Better Libations | Healthy Drink Reviews

Checkmate.

Welcome, libation-loving boys and girls!  Today I have a fresh pick from Purity.Organic, and this one really is hot off the presses!  Purity just came out with it in the last month or two.  And I’m especially excited (and nervous) for this flavor, because I love Half & Half’s!  (Or Arnold Palmers, as they’re known in my neck of the woods.)  For those of you not in familiar with either term, first of all, shame on you.  Second of all, it is a combination of lemonade and black tea, and when they’re made fresh they are absolutely delicious.  The two flavors are made for each other – the lemonade sweetens the bitter black tea, and the black tea cuts the acidity and intensity of the lemonade.  It’s yin and yang in a bottle!

That’s why I’m a little nervous, though – because it’s in a bottle.  I haven’t had the best experiences with bottled lemonades, so I hope this doesn’t turn out to taste like plastic lemons squeezed into my tea.  I don’t think I should be too worried, though, Purity.Organic did have a solid bottled lemonade flavor.

Let’s get to it!

Fragrance: Mmm-mm, lemony tea!  Smells like sweet, heavy black tea with a little lemon zing.

Flavor: Wow, that hits the spot… it appears that I had no need to worry about this one!  It’s got everything I want in an Arnold Palmer (Half and Half, whatever).  First the lemonade hits you, riding your tongue to a rising wave of  sweetness.  And just when you start to think “wait, is this going to be too sweet?”, the bitter black tea swoops in and calms everything down, leaving a pleasingly deep herbal taste in your mouth.  The flavor balance is perfect, the sweetness level is great, and the flavors themselves taste real and fresh.  This is the perfect summer drink.

The one and only issue that I can find with this beverage is its sugar level.  It has 19 grams per serving, which is so perfectly on the fence between “permissible” and “too much for a full score” that it’s driving me insane.  Coca Cola has about 26 grams per serving, to give you something to contrast it with.

Ultimately though, I think you need that much sugar just due to the nature of this drink.  It is necessary to balance out the two powerhouse flavors, lemon and tea.  I think if they tried to cut any more sugar out, the tea and lemon would quickly be overpowering,  thus ruining the experience of a good Half & Half.  I’ll go with the full five points!

Rating: 5.0 out of 5 - Perfectly sweet, perfectly balanced, and perfectly tasty.

-Danithius-

*****Review Rebuttal!!*****

Both Danithius and I have become enamored with the ‘Arnold Palmer’ beverage, so imagine my excitement when he tossed me one of these.  It leads off with a fruity sweetness for me, and finishes with a nice dry tartness compliments of the black tea.  It has a perfect lemony tea aroma.  I sipped the first half and chugged the rest. Quite pleasing to my palate and thirst. I wonder if I could talk them into sending a couple cases our way?

– WiseGuise

User Ratings: (2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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5-Star Reviews, Purity.Organics drink reviews

Hey there, Libationers!  Step right up as I review my final Purity.Organic entry: Cranberry Harmony!  Don’t worry though, WiseGuise still has a couple of flavors to go, and I hear through the grapevine that we may even receive a brand new flavor from Purity!  So if you’re a Purity.Organic fan, there will be more to come!

Fragrance: This smells kind of like a cran-apple drink… probably because it is!  It has a blend of cranberry, apple, and grape juices.  Personally, I’m a cranberry fan, so I hope they didn’t sweeten my favorite tart berry too much!

Flavor: Tart, sweet and fruity!  Nope, I don’t think they sweetened it too much.  The astringent cranberry tartness shines through just fine, with a modest helping of sweetness to serve as a counterweight.  I’m usually wary of drink companies using apple or grape juices as “fillers”, especially when the advertised flavor has neither grape nor apple in it.  I’m wary because a.) it’s a method of cheapening the product, and b.) the grape and apple flavors will inevitably seep into the main flavor profile.

However, cranberry juice is a major exception.  Pure cranberry juice has such an intense flavor that it begs to be tempered with other juices.  And even when you do add another juice, the cranberry flavor will immediately let it know who’s boss, making it slink away into the background with its head hung low.  That’s what’s happening here.  This is cranberry juice first, with a light overtone of grape and apple that you almost have to be looking for to catch.  I can dig that.

