I agree. In my experience all the Coke Diet/Zero/etc varieties has this really distinctive taste and the aftertaste is also quite different from Classic. My husband is a fan of Zero and also claims it tastes the same. He has occassionally poured Zero into a glass for me thinking I couldn't tell the difference. Every single time I take one sip and that's all I need to identify it. YMMV.

That bad artificial sweetener aftertaste is way less pronounced if you are making a Rum and Coke though, so I always use Coke Zero for my adult beverages. Can't let the sugar kill me when I'm having several cups of vodka!

Diet Coke absolutely tastes different, but Coke and Coke Zero taste exactly the same - I doubt you would get a reliable result if you did a blind test.

I find this varies from person to person. I have nothing to back this up, but I have a hunch it is a genetic thing, like how cilantro tastes like soap to some but not to others.

I can identify the taste of Coke Zero (or anything with artificial sweeteners) vs coke 100% of the time. They barely even taste similar to me. My wife can’t taste a difference at all.

I can assure you that one sip is enough for me to reliably identify it. Both Diet and Zero leave a very distinct and unpleasant aftertaste that's just absent on the regular one.

(doesn't apply to Pepsi though - here the regular one also tastes bad now as it contains sweeteners as well, so I doubt I'd tell it apart from Pepsi Max unless trained beforehand - they're both gross, so I unfortunately had to switch to Coca-Cola for my occasional coke cravings)

No, it doesn't taste the same. It's different from Diet Coke because Diet Coke has it's own unique formulation but Coke Zero 100% has that artificial sweetener taste.

I think it does. But even so, 80% of the taste with 0% of the calories seems like a bargain. Getting some marginal pleasure for 140 extra calories seems like a bad trade-off unless you're not trying to lose weight.

For me Zero tastes quite different and quite unpleasant. I had the same senstation of unpleasant flavour with Diet as well. If the only option was Zero/Diet/etc I probaly would just give up Coke altogethrer.