an all-natural soda without a trace of alcohol. If you want to have some fun, serve this to your parents or grandparents at a family BBQ but don't tell them it contains alcohol. They won't know the difference but by the end of the night you will have heard some interesting stories (I haven't tried this yet and I hope my parents don't read this because I plan on giving this a try).

B. Nektar has produced a winner with Black Fang. The beverage is perfect for summer weekends when the temperature is approaching 100 and the humidity is making you wish that your clothes were made of baby powder. Enjoy the last remnants of summer by hosting a party, inviting me, and serving up some ice cold Black Fang.