Greetings Libationers!  A couple of days ago I was wandering the aisles of my local food purveyor co-op, and what should I see there but a brand-new Lifewater flavor!  The title “Cherimoya Punch” grabbed my eyes from the frosted plastic bottle, and I knew I had to have it.  And of course, since it was a new flavor debut, it was on sale.  Double-score for me!

Cherimoya and I have a brief but torrid history together.  My chef at culinary school was the first to introduce me to this mysterious fruit.  He came into the kitchen one day with a big plastic bag full of exotic fruits for the class to try.

“Is there a fruit that I haven’t tried yet?” I muttered incredulously.  “Ppph, I don’t think that’s even possible.”

But my eyes widened as he pulled a lumpy, greenish-brown thing from the bag and immediately cut it in half.  It had white flesh on the inside with big, brown seeds.

“This,” chef said, “is the Cherimoya.”

I squeezed through my classmates for a better look.  What was this?  I had to try some!

The chef picked up a spoon - a spoon! – and scooped out a bit of the soft, white flesh.  He popped it merrily into his mouth and spat out the seed.  He told everyone to do the same.  Seeing some dubious faces, he egged us on: “come on, it tastes like bubblegum!”

I grabbed a spoon and scooped out a chunk of fruit.  Feeling the excitement of new experience, I raised it to my mouth and popped it in.

The flavor was amazing.  It was like bubblegum, except 50 times better.  It was like a big slap in the face to bubblegum flavor scientists everywhere.  By Mother Nature.  I didn’t even notice the giant seed in the middle until all of the delicious white flesh had melted away.  I had to have more!  Who had been keeping this fruit secret from me?!  They would pay dearly for their treachery…

But I digress.  In brief, I like the Cherimoya.  And I’m staring at this Lifewater bottle in my hands, hoping that Sobe doesn’t disappoint me.

I twist off the cap and take a whiff.  The smell reminds me of some kind of tropical bubblegum with a hint of sour.  It’s a good start, and I hope the taste can deliver that slice of heaven that I’m expecting.

I take a sip.  It’s… puzzling.  I can sense that bit of cherimoya-bubblegummy goodness coming out to greet me, but there are definitely other players here.  A tinge of sour.  A soft note of… banana?  Well, I suppose it is called “Cherimoya Punch“, so it makes sense.  And the flavors do come together in a nice harmony.  And, true to Lifewater’s tradition, the sweetness level is perfect. OK, I’m liking this.

Yes, I’m nearing the end of the bottle now, and I think Lifewater has pulled it off again with this one.  Cherimoya Punch’s flavor is deep and complex, while still being entirely chuggable and very refreshing.  I dig.

This beverage does contain an ingredient list that requires an encyclopedia to decipher, which can be worrisome.  I have ventured out on the internets to look them up, however, and they are mostly vitamins, weight-loss/fat burning ingredients, and flavors.   I haven’t found anything (yet) to be concerned about in this drink, but if there are any chemists or nutritionists out there who want to enlighten me, be my guest!

A quick note on the sweeteners – Lifewater is still one of the only “diet” products that I drink regularly (the other being Zevia soda), and it’s because they consistently get the sweetness level just right, and there is little to no strange “diet” aftertaste.  There is also the fact that they use Stevia and Erythritol, which are both natural ingredients.  (What do I think about artificially created sweeteners, you ask?  Well, you could make tire rubber taste exactly like sugar, but that doesn’t mean that I’d want to eat it.)

Finally, allow me to make one humble request:

Sobe flavor-creation people, could you please make me a batch of pure Cherimoya-flavored Lifewater?  Pretty please?  You don’t know what I would give for such a thing.  The least of which is my eternal love and devotion, and the most of which is something priceless.  Rhymes with shmeldest fun.  Call me!

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Another well-balanced, flavorful, “non-diety” diet drink.  Cheers!

-Danithius-

User ratings: (3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, SoBe Life Water

Yes, finally, the last oogave review that I’ve been putting off for a week.   Christmas shopping has been wreaking havoc on my posting, among other things.  Let’s get down to it, shall we?  Yes, we shall.  I ended up with the other citrus offering from oogave, Mandarin-Key Lime.  This simple soda has only four ingredients, as long as you count ‘natural flavors’ as a single ingredient.

