Star Nectar

Product Type:Juice: Juice Drink; Container: 12 oz Glass
BevNET Review: Star Nectar’s Black Currant and Wild Cherry was designed for the astrological sign of Scorpio. It utilizes a 10 percent juice blend of sour cherry juice and black currant juice along with natural flavors, sugar, stevia, and a proprietary functional blend. From a taste perspective, the product tastes like black cherry juice with a lingering stevia aftertaste. In that sense, it’s not overly complex and, assuming you like cherry juice and don’t mind stevia, it’s fairly pleasant to drink. However, they’ve chosen to market this at Scorpios, which will have an unknown effect (will Leos who like cherry juice go somewhere else?). The functional blend includes yerba mate, tyrosine, galangal extract, damiana leaf, and yumberry -- nothing out of the ordinary to really call it a “Scorpio blend” as they do. Packaging is a 12 oz. glass bottle with a metallic label, which, aside from the cluttered content that’s on it, looks like something that is a work in progress. Overall, it’s a decent tasting product, but we think there would be bigger potential if they could not limit the flavor’s audience to specific astrological signs. Reviewed on: 9/14/2011

Product Type:Juice: Juice Drink; Container: 12 oz Glass
BevNET Review: Despite saying “Coconut and Pineapple Juices” on the front label, this product actually has zero percent juice (we’re pretty sure that this isn’t a legal way to label it, but that’s their problem). In any event the drink has a pina colada flavor, which is drinkable, but nothing that we’d go out of our way for. The product uses a blend of sugar and stevia, which gives it a moderate level of sweetness but doesn’t fully hide the stevia aftertaste. The purpose of the drink, which is to pair astrological signs (in this case Cancer) with functional ingredients and flavorings, seems a bit ambitious to us. And we must say, having a proprietary “Cancer Blend” is something that we have a hard time taking seriously. Visually, there’s some good stuff here (we like the star logo and the type treatment on Star Nectar), but there’s way too much clutter on the product. Ultimately, this company needs to consider that a beverage like this is going to be consumed for flavor and refreshment over any functional claims. That’s a place where this product definitely needs to improve -- the rest of it is really moot. Reviewed on: 9/14/2011