All Natural Soda - 8 Reviews

This is the least dramatic Joia I have had. Is it still good? Yes. Is it as good? No. I enjoy the oddities that come from these guys. This one still has nutmeg and jasmine, which, for all intents and purposes, are strange ingredients. What does it do? It makes for some of the best sparkling orange juice I've ever had. I would amp it up, Joia. That's what you do. Ramp it up. Double the nutmeg. I want this to taste like a Christmas orange juice drank inside of a floral wonderland. This is just a great orange juice with fizzles. Yeah. Fizzles. I do what I want. This is great just not as great as I wanted it to be. Still got a four out of five. Even when they fail they win.

I think that the chronology of it happens like this:

1. Thirsty Dudes is created.


2. Some dudes read the reviews and decide they know the key to our hearts.


3. Joia is created solely to please us.


4. We find Joia drinks and review them all highly.

All of these drinks are wonderfully handcrafted and include a fantastic blend of ingredients that no other companies let happen. Allspice in a drink? That's crazy. Well, lame drink companies, it's not crazy. It's fantastic. Even if it is crazy, it's done with a logical base and really delivers. You get a little ginger, more flavor that spice, but it's there. The apricot really blasts through but the allspice hangs out with you like the faithful friend. Beginning to end the drink keeps on delivering.

Joia, we know that you used us as a cheat sheet to make "the perfect drinks" but we don't care. Keep up the good work. If this was math class, we would lean over and let you cheat off our paper and sorry about our poor penmanship. If all else fails, answer "C."

Joia soda, we meet again! Your complicated looking flavors always intrigue, and never disappoint me. I have never met a grapefruit soda I haven't liked, and this is no exception. I can't really distinguish the chamomile or cardamom in this, but the grapefruit is strong and delicious. While other grapefruit sodas have a decent amount of grapefruit flavor, this actually tastes just like taking a bite out of a grapefruit. I've already finished the bottle, but my mouth is still watering from how delicious it was.

I complain about this stuff all the time, a company delivers, and I complain. Therefore, I am sorry in advance. This drink, lemon sting, is just too much. It's a lot of lemon, and I like lemon. It's also a lot of honey, and I like honey. The two together tastes a bit too much like I should be drinking this with a sore throat.

I give this company full appreciation. I really do. Also, for adding rosemary in this drink saved you from a dreaded "2" rating. There is nothing in this drink, and for what it is it's great. What it is is reminiscent of long nights spent with a runny nose, coughing, and trying to talk as little as possible while trying to achieve 100% completion in whatever video game you're playing. I'm currently playing Just Cause 2 and if I have to have a sore throat and need lozenges for the duration of time it takes me to get 100% I might cut my throat clean off.

“Expect the best. Accept the worst” When Blake Schwarzenbach wrote those lyrics I can only assume he wasn't talking about this soda, but it's fitting. In my world there are few sodas that sound better than a ginger drink that is sweetened with honey. I was thinking a honey flavored ginger beer, and I was hoping for one heck of a burn to it. As it turns out this isn't a ginger beer at all. In fact it doesn't taste like any soda that I've ever had before. That could be a good thing, except that it tastes exactly like honey cough drops; Ludens to be more specific. There is a ginger flavor, but the honey overpowers it and the combo, with a little coriander mixed in gives it a definite cough drop taste. Did you know that coriander is cilantro? That kind of blows my mind.

At first I didn't like this at all really. I was turned off thinking that I was drinking cough drops. I kept sipping on the bottle though, and now that I'm done, I have to say that I don't hate it. It's not something that I would want all of the time, but I think the more you drink it, the more acclimated you become and the more you enjoy it.

Our friends Dave and Gabby brought this back from a trip to Maine. Many thanks to them. After finishing this off, I'm very interested in trying Green Bee's other flavors.

I am about to embark on an epic journey across the entire country. After 10 months living in Buffalo, I've decided to pack up and move back to Portland, OR. I would like to say it's because of the crappy season the Bills had, or that I need to take one for the team and review all the Hot Lips soda flavors and the only way to do that would be to move back out west. In reality, I just miss Portland. Plus my best friend (the one who helped name this very website you are reading) lives there and I miss her dearly.

I decided to review this soda as my last drink in Buffalo. I love all three ingredients and after the stellar reviews we've been giving Joia, I was pretty sure this was going to be a homerun. The pineapple/coconut mixture is the most prominent, but sadly the nutmeg is nowhere to be found. I would have settled for a subtle nutmeg aftertaste, but it is literally on the back of a milk carton. Just like the last Joia soda I had, the last ingredient was the one I was most excited for. But both times, I was let down.

A list of some things that are interesting:
- A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
- A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 6 years.
- Butterflies taste with their feet.
- It is possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.
- The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.;
- The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
- If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall.
- Hippo milk is pink.
- If you rearrange the letters in Vin Diesel it reveals his credo: "I End Lives."
- Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team his sophomore year.

More interesting than all of those is the taste of this drink. It tastes like winter holidays and tropical locations at the same time. I can only assume that children in the Caribbean leave bottles of this out for Santa on Xmas Eve. Somehow this tastes nothing like I expected it to, yet as an afterthought it tastes exactly like it should. I anticipated a heavy clove flavor, but in fact in this drink lime reigns supreme. The hibiscus rounds out the lime so it's not very tart and it makes it taste fancy. If it were just those two things I'm pretty sure I would love this drink. When you factor in just the faintest hint of clove it puts it through the roof. The clove is the secret to the craziness of this drink. There is nothing harsh about it, but it's there and it's exotic. It's cold here in Buffalo, but while I'm drinking this I'm lounging on a beach with the sun beating down on me and I have a plate of freshly cut mango on the table next to me. Life is good.

I turned 30 one hour ago. Most people fear turning 30, but I have actually been excited for it. It's probably because I have a lot of friends who are over 30 (including our very own Jason Draper) and they are still awesome.

I decided to break out a fancy soda for my first soda of my 30's. I've been waiting to try this one for a while, and it was well worth the wait. The blackberry is the first taste that hits your tongue, and it tastes like the juice that sits in your mouth after you just ate you're 20th blackberry in a row. A tangy pomegranate comes next, but it doesn't stick around long.

The only disappointing thing about this is the ginger, or should I say lack of ginger. It's what I was most excited about and it's barely there. I wanted it to have a deep burn in the aftertaste, but it's so subtle it's barely there. It's still a great soda. I just wish the ginger had more kick to it.