The freshly opened bottle tickles my nose with a citrus-y mandarin feather, but I’m having a hard time detecting the lime.  With a swig, I get that first rush of sweet from the agave, then an orange tang, followed by a hint of lime.  None of the flavors really overwhelm the others except for the sweetness; at least you can say that oogave knows how to play it mellow with the flavors, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I think that Esteban could really play around with the flavors a lot more, make them familiar but interesting.  The sweetness always seems to take control of my taste-buds before the real flavors get a chance to take them for a ride.  I really wanted to like this soda more, but the sugars are the only thing my tongue has any memory of now that I’ve finished the bottle.  Although, I do feel fuller.

Score: 3 out of 5. The understated flavors disappear under the agave sweetness.

– WiseGuise

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3-Star Reviews, oogave all natural, independent company, oogave, organic

As is usual when we receive a group of drinks to try, we split them up according to our preference, expertise, or just at random.  In this case it was all three.  I chose Esteban’s Rootbeer as my first, since Danithius had already tried it, and I gave my rebuttal.  My second oogave choice was this fruity number, since I am fond of citrus in mostly healthy ways.

Popping the top, my nose is greeted by  light, grapefruit-y scent, sweet and bubbly as your favorite waitress.  The taste follows with an undeniable link to the citrus waft, although more hinted at than fully explored, finishing with a grape-y mellow sweetness with a lingering memory of grapefruit o the back of your tongue.  None of the sour or bitterness I expected is evident, which is usually associated with this particular fruit, but not necessarily in a bad way.  Many are turned off by this pithy flavor in grapefruit, which is unwarranted.  Good grapefruits are sweet.

The agave tends to coat your mouth and throat, definitely leaning this towards being a sipping soda.  The agave nectar does seem to make me feel fuller after topping off my lunch with this, I don’t need to hit the water cooler or find something else to snack on.  I am refreshed and full.  I found this a welcome alternative to traditional sodas, oogave definitely has something here.

Score: 4.5 out of 5. A tad sweet, but definitely a citrus soda I will remember.

– WiseGuise

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4-Star Reviews, oogave oogave, organic

Alright, folks, time to try another soda from oogave.  (Check out our other oogave reviews).  Today I’m trying their cola flavor – the benchmark flavor of any self-respecting soda company.  I wonder how it’ll stack up.  Side note: my current favorite is the surprisingly complex Red Bull Cola – it tickles my fancy as a chef with its unique ingredients, and the flavor tickles my tongue like a good cola should.

I crack open the bottle and am greeted by a peculiar fragrance – something between a root beer, a cola, and a bite of something I can’t quite put my finger on… let’s see how this comes out in the flavor.

Well, the bite part came through a little bit, but not so much on the root beer and cola flavors.  In fact, it’s hard to pick up any distinct flavors in this.  How can I best describe it?  It’s flat.  Hollow.  It has no real body and a weak, astringent finish.  It lacks the sweetness of the other flavors (all of oogave’s current flavors have 24 grams of sugar per 12 oz bottle, and most of them do very well with that relatively small amount.)  It doesn’t say “cola” to me, nor does it remind me of any soda flavor.  It’s like very watered-down molasses mixed with citric acid.

Rating: 2.0 out of 5 - Healthy concept, but the flavor just isn’t there.

-Danithius-

User Rating: (1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
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2-Star Reviews, oogave

Time to pop open another oogave – this time it’s their Ginger Ale.  I take a whiff and am punched in the nose by a fresh ginger scent.  It smells real, not like some kind of ginger flavoring or powder.  It’s intense… I wonder how much will come through in the flavor?

Answer: a whole lot!  This is definitely on the intense side of the ginger-ale spice scale.  It has a honey-sweet (agave-sweet, actually) flavor that works well with the ginger extract.  Despite the sweetness, this flavor clocks in at only 24 grams of sugar per bottle.  Impressive.  It does have a slight astringency on the back end, but some of that can be ascribed to the ginger extract.

After nursing half of the bottle, I’ve decided that I’m a fan.  I like the bold ginger flavoring – it’s completely different from the “Dry” ginger ales that flood the popular market.  And yet it’s not so spicy that it’s overwhelming – it’s very sippable.  This could be a great palate-cleanser, or an accompaniment to a spicy meal.  It’s refreshing.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5. A spicy, agave-sweetened ginger ale that’s low on sugar yet high in flavor.

