Review: Cucumber Mint

Alova’s Cucumber Mint variety is a very pleasant tasting sugar-sweetened carbonated soft drink. Forgetting about the aloe for a minute, the taste of this product is very well-executed, with a moderate amount of sweetness behind the very pleasant and accurate tasting cucumber and mint flavorings. That said, it’s hard to really pinpoint where aloe comes into play with this product. There’s certainly no obvious taste, so ultimately consumers have to trust that there’s some “benefit” to this product that they can’t detect. Still, if the company can sell the consumer on flavor, looks, and the modest 70 calories per bottle, it just might work. On the outside, the product uses an 11.16 oz. glass bottle that has a slight blue-green tint to it. The Alova brand is light and clean, just like the drink, with a vibrant cucumber slice and mint leaf over the top of the logo. The name -- and the small word “aloe” -- are the only things reinforcing the aloe. It’s certainly a different approach than many of the other aloe brands that incorporate the ingredient into their branding. Overall, Alova Cucumber Mint is a very enjoyable CSD, but it’s hard to really think about it as an aloe drink.