Is fruit that tastes like the fluffy fairground favourite nothing more than a marketing gimmick?
You read it here first: supermarket giant Sainsbury's claims to be the first UK retailer "to market" with the launch of a new variety of candyfloss-flavoured grapes in some stores today. Yet we can't imagine there will be a queue of rivals clamouring to stock the so-called "Cotton Candy" fruit which taste just like the fluffy pink spun-sugar treat and is being marketed as "the perfect addition to lunch boxes or for enjoying in front of a movie".
Call me a boring purist, but what is wrong with grape-flavoured grapes? Perhaps some other marketing pointy-head is working in a lab on grape-flavoured candyfloss? Grapes are, generally, white or red, with pips or without and, er, tasting of grapes, whether sweet or dry or sharp. If I was gagging for a sugar rush and the taste of candyfloss I'd head to the fairground.
I just don't get the idea of marketing perfectly good food by trying to pass it off as something else. Years ago a frozen food company came up with the bonkers idea of coating carrots with chocolate in order to make them more appealing to children and encourage them to eat their veg. The idea bombed and the range was withdrawn.
The new grape isn't quite as bad: it's free from added flavours or colours. Stemming from a Lambrusco variety grown in California, Sainsbury's says it has a distinctive but extremely sweet flavour and yet a surprising taste of candyfloss. You can imagine wine writers having a field day with their glowing descriptions of "high notes of filling-zinging spun sugar encased in a pink cocoon".
Finbar Cartlidge, buyer at Sainsbury's, says the grapes are for "all our customers, whether they want to encourage their kids to eat more fruit or are simply looking for something more fun." If you fancy trying them, they're available from 35 stores priced at �3 for a 400g punnet.
The Guardian's consumer team did its own taste test and agreed that the Cotton Candy grapes were rather nice. Undoubtedly sweet and fragrant and tasty in their own right. But we are left pondering whether this is yet another marketing ploy and an attempt to sell us something we don't really want or need. Or is it hats off to Sainsbury's for imaginative and creating sourcing and an worthy attempt to introduced our jaded British palates to something new?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2011/sep/01/sainsburys-launch-candyfloss-grapes
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