Friday, October 28, 2016

Trader Joe's Sparkling Clementine Flavored Juice Beverage



As far as I can tell. Trader Joe's has five different flavors in this product line: applepomegranate, blueberry, clementine, and cranberry. The last of those is the only one we haven't tried yet.

This was an interesting one, because I've never even heard of a clementine-flavored drink before. I hid the label from Nina and had her try to guess what the featured fruit was, accounting for the fact that there is more grape juice than the mystery juice. She started with pineapple, and cycled through more than a dozen other fruit names, suggesting some as possible, confidently rejecting others as impossible. But even when I narrowed down the range of options to citrus fruits, she couldn't come up with clementine. I wouldn't have been able to, either.

All of which is to say that this concoction would be well served to have more clementine, less grape. The grape juice makes it too sweet, and overly disguises the clementine flavor. I didn't dislike it, but I was disappointed in it. If you're going to manufacture a fruity beverage based on a fruit as uncommon as clementine, well then by gum you ought to make it distinctly clementine, whereas this is just sweet and vaguely, generically fruity.

Blueberry remains the best of the bunch, and the one you should seek out to try.

In praise of this entire line of products, however, I must compliment the degree of bubbliness. I think they have that just right. It's a little more than typical seltzer-water kinds of drinks, but less than sodas.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

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