What Exactly Did Mountain Dew's Limited Edition Pitch Black Flavor Taste Like?
For fans of a certain soda named after back-road moonshine, there is never a bad time to Do the Dew. There's a truly dizzying assortment of Mountain Dew flavors — as of the time that we ranked all the ones currently available, there were 14 — and each has its lovers and haters. The original Mountain Dew does, actually, have a flavor (it's citrus, heavy on the lemon), and, for some, that's good enough. For those who wish that the Dew was, well, darker, there was, once upon a time, Mountain Dew Pitch Black.
Released as a Halloween tie-in way back in 2004, Pitch Black lingered until 2011 and made a brief, temporary reappearance in 2023. Pepsi, the parent company of Mountain Dew, called Pitch Black a dark citrus punch, but the prevailing flavor was grape. The darkness of Pitch Black was meant to be a promotional feature, but close observers noticed that the soda was purple, further underscoring the "grape" of it all.
Delving through years of internet reviews reveal that public response to Pitch Black was mostly positive, although one recurring critique was that the grape flavor was too subtle.
How much grape does grape soda need?
Polar Bear Cooks approvingly referred to the grape notes in Mountain Dew Pitch Black as "toned down ... the right amount." A commenter on EGullet echoed the positive feedback, noting that "grape lollipop is a good attribute." However, on EN World, it was written that Pitch Black paled in comparison to grape sodas that had come before: "[I]t's just not grape enough. Tastes nothing like a grape soda. It's just ... there." And, on Reddit's Mountain Dew forum — which proves that there is a subreddit for everything — a lukewarm post declared that "I taste grape but it's not super obvious ...I don't know if [identifying grape] would be my first instinct."
Mountain Dew Pitch Black must have been a success because Pepsi saw fit to release a sequel flavor named Pitch Black II for Halloween 2005. Pitch Black II was also grape-flavored, but sour on top of that. A pithy poster on the Starmen forums summed it up nicely: "Since when do soft drinks need sequels?" The public clearly agreed with that statement because Pitch Black II didn't make it past 2005.
To grape or not to grape may have been the question, but the issue is now all for naught. It seems that Mountain Dew Pitch Black is just another discontinued soda that we're not getting back.