Flavor-wise, it’s perfect.  I wouldn’t change a thing.  But one thing I must mention is the sugar content – one serving of this has 25 grams of sugar, which is comparable to Coca-Cola.  Yes, it’s natural sugar from juice, not HFCS.  And yes, as we discussed before it is a lot less sugar than many 100% juices out there.  But it is still a good amount of sugar, so I can’t give it full points.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – for a splendidly tart cranberry cocktail that is made to be sipped.  Just watch the sugar on this, and you’re golden.

-Danithius-

User Ratings: (2 votes, average: 2.50 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, Purity.Organics drink reviews

ImPRESSive?

A telling sign of any good apple juice or cider is its lack of clarity.  This juice is as opaque as they come, with a nice ruddy brown color.  This is a good indication that it is a pure, un-clarified apple juice without any white grape juice mixed in to thin it out and make it clear and pretty.  This is actually pressed in a cider house according to purity.organic, and is labeled as a limited pressing.

Breaking the seal, it smells just like a freshly juices apples, but stronger, as if its been concentrated.  You better believe it tastes like it too.  It is rather sweet, as it is pure, unadulterated apple juice, almost too sweet.  It finishes a bit tart, a nice follow up on the sweetness.  I don’t think I could drink too much of this at once, so it’s probably a good think that the bottle is only 16 oz.  Still, it has 54 grams of sugar, that about equals Coke, without the HFCS, caffeine, and carbonation and other junk.

It tastes great, very apple-y, and it kind of reminds me of those dried apple slices that are so delicious.  As juices go, this ranks right up there with Simply Apple, which has slightly more sugar.  Purity.Organic’s Apple Juice is definitely a much better option than any of the sugar-added juices out there, but if you’re watching your sugar intake it might not be the best choice.  Still, it’s a sweet, tasty treat.

Score: 4 out of 5. A superior though sugary apple rendering.

– WiseGuise

User Reviews: (2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, Purity.Organics drink reviews, organic

Ahoy there, all ye sailors drowning in a sea of high fructose corn syrup!  This is Better Libations, the little tugboat that’s going to save your sticky hides.  Every week we bring you drinks that don’t contain HFCS, artificial sweeteners, and diabetes-inducing amounts of sugar.  Or as we like to call them, drinks that probably won’t kill you(tm).  Now buckle up for this week’s entry from purity.Organic, purveyor of organic juice drinks squeezed straight from the farmer’s market.

Fragrance: Today’s flavor is Tropical Bliss, and tropically blissful it doth smell.  You can tell without looking at the ingredient list that pineapple plays a major role in this drink, backed up by hints of kiwi, grape, and mango.

Flavor: Guh!  For some reason, this taste threw me for a loop at first – you do indeed get the pineapple juice flavor coming out strong at first, but it is tempered by the white grape and kiwi in a way that I didn’t expect.  It still tastes “tropical”, but it has a mellow finish that is not usually found in drinks like this.

After several more sips and lengthy contemplation, I have decided that I like this juice, but that initial grape/kiwi/pineapple combo still catches me in an odd way.  It’s hard to explain – it’s like you’re anticipating a tangy citrus rush, and you start to feel it on the tip of your tongue, but then the middle notes are surprisingly alkaline.  All in all, though, it’s a solid drink, with 36% fruit juice and some organic cane juice as the sweeteners.  It contains less sugar than just about any 100% juice, so this could be a good alternative.

A lot of people consider juice to be healthier than soda, but in terms of sugar content, most of the time juice blows soda away!  Try 40 grams per 8-ounce serving, as is the case with many grape juices.  (That said, don’t think you’re being healthy by downing Coca-Cola instead of juice!)  So in my humble opinion, it is best to go with fruit-juice-sweetened drinks like these which aren’t 100%, but still use a significant amount of real juice.  This one clocks in at 23 grams of sugar per 8 ounce serving, which is a little high for my taste, but again, it’s no 40 grams per serving!

