A semifinalist in the recently held New Beverage Showdown 5 at BevNET Live Summer '13, Minta is a new line of mint-flavored sodas. The brand comes in original and diet varieties, each of which are packaged in a proprietary 12 oz. bottle. While the drinks could use some minor tweaks in formulation, Minta has done a great job overall.
There are a number of energy drink companies that have incorporated coconut water into their products, but, generally speaking, it is an ingredient that often gets overpowered and lost among stronger flavors. Fortunately, that’s far from the case with this Hiball Energy's new Coconut Water variety. Instead, the beverage tastes, first and foremost, like a coconut water drink.
Yes, the market has -- seemingly overnight -- become flooded with new cold-pressed, high pressure processed juice brands. Most, if not all, utilize extremely high quality and/or organic ingredients, but does that mean the products taste good? Look good? Not necessarily, but in the in case of South Florida-based OnJuice, the company has done an excellent job with the formulation and packaging of its juice blends.
While there’s probably some way to turn Chasing Rabbits into a good-looking brand, it currently lacks any emotion that a consumer might connect to. Both the branding and the execution of the design leave something to be desired, starting with the seemingly random name that is “Chasing Rabbits.”
BuchuLife is a sparkling water that is enhanced with buchu oil, and ingredient that is positioned as having anti-inflammatory benefits. Unfortunately, the product is, at least in liquid form, very difficult to consume. Overall, this variety in this review -- as well as the rest of the BuchuLife sparkling water flavors -- needs serious improvement.
Packaged in the Philippines, Cocozia is a new USDA Organic coconut water that comes in an 11 oz. Tetra Pak container. While being organic and not-from-concentrate will help the brand gain some consumer following, we feel as though this product is going to have to do a lot more to make it in the competitive coconut water space.
Back from the dead, Oogave, which markets a line of organic sodas, has introduced LOCA, a new brand of 10-calorie soft drinks. The products, which are sweetened with a stevia…
Alley Oop is new citrus-flavored sports drink from Youthtopia Beverages. Unfortunately, the product, which is made with a blend of natural and artificial sweeteners, is anything but a slam dunk.
Heart of Tea recently launched two new varieties -- Lemon and "Victorian," a sweet black tea -- to its line of all-natural, ready to drink bottled teas. While the company has done well to create two great-tasting products, there are a couple hiccups with the each tea, one in terms of formulation and the other in its packaging.
Earlier this year, Zico introduced a reformulated version of its Latte variety, and our review team decided to take a second look at the flavor. Was there a significant improvement in taste? Read on...
Yes, hemp is growing in use as an ingredient in the natural channel, however, the notorious seven-pointed leaf is rarely used in the branding of successful products. When an image of the leaf is used, there's really only a novelty buyer out there; it amounts to very low volume target market. And that's the biggest problem with Cannbis Energy.
Sambazon's Purifying Cleanse is three-day juice cleanse program that consists of three organic superfood blends each packaged in a 1 L Tetra Pak. Unlike many other juice cleanse beverages coming onto the market, the new products are not high pressure processed. Nevertheless, Sambazon has created an affordable and well-formulated program that could find significant mainstream appeal.
Billed as an “organic beet performance supplement,” Red Ace is -- as you’ve probably guessed by now -- made with beet juice concentrate. Packaged in a 2 oz. glass bottle, the product contains added guayusa, water, lemon juice and other flavors. All in all, we're quite impressed with the formulation, flavor and branding.
Watermelon and aloe are just about as perfect of a flavor pairing as there is, so it’s no surprise that ALO Comfort tastes as good as it does. Overall, it’s one that definitely lives up to the standard set by the other flavors.
