Sharbat Rooh Afza: The summer drink of the East

I'd been walking past bottles of this stuff at Shop & Save all winter and wondering about it. When the weather got hot, I finally decided to take a plunge on a $4 bottle of syrup imported from India and mixed some up -- 50ml syrup to 300ml of water. I used seltzer.

The list of ingredients is long and complex, with everything from pineapple juice to portulaca in it. It tastes sweet and exotically perfumey -- a little like Turkish delight. Despite the fact that it's the last ingredient on the list, the most identifiable flavor is rosewater.

I enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as Vissinada refreshment.

Can you taste the pineapple at all? Pineapple and rosewater sparkling soda sounds sooo good.

Not really. Except for the rose notes, there's not any one thing that stands out.