Fentiman's Dandelion & Burdock

Fentiman's has been making fermented and botanically brewed drinks since 1905; this one features dandelion and burdock roots, both good nutritionally. It also has ginger and aniseed flavour. The sweetness of the "soda" comes from cane sugar, pear juice concentrate and glucose syrup. This tasted interesting, not quite like the burdock root that I've eaten, but similar, the licorice flavour of the aniseed came out strongest. While this is a better soda, I don't think I liked it enough to drink it on a regular basis, and it is more expensive than soda.

GT's Organic Raw Kombucha - Original

Kombucha is one of my favourite drinks, raw, bubbly, healthy goodness, much better than any sugared pop. I've come across several new suppliers in the various health food stores I frequent here, this one is from California. G.T. Dave has been making kombucha since 1995; one of its main ingredients is "100% pure LOVE!!!". This is Original flavour, the ingredients are just, besides the LOVE, water, kombucha culture (yeast and bacteria) and tea. This is raw kombucha, there are strands of the culture floating at the bottom. GT's kombucha tasted pretty good; I'd like to investigate the other flavours in his line. The bottle cost me under $4.

Dry Soda - Rhubarb

This is the second of the natural and more healthy sodas from Dry Soda that I tried. This one intrigued me more than the Vanilla Bean one, you don’t see many sodas, or even drinks, with rhubarb. Like the vanilla bean, I don’t like that they use phosphoric acid, but I did prefer this one over the vanilla bean, and the rhubarb flavouring, they use natural extracts, was good and not overwhelmingly prominent. I doubt that I would buy this again, mostly because of the phosphoric acid.

Dry Soda - Vanilla Bean

I found this soft drink in one of the health food stores I go to, I think Whole Foods. Dry Soda makes a number of interesting flavoured soft drinks. This one features vanilla bean, a flavour I enjoy very much, and it delivers on it. This is also a dry soda, which implies to me, that it is not so sweet, similar to dry, as opposed to sweet, wine; when you drink it, it does taste “dry”, ie. not sweet, which I think is a good thing. The ingredient listing is short, purified carbonated water, cane sugar, natural extracts and phosphoric acid. This last ingredient is the only problem I have. Phosphoric acid is there to help keep the bubbles of the carbonation, but it has effects on the body, including potentially leaching calcium out of your bones (to counteract the phosphorus). I will grant, that perhaps the amount of phosphoric acid in this product likely is lower than you might find in one of the commercial products, Coke or Tab, for example. Overall, I enjoyed the flavour, but don’t need the worry of what the phosphoric acid is doing.

O.N.E. Acai Acerola Drink

This is the last of the O.N.E. drinks that I tried. Acai is a new fruit superfood that is finding its way into a number of drinks, both health-oriented and even commercial ones; these Acai berries are wild-crafted from the Amazon Rainforest. Acerola cherries are an excellent source of Vitamin C. Drinking it, the liquid has a fair amount of brownish-red pulp, a little off-putting, and the drink tasted somewhat sour (from the cherries, no doubt). Overall, I would say this was my least favourite of the O.N.E. drinks, my favourite being the Cashew Fruit.

Santa Cruz Organic Limeade

I’ve tried Santa Cruz’s Lemon Lime, Raspberry Lemonade and Mango Lemonade, this one features lime juice. Well, mostly lime, it also has white grape juice and lemon juice. It’s pleasant tasting, fairly good Organic with better ingredients drink, and around $2 for the near 1L bottle.

Kombucha Wonder Drink Essence of Juniper Berry, Spearmint and Lemon Myrtle

I would say this has been my least favourite of the kombuchas from Wonder Drink. Juniper berries are the main flavouring for gin, which I don’t care for. The spearmint is not a strong flavour, less than the juniper berries; the lemon myrtle I missed its taste completely. The kombucha didn’t come across as being very strong in flavour either. I am disappointed in this one, and miss my Himalayan

.

Santa Cruz Organic Mango Lemonade

Santa Cruz makes fairly good drinks using more natural sources, better than pop certainly, this is no exception. This tastes like a good-flavoured mango with lemon juice. It has an odd colour, kind of neon orange, which apparently comes from beta carotene. This one liter jar cost about $2, though I have seen them for about $5.

O.N.E. Coffee Fruit Drink

I’ve eaten coffee fruit before, in Venezuela, and found it to be a little sweet, nothing like coffee (but then the bean gets roasted, which changes its flavour (for the better). Like the Cashew Fruit I tried before, this is based on the idea of a fruit surrounding a more recognizable and used part of the plant. The fruit also contains caffeine, similar to green tea; it also has antioxidants. This drink only contains a little of the coffee fruit juice, it’s mostly acerola and pitanga (both fruits native to Brazil). Tasting it, I don’t get coffee, it has a sweetness along with a different sourness, interesting, but not one I’d want to drink again.

O.N.E. Cashew Fruit

I’ve had cashews before, lots of times, they’re fairly common in Indian dishes, and pair well with dark chocolate, but didn’t realize that the nut has a fruit around it, let alone that you could make juice out of it, or that it would taste so good. This cashew fruit comes from Brazil. O.N.E. makes juice from interesting and different sources. The cashew fruit has many health benefits, calming the stomach, soothing the throat, promoting healthy skin, it’s a rich source of Vitamin C (more than orange), is also a source of such important nutrients as beta-carotene, B1 and B2 and B3 vitamins, calcium and iron. It’s also low in acidity. They added cane sugar and citric acid and Vitamin C along with water and cashew fruit puree, but it still tastes great, like a light mango, very refreshing and something I’d like to drink on a regular basis (though, like most fruit juices, it is high in sugar, almost like drinking a pop, but nutritionally better for you).

