Review: Coca-Cola Releases New Orange Vanilla Flavor

For the first time in over 10 years, Coca-Cola is adding a brand-new flavor to its lineup of canned sodas. On February 25, Orange Vanilla Coke and Orange Vanilla Coke Zero Sugar will hit store shelves. Ahead of the product's official launch, The Daily Meal was lucky enough to try this new iteration of Coca-Cola, and it's safe to say we had opinions.

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As fans of both orange soda and Coke products, Daily Meal staffers were excited to try this new flavor, though skeptical. We'd been burned by new-flavored Diet Cokes just a few weeks before.

Upon cracking open the cans of both the regular Orange Vanilla Coke and its Coke Zero Sugar counterpart, the unmistakable scent of a classic orange creamsicle wafted through the air. Some of us expected to see an orange tint to this soda, but like other flavored Coke products before, these drinks both poured to reveal that signature cola brown color.

But how did it taste? "Neither the orange or the vanilla flavors were strong enough next to the already-strong flavor of regular Coke to stand out. But the orange did leave an acidic aftertaste on the regular version," one editor mused. "The Coke Zero version was super sweet, which normally I'm a fan of; but in this case, I thought it was too much." Another editor exclaimed immediately after trying the Orange Vanilla Coke Zero Sugar that this tasted like a Coke Freestyle Machine experiment gone awry.

Others, however, found these new versions of Coke to be incredibly refreshing and perfect for summer days on a beach boardwalk. The vanilla flavor is quite present, while the orange offers a hint of citrus that helps to balance out what could otherwise be a pretty saccharine product. Fans of Vanilla Coke and Cherry Coke will find that these new products have a similar level of sweetness and flavor balance. So if you like those, give these a try.

While the new Orange Vanilla Coke products are the first new Coca-Cola flavor in the U.S. market in the last decade, Coke is no stranger to experimenting with flavored sodas. The relatively newly-designed line of Diet Cokes includes six twists on that beverage. In the past, there have been coffee, cherry vanilla, lime and lemon versions of Coca-Cola, though those have all been discontinued in America. And if you happened to forget about Coca-Cola BlāK, you probably forgot these other facts about Coke, too.