Now That We Have Coke-Flavored Wine, The Food Scientists Can Focus on These Food Innovations

Remember when you were a kid at a fast food joint and you’d be a little brat and fill your soda cup with a mix of all the sodas in the fountain? You’d call it an “experiment” but it was really just a disgusting mess. A French winemaker is making headlines for doing the grown-up version of that.

“Red Lollipop,” from the French Rouge Sucette, is “75% wine with the balance in sugar, water and cola flavoring.” It sounds delicious at first – the mix of coke and wine – but then you remember it’s horrifying. A wizard could sell it as “Hangover Potion.”

My haterism re: mixing weird things in wine is not unfounded. I was once lured in by the promises of something called “Chocolate Wine”–ostensibly wine mixed with chocolate milk–and I haven’t been able to trust weird new flavored wines since. In retrospect, chocolate milk and wine doesn’t sound like a good combo.

Coke and wine isn’t even a new thing; all this winemaker did was figure out how to make it shelf stable (food biz lingo for “able to sit on a shelf for a long time”.) Kalimotxo is a bar and party drink where red wine and coke are mixed in a tumbler with ice. The drink is a major part of the culture of the Basque people on the Spanish/French border.

But now that we’ve got coke and wine figured out, what other food combos that sound awesome but are probably not actually great should food people be working on? Here’s my wish list:

Beer and Fried Chicken

What’s better than sitting down to a giant plate of fried chicken and an ice cold beer? Combining the two! With Chicken Beer you get the flavor and crunch of fried chicken with the cold, refreshing, beerniess of a cold, refreshing, beer. 

Satisfy your drunk munchies instantly with Chicken Beer! Half the calories of a plate of chicken and a beer!

Try it with ranch dressing!

Now see, this sounds awesome in concept, but then you find yourself drinking a salty, crunchy, beer and wishing your taste buds went on strike.

Okay, it would be pretty gross if it was actually crunchy, but I’d obviously drink fried chicken-flavored beer, who wouldn’t?

Seafood and Starburst

The flavor of freshly caught fish, served raw as sashimi or ceviche, is unbeatable. But it’s tough to always have fresh fish around and almost impossible keep friends when you’ve got pockets full of fish all the time.

Why not capture that fresh fish flavor somewhere small, juicy, and individually wrapped?

Fish-flavored Starburst! And not just tuna and salmon, other seafoods too, like clam, lobster and squid.

Now you can always have a fresh burst of fish juice whenever you want. Very busy sushi fans would love it.

This one sounds gross, but wouldn’t it be cool to chew on some lobster candy?

Croissants and Donuts

You beat me to it this time, Ansel, but I’ll win next time.

Freeze Pops and Time Travel

It would be great if you could travel back in time to the days when one of these things could infinitely brighten your day, the simple Freeze Pop made all your childish worries melt away as the colored sugar melted on your tongue and you felt cool and comfortable and perfect.

Now you think they’re “alright, but kinda messy”.

That would be a great food invention.

Salad and Salad Dressing

You know, if companies that do genetically modified foods are in the vegetable genomes altering stuff already, why don’t they just go ahead and add ranch flavoring to lettuce? I’d eat so much more lettuce! Spinach should taste like Thousand Island the second it comes out of the ground!

Caffeine and Cereal

Okay, I love my morning cup of coffee as much as, and probably more than, the next guy. But sometimes I don’t have time for it!

What if they made caffeinated cereal so you could get your fix (remember how caffeine’s an addictive drug?) while enjoying a delicious bowl of something way too sweet to eat first thing in the morning. It’s half the time of making a cup of coffee and cereal like a freaking caveman, and cheaper too, probably!

I’d love to get a boost from a bowl of Grape Nuts.

Nutella and Anything

If you combine something with Nutella, it will sell, guaranteed. People are obsessed with this stuff. Maybe some kind of Nutella Skin Transfusion/Hand Lotion (whichever’s easier) that makes your skin taste like Nutella?

Does Coca-Cola wine sound good to you? Would you try it, or are you waiting for the diet? Would you eat any of my food inventions?

Images via Shutterstock.