Sparkling Passion

James has stirred interesting memories with this post about drinks of the past.

I'm pretty well teetotal not because of any principles against drinking but simply because I have never really developed a taste for alcohol. In my early twenties, though, I went through a phase of drinking Vodka and Orange Juice (Screwdrivers) and Gin and Tonics. How gay was I?

Mention of Passion Pop in the comments to James' post triggers a memory for me.

Back in the late 1970s our Department's Social Club paid a visit to the hometown of the Minister of the day; an over colourful, faintly notorious character. The region around his hometown was known for it's vineyards and a visit to them was high on the agenda for this group of Public Servants all of us aged in our early twenties, highly sexed and living for fun.

We happily flitted from vineyard to vineyard. I had already passed my short drinking phase and stuck to the fizzy sickly sweet soft drinks to which I have been more or less addicted for most of my adult life. The rest got stuck right into sampling the wines which our hosts were hoping we would purchase by the boxful.

One of the wines on offer was a confection named 'Sparkling Passion'. A bubbly passion fruit coloured - and flavoured - wine which the serious drinkers - that is; everyone but me - took one sip of and then reeled in horror at it's sickly sweetness. Naturally it was the only wine I took to with enthusiasm.

I didn't find any reference to this wine on the Net; which doesn't surprise me but I did find this gaudy advertisement for an almost identically named soft drink, possibly from the same era.

Sparkling Passiona

There is no doubting why I took to the 'wine', when everyone else shunned it. It tasted exactly like a carbonated soft drink popular in my youth and still sold to this day; Passiona.  I was somewhat surprised to read in the link - but then again maybe not - that Passiona is only sold in Australia.

Passiona