Rating: 4.0 out of 5 – for a real organic juice drink with good flavor and reasonable sugar content.  Drink this instead of 100% O.J. in the morning.

-Danithius-

User Ratings: (2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, Purity.Organics drink reviews

Greetings, kids!  Today it’s time to try out Purity.Organic’s Lemonade.  You may remember that I’m something of a bottled lemonade snob, in that I hate every bottled lemonade that I’ve tried to date.  (With the exception of Simply Lemonade, which is pasteurized and constantly refrigerated like an orange juice, so I think it’s a slightly different category).  So to be specific, I hate every non-refrigerated bottled lemonade that I’ve tried to date.  The Purity.Organic rep that sent us these samples did rave about the lemonade in particular though, saying that it was her favorite.  So I am curious to see how it pans out – will it be the first bottled lemonade that doesn’t taste like a plastic lemon?

Fragrance: This smells sweet and tart like a lemonade should.  But wait… do I detect a hint of concentrate-y scent as well?  (You know what I’m talking about… like that concentrate juice that comes in squeezable plastic lemons).  It shouldn’t, because this lemonade doesn’t use concentrated juice – they just pasteurize it.  Hmm…

Taste: It’s sweet… it’s tart… it’s lemony.  There is a big difference when you use not-from-concentrate juice – the lemon flavor is a lot more true-to-life and not so plasticine.  Is it as good as my refrigerated favorite, Simply Lemonade?  ‘Fraid not.  But it’s close.  (And I hate to say that, because Simply Lemonade is owned by Minute Maid, who is owned by Coca-Cola.  The horror.)

Yes, I’m being nitpicky.  But there is a little something of the fresh fruit flavor that I’m missing in Purity.Organic’s entry, something that seems to be preserved by whatever technique Simply Lemonade uses on its juice.  It’s that pungent, fresh citrus edge that is so distinctive with fresh-cut lemons.  Don’t get me wrong, Purity.Organic has a good flavor going here, and the sweet and tart are perfectly balanced.  But I’m looking for something with that last little kick, that citrusy-fresh finish – something that is so hard to find in bottled lemonade.  It’s more of an aroma than a flavor, like the smell of the lemon zest when you first scrape it from the fruit.  Am I making sense, or am I off in my own little foodie world again?

But all nitpicking aside, I have definitely found a new “best” for my (non-refrigerated) bottled lemonade list.  It tastes good.

One other issue.  I know this comes with the territory when you’re making real lemonade, but this guy packs some serious sugar.  Just be aware of it!  And don’t drink it like it’s water.  One 8 oz serving of Purity.Organic’s lemonade contains 30 grams of sugar – this is more sugar per serving than Coca-Cola.  Some of this is balanced out by the fact that they use organic cane and lemon juices, sure, but I can’t give it full points as a “healthy” drink.

So with that in mind, I’m giving this .5 points off for sugar, and .5 off for my flavor nitpickings.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5. Finally, a solid bottled (non-refrigerated) lemonade.

-Danithius-

User Ratings: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, Purity.Organics drink reviews

Greetings, my liquid-loving brothers and sisters!  Today I have another flavor from Purity.Organic up on the chopping block.  It’s our third and final review from Purity.Organic’s “Functional” category – i.e., lower sugar, lower calorie, Lifewater-esque beverages.  Let’s see how it holds up under the spotlight.

Fragrance: A surprisingly realistic blueberry scent with hints of grape.

Flavor: Wow.  This is downright… pleasant.  The blueberry flavor comes through beautifully, supported by hints of the grape and cane juices.  I can pick up a little bit of pomegranate flavor in the aftertaste as well, but it’s definitely understated.  Most of all, I am impressed by the sweet taste that rides with you from start to finish.  Now given, it is not exactly a miraculous feat for a company to produce a sweet-tasting drink.  However, it is impressive when said company manages to produce a sweet-tasting drink with only 14 grams of sugar per serving (about half the sugar of Coca Cola). And no artificial sweeteners, to boot.  And much of the sugar comes from natural fruit juice from local organic farmers.  Wow.  Seriously, guys, did you guys build this drink specifically for us?

