Sparkling - 501 Reviews

I love that Sparkling Ice is taking a step back from sucralose, well at least with their Essence line. I just could not get into the dietness of it all. These new ones though have been mostly pretty great. It's just flavored seltzer water, but the flavors have been good, up until now. This isn't bad per say, but it really teeters on the “tastes like a cleaner” line of things. I feel like everyone involved in the lemon industry should file a class action lawsuit against household cleaners because they have ruined a once great fruit. I feel like the world used to embrace lemon in all its forms, but now folks are reminded of cleaning chemicals and it's a turn off. Big money could be made. Big, big money.

Once you get past the association, this isn't bad. I could do with a tad bit more lime, but I'm always going to want more of that. It's not really a flavor for me, but I wouldn't dump it down the drain.

Back to basics. I can't tell you how refreshing seltzer is after some of the crap we drink. Look, nothing we drink is literal crap or figurative crap. Everyone puts their hearts into the products they put out but come one, after 4600 reviews, we have earned the right to start calling things "crap."

This is great. It's pure simplicity. Water, bubbles and peach. I assume they have some sort of vat of peaches just stewing all their Georgia essence into some tube mechanism that sucks up the scent, injects it into water by way of science/witchcraft and then stores the vapors for someone lucky enough to drink it.

If you like seltzer, this is just seltzer. They can call it whatever fancy name they want. It's sparkling water with flavor. La Croix? Polar? The other one? Same deal, bro. Same deal. It's all great seltzer.

In a couple of weeks I'm going on tour in Mexico. Since we all know you are not supposed to drink the top water there if you are not a local I fully expect that I will get all of my refreshment from this company. If you've read Thirsty Dudes before you likely know that it took me over 30 years of my life to be able to enjoy seltzer water. It took me even longer than that to give Topo Chico a try, but once I did I kicked myself for not having it in my life already.

For those of you who are not in the know, Topo Chico is a sparkling mineral water. The minerals give the water just a hint of a flavor that makes it stand out from regular sparkling water. To add to that there is a bit of citrus in here by the way of lemon in a way that makes it interesting and not like boring restaurant water. Overall it tastes classic and classy. It's the kind of beverage that would pair perfectly with the world's greatest burritos. Oh Mexico, I can't wait to visit and hopefully I will not get stabbed while I'm there like people keep telling me I'm going to.

In an added note I just heard that Aldi bought this company, so now it will be easy to find at an affordable price throughout the US.

If I were to substitute all of the cans of seltzer water that I drink with La Croix brand, I would have to be a rich man. Perhaps that is just because the amount I drink is so obscene, but these cans are at least double the price of the 12-packs of Polar I normally purchase. Do you know what though? It's totally worth it. I love Polar, but La Croix put out the most flavorful seltzers I have ever tried. They have figured out a way for high quality fruit flavors to shine though without any sweeteners, which makes it zero calories. You could drink case after case of this stuff and not feel terrible about yourself. I bet you would have the most righteous burps too.

There is no mistaking this, it is most certainly a sparkling berry beverage. As long as you are not some sort of savage that needs your drinks to be more sugar than liquid, it is incredibly enjoyable.

Sometimes when you're a non-drinker, you still want to pretend like your fancy. You dress up, get yourself a fancy bottle of sparkling juice, get out the nice glass wear and play at being adults who are better than your current station in life. Then there are other times when you get that same bottle, dress like you always do and just take swig after swig directly from the bottle at a party. Can you guess which category I fell under? I'm not one for delusion, I'm happy with my place in life, and I most certainly love fancy drinks. This is most certainly fancy.

If Ikea is any indication, lingonberries run rampant in Sweden and they are used to flavor everything. I really wish this were true, but when I visited that country I don't think I saw anything of that flavor. It's a shame because it's a fantastic tasting fruit. Oh, you say you've never tasted lingonberry before? Well let me let you in on a secret; you know the classic red Swedish Fish candy that you love? Yep, that's lingonberry flavored. That's actually the perfect way to describe this. It tastes like someone somehow juiced a huge bag of Swedish Fish and mixed it with apple juice. The whole thing comes off not tasting like candy at all, but coming off as very natural, because you know it is an actual fruit, and not really made from chewy confections.

This is very likely the greatest sparkling juice I have ever tasted. Sure, I'd like to think I could do without the added beet sugar, but who knows maybe that would have offset the flavor balance. I do not want to upset the balance. They have it perfect.

Do you like water? Do you like having your throat itched by tiny bubbles? Are you sick of sugar? Then here you go. This is simply carbonated water and there's not much to it, because there is not supposed to be. Enjoy.

I just got married a month ago (pause for applause) and ate passion fruit for the first time. What a magical experience. What a strange, goopy fruit. It's so weird. I mean, I ate a ton of it but I don't think in a million years I could get my son to eat it. So slimy. It's like all slime and seeds. Strange that anyone would eat it to begin with but they do and it's wonderful.

