Trader Joe's Freeze Dried Red Seedless Grape Slices

These are a trip to eat. Sliced grapes--but they crunch when you bite them and disintegrate into grape-flavored powder. It kind of plays with your brain, because the texture is so foreign to what your whole life's experience tells you to expect from a grape.

They're extremely sweet. Which makes sense--because grapes are almost all water and sugar, so when you take away the water, guess what's left?


Will I buy it again? 

No. But I strongly recommend trying it once just for the new experience of it.

Trader Joe's Peel Away Fruit Leather Buttons

OK, "fruit leather buttons" is definitely a thing I had never heard of or imagined before spotting this trio on the new-products shelf at the Asheville TJ's.

Here's what you get:

I'm not sure why they chose to package these in a manner awkwardly reminiscent of strips of cheap condoms, but nobody asked me.

Once you get past that, you have thin, chewy disks of fruit leather. Other than the unusual shape, the substance is like any other fruit leather.

I liked both the plain mango and the mango-strawberry. But the mango-grape was off; there was surprisingly little grape flavor, and what there was seemed to clash with the mango.


Will I buy it again? 

No. On the rare occasions that I feel like getting something in this general category, it would be one of TJ's several flavors of dried fruit bars. I have a few in my cupboard right now.

Trader Joe's Organic Super Fruit Fruit Spread

This is the best jam/jelly/preserves/spread I've ever had from Trader Joe's, and one of the best I've ever had from any source. Though the cherry is the most prominent, three of the four main fruit ingredients are readily identifiable (I haven't been able to make out the pomegranate component), which is not usually the case when these things get blended. It uses fruit juice concentrates as sweeteners, not sucrose. It's sweet, of course, but it doesn't taste sweetened, even though it is.


Will I buy it again? 

Definitely. I'm even adding it to my Top Ten list.

Trader Joe's Green Seedless Grapes

I usually don't review produce items here, for fairly obvious reasons. I'm making an exception here because I think other people might be curious about this item on the basis of how it looks. Specifically, though this may not be obvious from the photo above, these grapes are HUGE--the biggest I've ever seen.

My general life experience is that fruits that are unusually large are sadly lacking in flavor. However, there have been some exceptions. Some fruits from Harry & David, for instance, are both gargantuan and delicious. So I wondered if perhaps these green grapes might be among the exceptions.

They are not. At least this bunch was seriously lacking in taste. There's a bit of fun popping such a large grape into one's mouth, but any pleasure ends there.


Will I buy it again? 

No. Fool me once, etc.

Trader Joe's Organic Concord Grape Juice

I passed this by many, many times in favor of juices that sounded more interesting. It's grape juice, yeah, I get it. BORING!

I was alerted to the wrongness of this decision by a post by STG at the "Trader Joe's 365" blog. And she's right--this is one of the hidden, under-heralded juice finds at TJ's.

The list of ingredients is exactly one item long: Organic Concord grapes. It has been our experience that when TJ's juices have a single ingredient, they are usually near perfection in how juices should be. This continues that trend. It's intense and sweet, without ever tasting like it's been adulterated with added sweeteners or other dreck.

STG was right about the dribbling down the side of the bottle, though. That's annoying and kind of baffling, but a trivial flaw in an otherwise superb product.


Will I buy it again? 

Eagerly.

Nina's View

Sip 1: OMG CONCORD GRAPE BLAST IN MY MOUTH.

This juice tastes exactly like concord grapes, which should come as no surprise and yet it does. I ate those grapes as a child and this juice is the pure essence of that. Nice.

Sip 2: Yep, that's some grape juice, alright.

The thrill is already starting to fade.

Sip 3 and henceforth:

Grape juice, meh. It's okay, but for me it gets old pretty quickly.

Trader Joe's Certified Organic Pasteurized White Grape Juice

I think this is another commodity item, in that I would never be able to distinguish one brand of white grape juice from another. As far as I can tell, it's exactly like every other bottle of white grape juice I've ever had. I have not done comparison shopping, but this was $3.99 for 64 ounces--probably a little more than a non-organic competitor would cost.

Will I buy it again? 

It's the kind of thing that I buy rarely--maybe every few years. So I guess the answer is yes, though not anytime soon.