Coca-Cola Cherry Vanilla Review: Is The New Soda Flavor Any Good?

Coca-Cola has had Cherry Coke and Vanilla Coke before, but for Valentine's Day 2020, the soda giant is joining these two flavored sodas in holy matrimony for an all-new Coke product: Coca-Cola Cherry Vanilla and Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero.

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Coca-Cola Cherry Vanilla and Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero were born out of the Coca-Cola Freestyle Machines you see in fast food restaurants and stores. According to the brand, the addition of the cherry and vanilla syrups to classic Coca-Cola (or Coke Zero) is one of the machine's most popular flavor combinations. The equivalent of 105.5 million cans of Cherry Vanilla Coke have been poured since 2017.

The product is set to officially launch on Feb. 10 in 12-ounce cans and 20-ounce bottles, but thanks to our friends at Coca-Cola, we were able to try it out before it hit store shelves to see if it's any good.

First, we sipped on the Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero, which smells heavily of vanilla. And as it turns out, that is the predominant flavor of this soda. We found ourselves in a vanilla world while searching for a little kiss of cherry flavor. "The Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero was effervescent and highly fragrant. It didn't taste like it was missing anything, as zero-sugar sodas sometimes do," one taste tester commented. "Vanilla was far more prevalent on the tongue than cherry, which is fine since cherry flavoring can taste medicinal."

Coca-Cola Cherry Vanilla left us looking for hints of both cherry and vanilla. "The classic Coca-Cola Cherry Vanilla tasted similar to regular Coke, and the flavors didn't come through as much as the Coke Zero version," another sipper stated. One taste tester claimed that in a blind taste test, she would have sworn she was drinking just normal Coke.

Coca-Cola Cherry Vanilla and Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero aren't Coke's first foray into turning Freestyle Machine successes into commercially available products. In February 2019, the brand launched Coca-Cola Orange Vanilla. Coke has also recently expanded its portfolio by adding six new flavors of Diet Coke and rolling out energy drinks in 2020. If you didn't know there were all these new flavored Cokes in the world, then you probably don't know these other crazy facts about Coca-Cola either.