Red Vines – Original Red Jumbo Twists

As someone who lives in the frigid North, I often heard of the legend of Red Vines, but rarely if ever got the chance to try them. It seems like it wasn’t until very recently that they started creeping their ways into our grocery stores and pharmacies. naturally, I had to sate my curiosity and didn’t skip a beat in adding these to my cart.

My understanding is that the jumbo twists have a different texture from the original twists – these are apparently softer and have a less waxy and chewy texture than the normal variety. Another interesting thing is that the flavour they call original red is not what most people think of when they think of red licorice. The taste of fake cherry or strawberry comes to mind, especially when thinking of Twizzlers. These apparently are not that, but some proprietary flavour. They also sell the cherry and strawberry flavours, but I figured this would be a more unique experience.

These smell like….well basically just corn syrup. Which makes sense when you consider that these aren’t real licorice, and are just a sweet, wheat based snack. They don’t smell like any fruit I know, and the faint fruity notes I do smell remind me more of some sort of tutti fruitti or generic bubble gum flavour.

Guess it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to tell you that it also tastes like it. The flavour is hard to pin down on anything specific, but it’s really just does taste like sweetness in the form of generic bubble gum flavour. It’s not bad by any means if you enjoy that, but I guess after decades of expecting red licorice to taste a certain way, this is kind of strange to me. Oddly enough, after eating a few of these twists, I’m kind of craving the fake cherry flavour that Twizzlers has.

The texture is definitely on the softer side. It’s similar to most soft licorices I’ve had. It’s chewy and pliable, but there’s not much bounce back to it like you’d get from a taffy or chewing gum. It doesn’t have any grit to it, and if you’ve had even a little experience with wheat flour based candies, you’d probably know exactly what this is like in terms of mouthfeel. For me at least, it’s kind of addictive in a weird way.

These leave a distinct flavour in your mouth. Whether you like bubble gum or not will change whether that’s a good or bad thing. Something about them makes me keep eating them even though they feel kind of off to me. I think realistically, I’d probably try Red Vines again, but probably go for either strawberry or cherry. The original red flavour is just too artificial and weird to me. Maybe I’ve just outgrown bubble gum as a flavour.

I think it’s great I finally got to try these and see what all the fuss is about, but I’m not sure I would get these again. Likely this is more targeted towards people who have a nostalgia with the flavour, or someone who is into that flavour profile, but I’m neither. I like to try everything at least once, and I think that’s enough for me when it comes to the original red flavour.