Kasugai’s strawberry gummy, made from fresh strawberry juice, is a very delicious gummy. Please have a fun time with this strawberry gummy.

Its translucent color so alluring and taste and aroma so gentle and mellow offer admiring feelings of a graceful lady. Enjoy soft and juicy Kasugai Muscat Gummy.

This is the Kasugai product description to which jo was referring, and, as I mentioned there, the first time I saw this bag on the shelf, I thought it said “Kasugai Muskrat Gummy.”

The muscat (or muscatel) grape is one of the oldest grape varieties in the world and it’s often described as having an “earthy” or “musky” flavor, but I think Kasugai may have taken that too literally. Because, despite their claims on the front of the packaging, I wouldn’t liken the taste of these things to a “graceful lady” unless that graceful lady was infected with black rot and had been putrifying in a compost heap for a week and a half.

Man, these things are nasty. They’ve got an overripe, vegetal bouquet, a full-bodied, almost loamy flavor that you can usually only experience by chewing moss, and an appalling finish that somehow brings to mind a worm farm.

It’s odd that Kasugai even offers a separate muscat-flavored gummy, since they already have the more generic Kasugai Grape Gummy that actually tastes like grapes. But I must admit I’m not familiar with the muscatel grape. Perhaps this is an accurate reproduction of its flavor. If so, I’m with the The Count of Monte Cristo.

The count looked at Mercédès as if to interrogate her, but she continued to walk on in silence, and he refrained from speaking. They reached the building, ornamented with magnificent fruits, which ripen at the beginning of July in the artificial temperature which takes the place of the sun, so frequently absent in our climate. The countess left the arm of Monte Cristo, and gathered a bunch of Muscatel grapes. “See, count,” she said, with a smile so sad in its expression that one could almost detect the tears on her eyelids — “see, our French grapes are not to be compared, I know, with yours of Sicily and Cyprus, but you will make allowance for our northern sun.” The count bowed, but stepped back. “Do you refuse?” said Mercédès, in a tremulous voice. “Pray excuse me, madame,” replied Monte Cristo, “but I never eat Muscatel grapes.”

[…]

The countess placed herself before Monte Cristo, still holding in her hand a portion of the perfumed grapes. “Take some,” she said. “Madame, I never eat Muscatel grapes,” replied Monte Cristo, as if the subject had not been mentioned before. The countess dashed the grapes into the nearest thicket, with a gesture of despair. “Inflexible man!” she murmured. Monte Cristo remained as unmoved as if the reproach had not been addressed to him.