-Danithius-

User Rating: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, oogave agave, drink reviews, oogave

The folks at Oogave were kind enough to send us a sampler of their six Agave-sweetened sodas. As always, we use the same criterion to judge samples sent to us as we do for our normal reviews. (Though we do give priority in the review queue to them).

Today I’ll jump right to the flavor that first caught my eye – Watermelon Cream. I just now popped open the bottle, and I’m trying to figure out what candy this smell reminds me of. Cotton candy? No. Bubble gum? No… Razzles? Arg, it’s going to drive me crazy.

OK, enough time contemplating the smell, I’m thirsty. I take a sip and let it sink in. There is definitely a bubblegum high note in this, with middle notes that deliver the watermelon flavor nicely. I’m surprised that Oogave pulled off this sweet flavor with only 24 grams of sugar in the whole bottle. (Our favorite measuring stick is a 12 oz can of Coca Cola, which contains 39 grams. There are sodas with even more sugar, but a can of Coke is a good average.) I pour some out into a glass, and am amused to discover a nice light pink-champagne color. The drink doesn’t taste very creamy to me, but the bubble-gummy flavor works well together with the watermelon.

I could see this making my regular rotation – it has low sugar, a refreshing flavor, and a rare choice of sweetener. There are a lot of interesting facts about agave nectar, the most striking of which is its low glycemic load. On oogave’s website they assert that agave nectar has a substantive feel, which helps your body know when it’s “full” in a way that HFCS doesn’t. To use their words, your body “doesn’t allow you to pound down a two-liter bottle [of oogave]. It will let you know when you have had enough”. I just like the fact that oogave is actually advocating moderate use of its product! (And not because they’re forced to, like liquor companies).

For my part, I did feel “full” after drinking this bottle, but I was never one to “pound down a two-liter bottle” of anything, especially HFCS soda, so I don’t know what the difference is like. Maybe I’ll take one for the team and try an experiment sometime…

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0 – A solid agave-sweetened soda with an original flavor and low sugar.

-Danithius-

User Ratings: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, oogave agave, drink reviews, oogave, watermelon cream

Ito En, as a Japanese beverage company, is one of the leading manufacturers of tea, although this beverage is manufactured in China, brought in through Hawaii, and distributed through their North America office in New York.  Quite a journey for a small bottle of tea.  the FDA says it’s cool, so I’ll give this one a chance to prove it’s tea goodness, China is known for their tea.

I popped open their supposed environmentally-responsible bottle and gave it the old scent test.  I get the overwhelming image of a fresh cut pear wrapped in tea leaves, sweet and aromatic.  Good so far.  A swig later, and my tongue is reveling in the delightful pear-y taste, giving way to a surprisingly strong tea flavor for a white tea; and with surprising sweetness for only 30 g of the sweet stuff in the whole 16 oz bottle.  The finish is a little dry with a lingering sweet-pear flavor.

Fruit teas are hard to nail down properly, often the fruit overwhelms the tea, or is left far too understated to avoid this cover-up.  This tea has struck a good balance, a good pear flavor with a nice strong tea to follow, although the sweetness is beginning to feel like a little too much, they might want to take a cue from Honest Tea and tone it down a bit.  Ito En surely knows how to make a good fruit tea, although too sweet, it still has its merits.

Score: 4.5 out of 5. Excellent balance for a fruit tea, just a tad too sweet.

– WiseGuise

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4-Star Reviews, Ito En, Tasty Japanese Drinks all natural, drink reviews, white tea

Please welcome the belated poster-drink of the “Me Generation”!  I found this tangerine-pineapple flavored beverage cylinder amongst its equally brightly-colored brothers on the shelf of my local health food store.  As I always do when encountering new drinks, I flipped it over and checked the ingredients.  And the primary sweetener was: fructose!  Not high-fructose corn syrup, mind you.  Just fructose.  Eyebrows raised, I read on.  They also used 13% juice concentrate, some erythritol, and something called “oligofructose” as additional sweeteners.  (My eyebrows went up even further when I saw the last one.)  I did some preliminary research on oligofructose over a few different sites, and I didn’t find any negative health claims.  Evidently it’s supposed to be good for the ol’ colon, and it doesn’t add many calories, if any.

And the grand total for all of these sweeteners was: 17 grams for a 10 oz can.  Not too shabby.  So how does the flavor measure up?

