My first encounter with Foster's Twist almost gave me a nasty cut.
I assumed that it would have a screw top, but it has a seriously sharp metal bottle top instead.
Pain aside, I still viewed it with suspicion. Nice-looking label but why adulterate a perfectly good - well, functional - lager with a citrus flavour?
On a plus point, there were no signs of any artificial flavourings or
e-numbers on the ingredients list.
When I pushed a wedge of fresh lime into the neck of a bottle of Corona Extra and tasted the two side-by-side, Corona won hands down.
I asked a few other people to try it. One person said: "If we were enjoying lovely weather and I was having a barbecue, I wouldn't mind drinking this." Another said: "Only idiots drink lager and lime - I'd be too embarrassed to order it!" And a third person said: "It has a certain sweetness."
Then I gave it to one of the team who hates beer.
"I quite like this," she said, and the mystery was solved - this is more of an alcopop than an ale, and is guaranteed to appeal to the kind of drinker who wants to stand at the bar and swig from the bottle, but isn't interested in anything tasting like proper beer.
Does it have broad appeal? In a way.
I think this drink will last a season or two and then be confined to alcopop history. It doesn't work for discerning drinkers, but I think they will probably sell enough to meet the marketing guy's forecast and justify their ad campaign, although they should have started promoting it earlier this summer.
It's not the kind of thing we'd stock but when I looked for it in Tesco, they'd sold out, and Morrisons were down to their last two multi-packs. Enough said...