StrangeLove: Calmly Outperforming the Soda Industrial Complex.

StrangeLove doesn’t shout. It doesn’t need to. It moves with the quiet authority of someone who has already solved the puzzle - confident, assured, and entirely unshowy. In a landscape crowded with engineered sweetness, wellness posturing, and flavours optimized for clicks and algorithms, StrangeLove embraces something rarer and far harder to master - true restraint.

Australian by birth but cosmopolitan in palate, the brand borrows from the world’s flavour traditions with a translator’s care, not a tourist’s curiosity. Yuzu from misted Japanese mountains, jalapeño from fiery Mexican soils, ginger from the sun-soaked Pacific - none of it feels like performance. There’s no novelty for novelty’s sake, no spectacle disguised as sophistication. What StrangeLove crafts instead is fluency - drinks that enter daily life effortlessly, refresh without demanding applause, and linger in memory simply because they are remarkably, unapologetically good.

What sets StrangeLove apart from the lo-cal crowd isn’t merely what has been stripped away - no sweeteners, no preservatives, no flavour theatre - but what has been left untouched. Flavour behaves like flavour. Sugar performs its quiet alchemy. Calories are reduced without turning enjoyment into a laboratory experiment. It’s confident in the kind of way that doesn’t need to announce itself.

It doesn’t need an introduction - but we’ll give it one anyway.

Take the Yuzu Lo-Cal Soda, perhaps the most self-assured star of the range. Yuzu is a citrus with exacting standards - overwork it and its delicate aromatics collapse, adorn it with gimmicks and its charm vanishes. StrangeLove’s answer is radical simplicity: pristine Japanese yuzu, poured with care, then left to shine on its own. The result is a soda that doesn’t try too hard but insists on being unforgettable.

The Yuzu Lo-Cal Soda arrives crisp, aromatic, and impossibly clean. Lemon brightness, mandarin softness, and grapefruit bitterness make their cameo, then bow out with impeccable manners. No sticky sweetness, no lingering aftertaste, no hint of anything clandestine. At 45 calories, it doesn’t feel like a compromise - it feels like impeccable editing. A soda you grab almost unconsciously, only to marvel at once it touches your lips.

Lime & Jalapeño, by contrast, thrives on a little tension. Australian lime hits first - sharp, confident, impossible to ignore - before a measured, slow-building warmth from jalapeño follows, precise and playful. The inclusion of Murray River pink flake salt is the quiet coup de maître - not seasoning, but scaffolding. It sharpens, elongates, and holds everything in elegant balance, transforming the sip from merely refreshing to unmistakably memorable.

This isn’t heat for heat’s sake. The jalapeño in Lime & Jalapeño plays the supporting role with perfect poise - never trying to steal the spotlight, just enhancing every sip. It pairs effortlessly with tequila or mezcal, yet holds its own beautifully solo, particularly alongside a meal. At 53 calories, it feels playful, intentional, and utterly grown-up.

Then there’s the Double Ginger Beer, which boldly confesses its recipe was “stolen from an old person” - and immediately proves the theft was genius. This is ginger beer with memory, character, and a wink of mischief. Australian ginger juice provides grounding warmth and depth, while Fijian ginger extract delivers a sharp, aromatic snap that lands like a note perfectly struck.

The heat unfolds naturally - measured, never theatrical - before giving way to a clean, lemony finish. Complex yet effortless, nostalgic without ever feeling stale, it clocks in at 55 calories yet feels simultaneously bracing and comforting, like a perfectly timed piece of advice from someone who’s been there.

Across the range, StrangeLove demonstrates a rare confidence - the kind that doesn’t need applause to prove its worth. These drinks earn their place by being returned to, not by making a scene on first encounter. They behave less like fleeting novelties and more like objects crafted with care - settling seamlessly into routines, adapting effortlessly to any context, and never demanding more attention than they merit.

In a world obsessed with the next big thing, StrangeLove quietly makes the case for better, sharper, more considered flavours. Then, without fanfare, it invites you to open another bottle - and another - until you realise the rebellion it quietly staged is complete: a small, sparkling revolution, one extraordinary sip at a time.

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Words by AW.

Photos courtesy of StrangeLove.