Score: 5.0 out of 5 – It works for me on every level: perfect sweetness, balanced flavor, low sugar, real fruit, organic, and possibly magical.  Seriously, I’m going to order a box of this.

-Danithius-

User Ratings: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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5-Star Reviews, Purity.Organics drink reviews

Hola, Libation-lubbers!  Today I’m going to review an entry from Purity.Organic, a drink company out of San Fran that backs sustainable, organic agriculture.  You’ll probably see a lot of these over the next few weeks, because they were kind enough to send us one of every flavor for review!  And as you know, while we don’t give preferential treatment in the reviews themselves, we do make a policy of placing company-submitted samples first in the review queue.

Let’s get down to business.  I’ve chosen the Orange Mango Tangerine flavor to begin with because it contains 25% juice and yet only has 14g of sugar per serving.  (This is about half the sugar content of your average cola, and much less than typical fruity sodas.)  And on top of that, it just sounds citrusy-fresh.

Orange Mango Tangerine is one of Purity.Organic’s three “functional drinks”, which are lighter on sugar and calories than their sweeter, juicier brethren.  This one is like their sports drink, containing calcium and sea salt intended to replenish the body after exercise.  I did just hit the gym, so let’s see how it treats me.

Fragrance: Well now, this does smell like real fruit.  Because this is a juice cocktail sweetened with cane juice, I was afraid that it would have that “from concentrate” smell or that it would just smell flat.  But this actually smells tangy like a mango, with overtones of fresh citrus.  I am officially enticed.

Taste: Lightly sweet, fruity, and refreshing.  White grape and citrus juices combine with tangerine oil to form an interesting flavor profile that I think is very well suited to chugging during exercise.  It’s pleasant, goes down smooth, and isn’t astringent at all thanks to the white grape.  If you were feeling parched, I think you could easily chug the whole bottle in a matter of minutes and be right back on your feet.  I mean hell, I just chugged the whole bottle in the time it’s taken me to write this review!

This drink has a lot going for it.  It’s all organic, it’s low sugar, it’s nicely flavored, and it’s produced by an environmentally conscientious company.  I’m hard-pressed to come up with a critique for this one…  The only thing I can wish for is perhaps a more defined flavor profile.  I realize that as a “functional drink” this is intended to be lighter than normal juices, and that’s fine.  But I’d like to be able to try this stuff without even looking at the label and tell you at least two out of the three flavors.  As it is now, I think I’d be able to pick only one – citrus.  Still, it’s a good flavor, and I really can’t complain.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 - Low sugar, organic ingredients, and real fruit juice.

-Danithius-

User Ratings: (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, Purity.Organics drink reviews

Yes, the famous pouch

I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic recently, so I bought a box of Capri Sun pouches on my last trip to the store.  Growing up in the Eighties and Nineties, these were a familiar sight in lunch boxes and floating around in coolers in summer time.  I don’t remember anyone ever saying ‘man, I hate those Capri Sun drinks.’  Let’s reexamine this childhood delight.

First off, the box now proclaims “25% Less Sugar Than Other Leading Juice Drinks” as well as “No Artificial Sweeteners” and “NO high fructose corn syrup.”  Each pouch has 16 g of sugar, which is about 21 g of sugar per 8 oz (the pouches used to be bigger, 6.75 oz, but are now 6 oz due to the infamous “grocery shrink ray“).  This is a little better than letting your little rugrats suck down superfluous quantities of sugar, but still cannot match Crayons, and particularly Honest Kids in sugar content, and they have a pouch too.

As for the sensory experience, sadly it cannot be easily subjected to my olfactory nerves without squeezing the pouch into a cup, and let’s just face it, I’m a little too lazy for that.  As far as the taste goes, it is as pleasantly fruity as I remember, but perhaps a bit more watery.  My guess is the 25% less sugar than before.  I still enjoyed drinking over half the pouches in the box while I procrastinated on this review, just as I did as a kid.

