The Slice: A soft spot for latest soft drinks

I am a soft-drink snob and I don’t care who knows it.

My disdain for the mass-market swill you probably have in your refrigerator is way over in the red zone.

Oh, I’m sure you have your reasons. Maybe your kids like it. Maybe it’s a habit.

It doesn’t make you a bad person.

But I’m telling you. To me, that stuff tastes just like the toxic-sounding list of ingredients suggests it would.

I’d tell you what brands I prefer. But then you might go out and buy some and discover what you have been missing. Word would spread. Soon local supplies would be depleted and I would wonder what possessed me to go public.

So let’s just say my favorite colas are sweetened with cane sugar and the bottlers are not Super Bowl sponsors.

I haven’t always been a discriminating connoisseur of carbonated sodas. When I was a kid, I truly enjoyed the mainstream lineup.

Our rule at home was that you could have no more than one a day. So I learned to choose carefully.

On family car trips, I would deliberate long and hard about what to buy at our next stop. Royal Crown Cola or Dr. Pepper? Orange Crush or a Frostie root beer?

When Sheriff Andy Taylor and Floyd the barber would sing the praises of the refreshing drinks available at Wally’s filling station, I understood.

But something happened.

Maybe my tastes changed. Or perhaps cost-cutting beverage makers fiddled with their formulas so much that my fizzy friends were no longer recognizable.

In any event, soft drinks all but disappeared from my radar screen for a long time.

Oh, I’m sure I mindlessly tossed one down now and then in settings where I didn’t feel like having a beer and wanted something other than water or juice. Still, they stopped being something I anticipated.

I went through a Snapple phase, but that didn’t last. Too cloying.

Then, not all that long ago, small soft-drink bottlers cropped up everywhere. I’m no expert. I haven’t tried all their offerings. But I can tell you this: Some of these 21st century sodas are good.

And when it’s punch-you-in-the-chest hot, there’s really nothing like a cold, sweet reward for having remained upright.

I still try to keep it to one a day. I savor it after I get home from work.

I start thinking about it as I park my bike in the garage. I imagine it while stepping out of the shower.

Then there’s that inviting fffftt when the bottle cap comes off. Translated, that means a hot summer afternoon is about to meet its match.

“Today’s Slice question: What was/is your all-time favorite soft drink?