Rivergreen Cocktails Greyhound

This completes the Rivergreen Cocktails triple pack, featuring a cocktail I had actually never heard of before. I've had a couple of cans of this previously and recall it being quite refreshing, with real grapefruit juice that made a noticeable difference. There's certainly nothing extraordinary about the ingredients, as we already know the taste of the gin, and the sparkling water is merely a filler. So, does swapping the sweetened lime from a gimlet for the strong, bitter grapefruit in this still create a good 3-ingredient ready-to-drink beverage? The color is the distinctive orange-pink expected of grapefruit, but it's noticeably cloudy and even has a bit of actual pulp, which is a nice visual detail. The nose, however, barely offers any grapefruit; instead, I detect a sweet, honey-like note that shouldn't be there, along with the familiar, slightly Windex-scented gin. Repeatedly smelling it allows the grapefruit to come through more, but it doesn't align with what the eyes suggest. With the first sips, although both grapefruit and gin are present and equally balanced, the flavor you actually notice isn't them, but rather the characteristic dry pith of the fruit itself. Once you adjust to this, the gin recedes, allowing the grapefruit juice and its dryness to combine with the sparkling water, essentially creating a more intensely flavored long drink, but without the sweetness you'd find in the grapefruit soda of a paloma, for instance. I could never get into eating a whole grapefruit for breakfast. As a child, I tried sitting down with a spoon and sugar, but that extreme and unique bitterness was too much for me. Now, as an adult who seems to exclusively favor and seek out bitter flavor profiles, I find that grapefruit still isn't high on my list of preferred tastes, but I still appreciate the use of real fruit here. The Rivergreen Cocktails sampler is an excellent starting point for exploring the world of ready-to-drink beverages (especially since that world is overwhelmingly filled with sugary and low-proof liqueur fillers), and it's polarizing enough that non-gin lovers might have to look elsewhere, which is even better for those seeking an easier gin cocktail.