We Tried Coca-Cola Move. Does It Really Taste Like Rosé?

I’m old enough to remember when Diet Coke burst onto the scene in 1982 when it was a Big Honking Deal that the vaunted Coca-Cola was allowing its name to be used on another product. How far we’ve come: Coca-Cola Move is just the latest in what seems like 87364027 satellite beverages that use the Coca-Cola name.

Coca-Cola Starlight was a super-sweet cotton candy-ish drink, not to be confused with Coca-Cola Dreamworld, which was a super-sweet fruit punch-ish drink. Both are part of the Coca-Cola Creations line, which keeps pumping out limited-edition beverages that have the Coke name behind them, but often taste very little like traditional Coca-Cola.

The latest Coca-Cola Creations drink is called Coca-Cola Move, possibly the most boring of the names so far. It’s a collaboration with the Grammy Award-winning singer Rosalía, who even created a new song for it, titled “Lie Like You Love Me.”

I’m not familiar with Rosalía, but still, I had to try the new Coca-Cola Move. (And I listened to her catchy part-Spanish, part-English song, which isn’t half-bad.)

What Is Coca-Cola Move?

As with the other Coca-Cola Creations flavors, the company doesn’t just come out and tell you “this is banana-flavored Coke” or whatever. (Coca-Cola Starlight was supposed to taste like outer space!) You have to try and read between the lines of a flowery description and see if you can match their wording up with the drink’s flavor.

The word that runs through all the corporate descriptions of Coca-Cola Move is “transformation,” but its taste isn’t described in any concrete way, just as “unique.” Early tasters have claimed to find a coconut taste—some say coconut and vanilla, some say coconut and pineapple, some claim it’s marshmallow and blogger @markie_devo wrote on Instagram that a Coke employee reports it has notes of rosé wine.

What Does It Taste Like?

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper for Taste of Home

My first sip of the full-sugar version of Coca-Cola Move brought only one thing to mind: Bubblegum. It’s Coke, for sure, but it’s got that super-sweet mouthfeel of a sugary pink piece of gum. And after a few more sips, I could see where early tasters are getting the coconut-vanilla descriptor. There’s a tropical element to it, but it’s not overwhelming. I have been known to mix Coke or Diet Coke with coconut rum, and there’s definitely a similarity there. Isaac, the charming bartender from The Love Boat, could pour this into a coconut shell and I’d drink it on the Lido Deck while enjoying a humorous romantic adventure aboard The Pacific Princess in the 1970s! Where’s Julie, our cruise director?

Do you like pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain? I’m definitely a fan of the drink part of that song, but I didn’t really get any of the pineapple taste that makes a pina colada pina-y. And rosé wine? Not tasting that, either, though I can see that there’s a bitter undertone that might bring wine’s tang to mind.

Full-sugar Coca-Cola Move, then, is a pretty satisfactory Coke, jazzed up with other sweet flavors. But the zero-sugar version of Coca-Cola Move only moved me to race to the sink to dump it down the drain. That chemical aftertaste that so often comes along with diet drinks horribly dominated the zero-sugar version. It’s no Coke Zero or Diet Coke, that’s for sure. Stick to the full-sugar version of Coca-Cola Move.

When Can I Get It?

I’m already seeing Coca-Cola Move in gigantic, prominent displays in my local grocery stores, both in multi-can packages and in individual 20-ounce bottles, if you just want to try it without a big commitment. If you can’t find it in your store, it’ll almost certainly be there soon—workers at my local Safeway were setting up a huge display by the checkouts on Feb. 23.

Like the other Coca-Cola Creations drinks, however, Coca-Cola Move is a limited-edition offering. So if you want to try it, start looking now, and don’t wait to buy it if you spot it. In other words, Move quickly.