Flavour Art Vimtonic
ConcreteRiver
Setup: Recoil w/ flavor barrel, Dual 15 wrap 26g 3mm Nifethal 70 coils @.13 ohms. 60w power, 450F temp limit. Full Cotton Wicks.
Testing: FA VimTonic, 1 and 2.5%, 60/40 VG/PG, Steeped 22 days.
Flavor Description: My last Flavourart UK blend, this time apparently based on VimTo an English patent medicine turned fruit cordial. The company describes the flavor as "a mix of three fruit juices - grape, blackcurrant and raspberry - along with a mysterious blend of 23 fruit essences, herbs and spices." This doesn't taste as complex as that sounds. Primarily a dark and syrupy fruit mix, with the blackcurrant providing most of the definable taste. They're some added sweetness and over just straight FA Blackcurrant, maybe a relatively smaller percentage of FA raspberry but could be a cherry and some additional jammy mouthfeel that conceivably be coming from FA White Grape. I'm not getting a ton in terms of "herbs and spices" but it does seem to have a sort of cola-ish spiciness especially on the tail end of the exhale. Dry mouthfeel for something based on a liquid, and a moderate amount of harshness in there. This would be an interesting candy base, or I could see taking it in a cocktail or beverage direction with some additional, more watery volume. I like this around 3% as a primary note.
Inhale is sweet and dark berries. Inhale has that pretty distinctive sticky swedish fish sweetness from FA Blackcurrant. Some more neutral fruit sweetness underneath that, but inhale is pretty dominated by the blackcurrant. Exhale opens up with that same blackcurrant note. Some really light spice in the top notes, but I'll be damned if I can nail it down past all that jammy blackcurrant. Kind of gets dr. pepper-ish, but that could just be the 23 herbs and spices marketing tagline kicking around in my head. Blackcurrant thins out a bit on the back of the exhale. Still sticky, sweet but more of a generic mixed fruit juice taste. Thick mouthfeel, and a lingering stickiness.
Off-flavors: And here's another flavor I don't have a real reference for. I can't really compare it the Vimto inspiration, but there isn't anything here that seems out of place based on the description and nothing that tastes actively offensive.
Throat Hit: Light. A bit harsh and dry for that much fruit going on.
Uses & Pairings: Seems like a good jump-off for an interesting candy or slush flavor. Thick, syrupy flavor that should texturizers or cooling well. You could probably throw this in with a bit of FA Oba Oba and have a decent blackcurrant candy.
In the realm of beverage, I could see mixing this TPA Champagne, or even better FW Pink Champagne. Just added a bit of pink champagne to a tester, and even as a S&V seems like it's moving in a positive direction. Cuts some of the sweetness, moistens it up a bit. The grape notes are working really well the blackcurrant. That blackcurrant should also work really with gin, cucumber, or mint.
Notes: Concentration testing this seems pretty a linear. Thin and dry at 1%. 2% is fuller, with some of that syrupy sweetness coming through but it still feels a bit dry and underflavored. 3% is my sweet spot, fairly syrupy but everything seems pretty well in balance. 4% is okay, but maybe a bit sweet, heavy, and warm for me. Seems to be losing a lot of that nuance and that blackcurrant is getting overwhelming. 5% is starting to border on ketchup-y.
Second Opinions:
Not a lot in the way of actual notes.