Senjaku Assorted Grape Hard Candies

Grape has by now, established itself as a sort of “default” choice when it comes to fruit flavoured candy from Japan. The number of positive experiences vastly outnumber the negatives, so I feel pretty confident that most grape flavoured candies can do no wrong. It’s how I ended up with today’s candies. I have no recollection of experiencing anything from this brand before, and I don’t tend to choose hard candies, but I figured why not.

There are five flavours, each one doing some interesting and decidedly different take on a grape related snack or dessert. I honestly can’t be sure what’s going on, so I’m sort of flying by the seat of my pants, as it were. But sometimes in life, you just gotta go for it, ya know?

It looks like there’s about 4 – 5 pieces of each flavour. Kind of odd though, how it ends up with a total of 23. Usually they are nicer numbers, like an even 24, 18, or if it’s odd then something like 15. But I’m just being annoying. Let’s see how these taste.

The first one is this grape soda type candy. It tastes…like a grape soda. Imagine if you will, a fizzy hard candy. Now imagine if it was a little less fizzy and had a grape taste to it. The grape flavour is not the usual grape flavour that I get from soda. Instead, it’s a bit more floral and has an after taste that is very reminiscent of honey. The flavour is pretty stable throughout, and there doesn’t appear to be anything special or layered about the piece.

This next piece seems to be some sort of custard or cream based dessert that uses green grapes. The smell coming off this instantly reminds me of a quality cream soda. The flavour is also very nostalgic of a quality cream soda I would drink as a kid. There are the occasional hits of green grape flavour, but for the most part it’s mostly just the familiar flavour of cream soda. I imagine I could get a similar flavour if I took some grape flavour syrup and mixed it with a cream soda. My guess is they went a little overboard with the vanilla flavouring. I like this flavour, but I like cream soda. I wouldn’t know there was supposed to be grape in this unless I saw the packaging.

This next flavour is some sort of yin-yang flavour. It’s the combination or fusion of red and green grapes. Unlike what the main package would lead you to believe, the flavour is more of a top and bottom deal, then a left, right deal. Probably a better way to go though, since this means you can taste just the one flavour at a time as it sits on your tongue. It reminds me of those Chupa Chups lollipops that had two separate flavours and you’d kind of twirl them together to get the combination of the two flavours for the full experience. With this candy though, the difference between the two grape flavours isn’t that distinct. The green side is more straightforward and just a sweet grape, while the red side has more tartness to it and helps even out the sweetness of the other side.

I’m not sure exactly what kind of ice cream this is supposed to be, but this piece appears to be based on some sort of frozen treat. Maybe sorbet? This one is kind of confusing for me, because it’s also kind of like cream soda, but the flavour of the grape is far stronger in this. There also seems to be some filling in this one, and I can’t be sure but I think there’s a deposit of xylitol in the centre of this candy. As it begins to dissolve, you can taste a small pocket of something that is powder like coming from the centre. It doesn’t seem to have a taste, but after a short while you notice a cooling sensation in the mouth. It’s a creative way to try and simulate the cooling effects of ice cream or sorbet. The grape flavour of this piece is by far my favourite one, and closest to what I imagine an actual grape treat to be.

This final flavour is supposed to be based off a grape tart of some sort. Based on the packaging this piece is supposed to have a filling unlike the others. Right off the bat, I can smell cream and pastry, similar to what an actual fruit tart would smell like. The flavour of this piece is kind of weird at first. You get a bit of a muted grape flavour, and almost straight after you can taste something similar to a butter pastry. It’s odd because it’s something you don’t tend to associate with a hard candy texture. Speaking of texture, the candy itself is not like the other hard candies. It’s almost like those flaky peanut butter candies, where the outer shell is kind of like a hard candy, but once you get past that it’s just a bunch of layers of flaky candy. If you’ve ever had those classic chocolate mint hard candies, where the centre is the chocolate, than you’ll probably know what I’m referring to. It’s kind of odd to be honest. It’s creative, I’ll give them that, but I guess I’m not used to having pastries in hard candy form.

As is customary with assortments, I like to rank my preferences so here goes:

1. Double grape ?
2. Muscat with cream?
3. Grape sorbet?
4. Grape soda?
5. Grape based dessert?

I honestly couldn’t figure out what the flavours were called, but you get the idea. The double grape was a pretty good mashup of the red grape and muscat flavours, and doesn’t really have any gimmick beyond that. The muscat with cream flavour is like having a normal muscat flavoured candy, but smoother because of the cream. The grape sorbet and grape soda are pretty standard affair. The grape based dessert, while interesting was not for me. It reminded me too much of those weird chocolate mint hard candies that have a flaky centre to them, and texturally seems weird to me.

I’m not sure whether I would get this assortment again. If they sold the flavours separately, I would definitely consider getting the double grape flavour or the muscat with cream, but other than that nothing about the other pieces does it for me.