Trader Joe's Low Calorie Cranberry Juice Cocktail

Cranberry juice, all by itself, is pretty stern stuff. The tartness is more than most people like. So juice manufacturers rarely sell it straight; they make it into cran-apple, cran-grape, cran-raspberry, and other similar blends. Or, less overtly, they quietly mix in some blend of sugar or apple or grape juice as sweeteners, and sell it as "cranberry juice cocktail."

Trader Joe's here has an interesting twist on the latter formula. They've taken cranberry juice (from concentrate, reconstituted with water), and added fructose (the principal form of sugar found in most fruits) and stevia.

The result produces a somewhat unusual and unexpected mix of experiences. The cranberry flavor seems both full and natural. But it lacks almost all of the tartness usually expected with straight cranberry juice. The sweeteners have been added to a level that they dampen the tartness almost into oblivion, yet don't make the result taste flagrantly sweetened.

Part of the dampening effect is probably due to nothing more complicated than dilution. The label says that this blend is 34% juice. I don't think that means that the cranberry juice concentrate has been reconstituted with roughly 2:1 water. I think it means that nearly two-thirds of the contents is water above and beyond what was needed to reconstitute the concentrate.

I found the overall result a bit disconcerting and distracting. When I'm drinking a more typical cranberry blend, I understand that the cranberry tartness has been eradicated by either the sugar or the other fruit juices, so it makes sense. But here, it tastes like only cranberries, yet without the expected tartness AND without the obvious sugar to explain its absence. It's kind of as if you bit into a lemon, and found all the expected lemon flavor, but it was somehow magically not sour. Not unpleasant, but unfamiliar--maybe even disorienting.

I've finished off this large bottle of the stuff, and still remain kind of conflicted about it. It's nice to have cranberry juice all by itself instead of a cran-X blend, without having it sugared up to within an inch of its life. But at the same time, it felt like, I dunno, sort of cheating somehow, like something was missing--specifically the tartness. Without it, cranberry juice feels incomplete. I guess I'm an oddball in that I kind of like the put-hair-on-your-chest tartness of straight-up cranberry. If I'm going to have cranberry juice unmixed with some other fruit juice, well then, give it to me pure, raw, strong, and bold. I can handle it.

Will I buy it again? 

I'm not sure.

Nina's View

This is a perfectly good cranberry-ish juice. Bob's right, it is less tart that your typical cranberry juice cocktail. But it's also substantially less sweet and has a lower calorie load. To me, this is an acceptable trade-off. I consider this quite drinkable as is, but less useful as a mixer.