BEVNET.COM'S BEST OF 2005 -- BEST BEVERAGES

BEVNET'S BEST OF 2005

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regarding this article,
please contact
John Craven
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or 617-715-9630

HOW WE PICKED THE BEST OF 2005
How do we pick the year’s best beverages? We drink a lot. But we also look at a lot of packaging, examine the market, and, most importantly, elicit nominations from our readers. Hundreds of new ready-to-drink beverages hit the market last year; that would have made picking the best from just one category an apple-to-orange – make that an Apple Beer to Orangina – comparison. Fortunately, once we picked the categories, products really started to stand out, particularly as the nominations started rolling in. While the competition was stiff, the winners all feature the kind of long-term vision of beverage excellence valued by BevNET and Beverage Spectrum. Some of these brands advertise with us; some don’t. Regardless, no one got consideration they didn’t merit. Some of the beverages we picked are parts of mega-successful companies. Others are like the independent movies of the beverage world. What’s the one thing tying them all together? That they are The Best.

BEST OVERALL
vitaminwater perform
This drink signaled a direct shot across the bow of the good ship Gatorade, which glaceau has been subtly circling for the past two years with a broad suite of functional beverages. perform is a tasty, electrolyte-filled sports drink alternative that echoes Gatorade’s initial product, Lemon-Lime, but beats it hands down in flavor, calorie count, attractiveness of packaging, sweetener quality and overall appeal. That’s not to say that perform, let alone any other sports drink, can ever topple Gatorade; the name is synonymous with the sports drink category.

But perform does signal the opening salvo in the fight to absorb the sports drink category entirely into that of functional beverages. For years, Gatorade has been on top because sports drinks were the only ones that fulfilled their core functional purpose of performance rehydration. Now, glaceau is effectively marketing drinks that purport to fulfill a broad array of functions. Whether or not they actually do so is beside the point; it was for Gatorade, too, which popularized fitness rehydration for athletes who, in most cases, would have done just as well drinking water. With perform, vitaminwater is adding fitness rehydration to an already bulging portfolio of promise. Gatorade might stay the top selling sports drink, but will it be the bestselling performance drink? glaceau is forcing it to consider that question, and fast.
glacéau; Web: http://www.drinkbetterwater.com Tel: 800-746-0087

BEST ENERGY DRINK
Monster Khaos

Behold the power of the energy juice! With Khaos, Monster energy took a brave step into the world of the living, a world in which decisions about which energy drink to consume will actually be made according to their taste. And in that world, Khaos comes out way ahead of any other broadly distributed energy drink, because of its almost nectar-like blend of juices that mask not just the energy drink components, but those of the calorie-reducing sucralose that’s been added into the mix. Wrapped in a bold package, this is a bold experiment of a drink that could succeed on many levels: as a morning pick-me-up, an afternoon beverage or a great mixer for an evening in the clubs.
Hansen Natural Corporation; http://www.monsterenergy.com; tel: 866-322-4466

BEST CARBONATED SOFT DRINK
Fizzy Lizzy Passionfruit

With this drink, Fizzy Lizzy found the perfect soda that is trapped in every piece of fruit. Sweet and slightly exotic, perfectly carbonated, this is a crisp beverage contained in a classy package. We know that Fizzy Lizzy uses white grape juice as a sweetener. We also know that this product doesn’t taste like white grape juice. What it tastes like is the promise of every luscious-looking fruit-flavored soda advertisement – delivered by a juice drink with a shot of seltzer in it.
Fizzy Lizzy LLC; http://www.fizzylizzy.com; tel: 212-966-3232

BEST NON-CARBONATED BEVERAGE
Adina World Beat Beverages

Ever since the glory days of Nantucket Nectars, Sobe, and Snapple, we’ve lacked compelling ready-to-drink juice products, until now. Tiny Adina World Beat Beverages, with its four hibiscus-based juice cocktails, manages to combine traditional flavors like mint, lime, lemon, berry, and pineapple into four original, modern tastes. With a unique new age mission reliant on all-natural ingredients and fair trade farming arrangements, as well as bright, colorful, folksy labels, this product, if it survives its growing pains, could soon be in the hands of a lot of consumers.
Adina for Life, Inc.; http://www.adinaworld.com; tel: 415-285-9300

BEST TEA (READY TO DRINK)
Honest Tea Pearfect White Tea

Combining a level of sweetness that approaches the mainstream with hot natural consumer-type ingredients like white tea and organic cane sugar, with Pearfect White, Honest Tea is taking its best shot at bringing the Whole Foods and 7-Eleven crowds together. There’s lots of appeal here.
Honest Tea; http://www.honesttea.com; tel: 301-652-355

BEST PACKAGING
No-Cal Soda

At a time when diet sodas try to act like almost-as-good versions of their mainstream predecessors, No-Cal owns up to its own identity, and proudly. As an all-diet line, No-Cal combines vibrant, clean, retro-graphics into a smart offering that doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t. With a memorable label character representing each of its four introductory flavors – all of which are excellent, which doesn’t hurt, by the way – No-Cal wraps modern artificial sweeteners within an honest, stylish package.
Inov8 Beverage Company, LLC; http://www.no-calsoda.com; tel: 914-925-9100

BEST RELAUNCH
Airforce Nutrisoda

A lot more people are joining the Airforce now that its marketing strategy has been retooled to get them to notice it. Harnessing the mysterious health properties seemingly held within the Red Bull “slim can” to the functional labeling system (“Flex,” “Immune,” “Slenderize,” “Calm”) of vitaminwater, but making it without sugar or many calories, Nutrisoda is no longer the drink you have before you get on an airplane to ward off disease; now it’s the mysterious can you find in your minibar or the luxurious spa treat you see in the hands of a skinny model. A masterful job of rebranding. “TaB Energy” indeed – we’ll take a Nutrisoda any day.
Ardea Beverage Company; http://www.nutrisoda.com; tel: 952-746-5797

STRANGEST PRODUCT
Gorilla Juice

We just can’t stop drinking the stuff. It’s got this “cloud,” of vitamins and herbs and weird chemical elements in it, you see? It’s an energy drink, but it comes in a bottle, and it doesn’t have any calories, but it’s still really tasty, just so long as it’s cold and it’s not your fourth one of the day – a line we’ve crossed more times than we care to count. Move over, turkey and gravy or salmon pate soda. A big gorilla is coming this way, and boy, is he ever hyper….
Gorilla Juice, Inc; http://www.gorillajuice.com; tel: 484-802-5408