Caribou Coffee, the second-largest specialty coffee company in the US after Starbucks, Have announced a partnership with another great evil, Coca Cola, to produce their sixth coffee/tea line of 2007.

Michael Coles, Caribou Coffee chairman and CEO said: “Our partnership with Coca-Cola will extend our great premium coffee taste experience into the RTD category and allow us to take advantage of Coca-Cola’s world-class distribution system.” – unfortunately, while found at a small convenience store, this by no means helped the flavor, and could only be found (so far) in small mom and pop gas stations around denver. Of course, tagging along with a big celeb like Ashlee Simpson for her “Bittersweet world” tour should have helped sales a little.

Mr Douglas, president of Coca-Cola North America, said: “Volume in the RTD coffee category has grown 17% in the last four years, and revenues are up 24%. Caribou’s expertise, involvement and focus in brewing the perfect coffee will allow us to create a wonderful ready-to-drink coffee.”

I have finally found it – the thing that makes all pre-made canned coffee taste like canned coffee. And unfortunately, it is not even a little masked by this iced coffee, only having the bland Caribou coffee and no flavors to mask the Baking Soda added to help shelf life. While I appreciated the lack of wierd ingredients, the taste, either because of the quality of coffee or the taste of the beans, left something big to be desired. Look to Bibicaffe or Shock for a much better canned coffee if you are on the go.

Buzz/Nutrition:7
I like the ingredients list in this drink. Other than the Seaweed (carageenan) added to thinken things up, this drink is just their coffee, sugar, milk and Sodium Bicarobnate (baking soda). Still 100 calories in here, most likely from the milk, but that would not be so bad if the taste were decent; which it is not.

Taste:4
Even for canned coffee this is not good. In todays age, where you can do so much with a csanned beverage, there is no reason to do this to coffee, even if it was to not-so-good coffee such as this one. It looks like a good drink from the can, and the big square informing you this is an all natural drink, but this is one to pass on

Packaging:9
I LOVE the cool metal can. This drink looks like something futuristic and mod – not to mention seeming like this drink has cooler-like properties, being able to stay cold for longer ( even if it doesnt). They list everything except for caffeine content on the can, but that is understandable, seeing as this is made with coffee, and you cant really measure caffeine in coffee reliably. If there was one reason top pick this up, it would be for the awesomeness of this metal container – designed quite perfectly.

Website:0
while their main website is very nice and very professional, there was no info to be had at all about thses drinks. While I cold get all sorts of info as to their main coffeehouse drinks, these drinks are not listed anywhere. Only real problem is the URL on the can – if it is not supported, dont list it!