11 May 2010

My Gummy - Grape Sweets [Korea] (International Shop, Birmingham)


Due to the popularity of blackcurrants in the UK, purple sweets seem to be rarely flavoured with anything else. I am a big blackcurrant fan, and love Ribena, but I would like to have some grape flavoured sweets here in the UK too, just to mix things up.
Spectre found these grape sweets in an import store, they are actually from Korea, and that really is all I know about them. There is only the minimal of English on the pack!
The foiled packet was remarkably hard to open, and despite my tries required scissors in the end. That cut into the package did something strange, it released the most pungent grape and chemical smell you can imagine.
After the pack was fully open I made the mistake of taking a full on inhalation of the contents. It was the most intense thing, like grape mixed with nail varnish remover, and it left a strange feeling in my throat. It was ridiculously overpowering! I have no idea how one small bag of sweets could possibly contain that amount of smell. If I could go back in time and choose not breathe it in, I would!
As you can imagine I was a little put off trying one of these sweets, but I battled on. They looked harmless enough in appearance, small purple jellies, shaped like a bunch of grapes, quite cute really.
I let the courage build, and tried one. Now here is the funny thing, they had very little flavour. They were sweet and certainly tasted of grape, but it wasn’t the strong overwhelming taste I expected, and there was no chemical edge to it either. I ate a few more, and found myself quite liking them, but they did leave me with some questions. Does the company make sweetened but flavourless jellies, pop them in a bag, and flavour them using powerful scented gases? Or did I use a super human breath and somehow inhale all their taste? Either way, the smell and flavour combination just don’t add up!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had exactly the same experience in a Japanese market! You never really do forget that crazy chemically smell, and strangely I now have an addiction! The only thing that worries me is the fact that the ingredients are in Korean. Probably for the best though...

cinabar said...

Anon - they do have a strange smell - but were surprisingly nice jellies