Haribo – Wine Gums

You know that feeling of shock and excitement you get when you find out that one of your favourite brands just so happens to also make one of your favourite past time candies? I certainly did when I found out about these. It’s worth noting that knowing something exists, and actually finding them in the flesh so to speak, are two very different things. Especially in the frigid North, products that we seem to see all over the place because of our Southern cousins can be misleading in the sense that often times we don’t know if they are exclusive to their market or includes ours. Often times you tend to realize very quickly that the market here is quite limited.

I bring all this preamble up because I’ve been searching for these for a while, so I’m pretty excited. I love wine gums, and I love Haribo. Let’s see if I love their take on wine gums too. It took a lot of specialty stores and online vendors to finally get my hands on this bag at a reasonable price.

The little flavour legend on the back tells us that there’s pineapple, raspberry, lemon, lime, orange and blackcurrant. I just want to take a moment to appreciate that some companies still make a clearly marked flavour legend. A lot of times I’m left to my own volition to figure out what is what. It’s the extra touches like this that make a difference.

Orange is a very vibrant and bright orange flavour that reminds me a bit of orange juice. It has a nice tangy flavour to it. The lime is very zesty, and reminds me of their lime flavoured gummy bears. Lemon is pretty standard stuff, and reminds me of the classic lemon drop flavour. Pretty straight forward. The raspberry is also a classic gummy bear flavour – it tastes like a nice flavourful raspberry jam. Blackcurrant is fairly standard – it has a nice tart, berry flavour to it and almost has a slightly sour tinge to the flavour. It’s slightly less sweet than what I’m used to, but that allows the flavour to come through better. Are you noticing a pattern here? All the flavours are basically just a variation of their famous golden bear flavours, which is a good thing, since those things are awesome.

The consistency is something slightly different from the usual wine gums. They are firm, but also in a chewy, gummy way. Instead of being firm and more like a fruit pastille or something that gets sticky once it’s been in your mouth for a while, these don’t seem to get that sticky even after they have a chance to warm up. They seem to be quite firm but chewy throughout, so it’s a little different from what I’m used to. They’re almost like the if you took the classic Haribo gummy, let it sit out for a while and added a bit of starch to make it less sticky, and slightly less chewy.

While not exactly what I’m used to in wine gums, the flavours are quite nice and the consistency is still really tasty and right up my ally. If you have issues with general Haribo firmness, you might want to stay away from these, as even when fresh they aren’t exactly soft. Great way to take out fillings or loose teeth though, if that’s what you’re looking for.

That being said, I would totally grab these again. Unlike the more common ones we find here in the west end, they don’t have quite as much of a greasy or fatty feel to the touch which I really like. The flavours are really great, and the