President's Choice Peach and Tangerine

This new 100% fruit and juice blend from President’s Choice (similar to their Pineapple Guava Passion Fruit, which I really like, and their Mango Orange) features Peach puree, and tangerine and orange juice as its only ingredients. I don’t really taste the tangerine and orange juices, the predominant flavour is peach; not that I mind, I like peach. This is a very thick juice; I normally add some carbonated mineral water to it. I think I prefer this second to the Pineapple Guava Passion Fruit.

Oasis Fruits Etc. Deliciously Yellow

This 100% fruit juice from Oasis features yellow fruits and vegetables, including pineapple, passion fruit, lemon, yellow bell pepper, with golden kiwi puree and turmeric (a natural yellow colour). There is also, like many fruit juice blends, a base of apple or grape juice. This tasted very good, though maybe a little on the sweet side (and 25 g of sugar per serving of 250 mL). This is definitely a blend, because not one flavour of the various yellow fruits and vegetables dominates.

Kiju Pomegranate Cherry

Another of the flavours from Kiju we decided to try has two juices I like, pomegranate and cherry. I say I like them, but not really together. This takes more like cherry than pomegranate, and there is the underlying apple juice flavour. This is not nearly my favourite of the Kiju products.

Rosehip Juice

I've had rosehip as a tea, as a Vitamin C, as a jelly, eaten it raw, but never have I had rosehip juice. Rosehips are the fruit of wild roses, and are high in Vitamin C; they have other health benefits, including benefiting circulation of blood, kidney, stomach and ulcers. This juice from Azerbaijan is 100% rosehip juice, with no added sugar and not from concentrate. It tastes quite interesting, a little "medicinal" in flavour. I don't know that I could drink it other than as a health benefit.

Kiju Mango Orange

I first saw these fruit juices from Kiju on Michael Smith's Chef at Home series on the Food Network, not sure if he actually used them or whether they were a product placement, but we decided to try it anyways. Like most 100% fruit juices with no sugar added, it does not have 100% of the advertised flavour; this is mostly white grape juice with mango puree and concentrated orange juice, also natural flavours. Still tastes pretty good, and Kiju's juices are Organic. They are also a Canadian company, located in Kitchener, Ontario.

Fresh Roselle

We were in this new, to us, Vietnamese/Chinese supermarket called Jian Hing, located on the south-west corner of Jane and Finch (behind the Petro Canada), they have a lot of good Asian ingredients. One thing that they have, is fresh roselle, or hibiscus, flowers! I've had them dried, and in concentrate, but never fresh. I don't know where these came from, the Caribbean or Thailand, or China.

We boiled them to make Roselle or Hibiscus or Sorrel Juice. Great! And fresher tasting. Now, I'd like to try them really fresh.

Fairy's Tonic Kombucha Uplift

I recently had the opportunity to try one of the made in Toronto kombucha drinks from Fairy's Tonic, their no-added-flavour black tea-based Digestif, which I enjoyed. Being in The Big Carrot on the Danforth the other week, I found for sale this kombucha, which is a green tea-based kombucha with lemon. It is very similar to the kombucha flavour I prefer from Wonder Drink, their Himalaya, though the Himilaya has a stronger lemon flavour and has oolong tea rather than green tea. They are very similar in price (this one was about $7 for 500 mL, but you can get it cheaper directly from the source much cheaper, see her website). I would say that this is a very good drink, the better of the two from Fairy's Tonic, and something I could drink on a regular basis.

I'm still looking for the elderflower one, but this one is pretty good.

Eisiti Chinese Herbal Drink

I like trying new things, and occasionally there are new interesting things for sale in the Chinese supermarkets. Having tried a sample of this, I thought it tasted pretty good, kind of like licorice (and I found out later, one of the ingredients is Glycyrrhizin, which comes from licorice root). The herbal drink, which has been made for many years in China, I don't know the properties or effects, and the main ingredient is Ageratum (which, in searching the 'Net, might help with summer colds).

BottleGreen Elderflower Cordial

The normal elderflower drink I go to often, and enjoy very much, it's for sale at a lot of supermarkets, is by BottleGreen in the UK. We normally drink the Pressé form; this is the Cordial, or concentrated, form. Add sparkling or still water to the cordial, and you get the Pressé. This 500 mL bottle makes 6.5 L of elderflower drink. I find the Pressé version better tasting, perhaps it's the water I have diluted it; too, I found I like it sparkling, rather than still (which tastes to me like just sugar in water; somehow the bubbles add flavour). This is definitely cheaper than the Belvoir one. BottleGreen has a wide range of flavours, only some of which are available here in Canada (for example, they have a Russet Apple and Blackberry Cordial that I definitely would like to try, being a fan of russets - they also have two more in that range, Cox's apple and Plum and William's Pear and Elderflower, both of which also sound interesting). Tasting the cordial straight, it is a more intense elderflower flavour, quite good.

Oasis Nature's Collection Red Orange Pomegranate Cranberry

Alassonde is a company with several fruit juice brand names, including Oasis, Allen's, Everfresh, Fairlee, Fruité, and Graves, you might have seen some or all of these in most grocery stores. This is a new product from Oasis, and because I like blood orange, I decided to try it. This is a fruit juice mixture, thus it has mostly apple or grape juice, along with orange, blood orange, pomegranate, elderberry and cranberry juice. The juice is opaque and a little chalky tasting, but not bad. I couldn't really discern each of the three, or any individual juice, though overall it was a pleasant drink. I might try this one again sometime.