My overall feelings on this come down to this:  yes, it has let sugar than a soda or other fruit drinks, and yes, it’s now sweetened with sugar instead of HFCS, and yes, that pouch is pretty handy, and they have a program (with Terracycle, same as Honest Kids) where you can recycle them and they get turned into purses and pencil carriers, and a few cents get back to the schools.  All good points.  But.  The original line is not 100% juice, has added sugar, and those huge boxes don’t look particularly environmentally friendly.  They are also distributed by Kraftfoods in the US, not a small company.  The truth is, there are still many better alternatives out there for your kids, most importantly water.  THEY SHOULD DRINK WATER.  Sweet drinks should be a treat for them, not a daily requirement.  I know no one likes anyone to tell them how to raise their children, but seriously, childhood obesity rates are astronomical right now, almost 20%.  So toss a bottle of water in that lunchbox, and a juice drink on occasion.

Score: 3 out of 5. A better effort from a behemoth distributor, but still plenty full of sugar and not enough juice.

– WiseGuise

User Reviews: (3 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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3-Star Reviews, Capri Sun, Rants drink reviews, Rants

Greetings, Libationers!  Today I’m pleased to bring you another flavor from Sweet Leaf.  Today I’m tackling their lemonade.

Now let me state from the start that I have never had much luck with pre-bottled lemonade.  It’s really, really hard to find anything that doesn’t taste like a tin can of super-fake lemon concentrate.  Sweet Leaf has had some solid entries in the past, though, so I’m willing to give them a try.

Let’s crack it open…

Fragrance – yep, smells like lemon all right.  I do detect a little bit of that concentrate scent, too.  (You know, the stuff from the little yellow plastic squeeze-lemon).

Taste – while it’s better than some other bottled lemonades that I’ve had, I still just can’t get over that concentrate taste.  It just feels fake.  The sweetness level is just right, and it could be great if it just tasted like a fresh lemon.  But there’s just no getting around the fake taste.

To be fair to Sweet Leaf, there is only one bottled lemonade that I have ever really enjoyed, and that’s Simply Lemonade.  (Which is pasteurized and kept under refrigeration like other fresh juices).  It may be comparing apples to oranges here, but in order for me to like a lemonade it has to taste like real lemons!  I simply can’t get over the concentrate taste.

Rating: 2.0 out of 5 – A worthy effort, but it still tastes like plastic lemons.

User Ratings: (1 votes, average: 2.00 out of 5)
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2-Star Reviews, Sweet Leaf drink reviews

Some time ago, we (and by “we” I mean WiseGuise) reviewed a couple of drinks by a company called Adina.  They both received pretty solid scores for flavor, health, and fair trade/earth-friendly products.  After that I proceeded to completely forget about the company.   And then last week I came across this striking little asian-looking design on a bottle boasting honey lemon aloe flavor (how refreshing!).  The bottle looked completely different from the ones in our previous reviews, so I thought this was a totally new company.  Little did I know they had just given themselves a facelift!  I think they took a note or two from SoBe’s design philosophy on this one.  I like the thick glass bottle and the funky monkey on the front.

As I further investigated the bottle, I found that it was 100% organic certified, and they use evaporated cane sugar as the sweetener.  As far as the actual sugar gram count goes, it scores very well – 13g per serving, or exactly 1/2 the sugar content of Coca-Cola.  I also found out that their slogan is “drink no evil”, which I think is a deliciously scathing jab to the liquid-evil factories out there.  OK, enough about fun facts, how does this stuff taste?

Fragrance: Mmm, herby.  I smell something like fruity lemongrass with a hint of green tea.

Taste: Lightly sweet, delicate, and refreshing, with a botanical green tea aftertaste.  I’m glad they sell these in 14 ounce bottles, because I think that’s just the right amount.  This would be excellent on a hot day or after a good workout, when you really want some liquid refreshment.  No one flavor really pronounces itself, though; neither the lemon nor the honey grab center stage.  Instead, all the flavors meld together into an herby mix.  This can kind of wear on you as you get towards the end of the bottle – I kind of wish there was one flavor in particular that was held up above the rest.  Still, it’s nice.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5 For a cool design, organic, healthy ingredients, low sugar, and good flavor.

-Danithius-

User Ratings: (2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, Adina drink reviews