Well, all I can say is that this is an incredibly tame tangerine-pineapple flavor.  It tastes like very lightly flavored, lightly sweetened seltzer water.  I want to taste the tropical bite of the pineapple, and the distinct citrus notes from the tangerine.  I want them to come out and hit me square in the taste buds, not skulk around in the aftertaste. And the flavor notes that I do manage to pick up have that distinct “from concentrate” feel to them.

One section of the can has a little blurb praising all things “me”.  Here’s a couple lines:

“You can be energetic, reflective, outgoing, moody, surprising, and unashamed.  You don’t fit a category – you are unique.  Now there is a beverage as natural and refreshing as you.”

While I am thankful for the “you are special” blurb on the side of the can, what I need first and foremost from my drink is to taste good, not to suck up to me. This drink isn’t bad, per se, it just has nothing memorable about it.  This beverage is supposed to serve as a living metaphor for someone’s unique personality?  I can’t help but wonder what personality they based it on.  Librarians*?

You can check out their site at www.findyourme.com to see bright colors and new ways to revel in your sassy, unique personality.  They have a personality quiz that will match you with your “Me” flavor.  Evidently I should have bought “Curiosity” – maybe I should reserve judgment until I try the flavor that was genetically engineered for me?  …nah.

Rating: 2.0 out of 5 – It’s all about health and flavor, and this just didn’t deliver on the latter.

-Danithius-

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*Librarians of the world, forgive me for using a cliched stereotype.  I know there are plenty of deeply interesting librarians out there.  Feel free to replace the word “librarian” with whatever stereotype librarians like to make fun of.

2-Star Reviews, Me drink reviews, Me

Viagra in a bottle?

Another Function flavor I have been meaning to review, and after two failed attempts (drank it without a notepad or camera) I have finally brought you my wisdom and advice.

As is normal for drinks not rife with chemicals and sugar, the scent is rather weak, but definitely speaks of its tropical origins.  The taste is more arousing, a passionate assault on my taste-buds with its twin cannons of passion-fruit and guava.  There’s only a bare hint of the astringent  nature of the supplements and extracts added for its supposed sexual health claims.  It leaves me with no dry-mouth or unpleasant aftertaste.  Yummy.

I see no way to easily or diplomatically lay down any evidence as to its claims, due to the sensitive nature of such information and the personal familiarity of some of our readership, so I will leave it up to the speculation of our readers; also I highly suggest experimentation on all your parts.  Ahem.

I felt a bit of a boost after my lunch, which is usually capped by some drowsy reading in the break-room and a sluggish afternoon.  Sugar content is moderate, 33 g in the 16.8 oz bottle, and the taste is excellent, by far one of my favorites to come out of the labs at Function.

Score: 5 out of 5. A flavorful harbinger of potency, also a first 5 for Function.

– WiseGuise

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5-Star Reviews, Function all natural, drink reviews

Sounds odd, but don't judge it yet.

I like finding the odd and random drinks that appear out there, ones that few have tried and I have never seen before.  But, I hesitate to review them, because of the above stated facts.  They are hard to find and not widely consumed; and often, not very good.  But sometimes you find a diamond in a field of coals.  This aloe drink may be one of those.

I remember using aloe as a home-remedy for small injuries and sunburns, my grandmother had a large plant on the back porch you could go break a piece off of and smear the smelly, slimy substance on your wound, which soon felt miraculously better.  Aloe is well known for its beneficial effects on the skin and for the stomach, as well as possibly aiding the immune system.

After curiously reading the contents, I shook it as directed then popped open the can.  A smell that brought to mind something likened to burnt grapes with a hint of aloe escaped the can.  Heedless of any foreboding I took a swig right out of it, and found my mouth  full of sweet, grape-y chunks of aloe, a lot of them.  It tasted much more of grape flesh than aloe, which can have a bitter taste.  There is a bit of a tang from the citric acid and Vitamin C (ascorbic acid).  Chewing the aloe chunks, which have an almost jello-like texture, releases more sweetness.

The grape taste is rather strong, and the sugar isn’t subtle either, with 23 g in the 8 oz can, still a bit less than Coke.  A couple extra g of carbs appear due to the aloe vera.  Texture people may not like the soft chunks of aloe, others may love it.  Nothing artificial, extra Vitamin C, and made in Korea.  I really enjoy trying new things like this, and encourage others to do the same.  Other bloggers have found these aloe drinks interesting as well.

Score: 3.5 out of 5. Uber sweet and uber grape, but a different kind of drink.

– WiseGuise

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3-Star Reviews, J1 all natural, drink reviews