This drink, sans goop, tastes just like it. I was surprised. La Croix does the flavor justice. I feel like that one is hard to nail. They might use real fruit juice or whatever "essence" is but whatever science they're doing in there, they've pulled in the right people.

I have to come clean. I have had a handful of new flavors that Sparkling Ice sent me sitting in my fridge for a little while now. Every time I would open up the drawer to choose a drink they would be staring right back at me and I haven't had it in me to taste a zero calorie sweeter tainted drink. Tonight I decided t finally give in and deal with that nonsense on my tongue and what is that? The Essence line isn't sweetened at all. They are all just seltzer water. This instantly made my night better. I expected to take a few small sips and introduce the rest of the bottle to my sink drain, but now I can sip it throughout the night and enjoy it.

This is fairly lightly flavored. It just has slight hints of citrus, which happen to be tangerine. A lot of sparkling waters, sweetened or otherwise tend to go pretty strong on the flavoring, but this is subtle. I could do with a little more, but I do like what they are going for. I also like that this doesn't taste like sucralose and my taste buds would like to express their thanks as well.

What a nice man, Craig is. He always holds the door for people, even if they're half a parking lot away. He's thoughtful. He cares. He's a caring, thoughtful man. Everyone loves Craig. One time he went to a kid's school and they didn't like him. Why? He brought in a case of melon grapefruit sparkling water. Problem is that kids do not love grapefruit. Every kid there was either crying because it was too "spicy" or they didn't like the taste of grapefruit. Craig meant well. Melon. Kids love melon. So it had grapefruit in it. It didn't have the bitterness of grapefruit, just the flavor. It's sparkling water. What did the kids expect? The kids didn't like Craig and now, Craig didn't like kids. The streak of Craig being nice to everyone had ended all because of a couple snot nosed brats. Great job, kids. You broke Craig.

One of the few good things about the seasons changing and winter being upon us is the release of the new seasonal Polar flavors. They are a nice change of pace for a limited time. As the first snow starts to fall outside my window a cranberry cider seltzer sounded like a dream. While it may not have lived up to my hopes it is still a unique flavor. I've been hitting the cranberry and lime hard lately and I was excited to mix it up. My first thought upon taking a sip was “Maybe cider and seltzer shouldn't be combined.” Then I thought, “Well maybe I'm just a cider snob because I grew up with an amazing cider mill in my home town.” I settled on “cider without sweetness is just weird. That is what feels off about this.” The more I drank the more I got used to this strangeness on my palate. The cranberry isn't as strong as it is in the cranberry lime, but it does mingle well. I wouldn't drink this all the time, but for a seasonal treat it is quite nice.

Sparkling mango water. My wife might have just found her mecca. She loves La Croix and rightfully so. I mean, it's just sparkling water but it's good stuff. Polar is more than readily available and we buy a fair amount of that. They have some cooler, experimental flavors but she's been hard into this lately.

This is an accurate mango flavor, too. They really nailed it. I'd like to know what sorcery they used to do that. Are sorcery and magic the same thing? Sorcery might involve more potions. I wouldn't say that a witch performs magic. Stirring cauldrons is sorcery. Wizards perform sorcery. Is magic just another word for "illusions?"



The end.

It's easy to be nostalgic for other eras in human history. There were a lot of great things that happened and through forgetfulness things seemed like they were perfect. I often find myself wishing I was living in various decades from the past century when life seemed great and the internet hadn't ruined everything. At this point pretty much all of the “secret” spots my friends and I knew about and enjoyed when we were younger have been posted all over the internet and they have either been closed off, or there are now far too many people there for it to have that special allure anymore. Also, don't get me started on how self-important people are now. So I think back to times that I'd like to think were simpler. Then I remember that racism, sexism, homophobia and the like ran rampant during a lot of those times and things weren't perfect then either. I can say if this truly is a facsimile of vintage and what beverages were like in another era I think I could look past the horribleness and just bliss out, can after can.

Somehow seltzer has become a cool thing in our current times. I never saw that coming. I found my way to it because I was looking to lower my sugar intake, but still wanted bubbly drinks and diet soda is just awful. I don't know if that's the route most people take or if it's just a hot item now so they are flocking to it. I will say that I will reap the rewards because the flavors available have expanded greatly.

If you know me, you probably know that I love all things cucumber flavored. I think I may have even been attracted to my girlfriend in high school because she used cucumber melon lotion that was all the rage back then. It's delicious and it's refreshing. I feel like it sounds like I'm building this up for a letdown, but that is not the case. This is wonderful and it's what I wanted out of it. It tastes mostly like cucumber with a faint melon flavor. It's refreshing with no calories. This is guilt free enjoyment here and I could drink a case in a day without blinking an eye, although I would have to make a lot of trips to the bathroom. Everyone who's on a seltzer kick buy this. I'm afraid I may be the only one who will buy it and they will stop production and then I will go in a deep depression and live alone with my riches. When I die my final words won't be about a sled, but about a beverage I truly loved.

Back from a long time off on a thing called a "honeymoon" but I'm back and what do I start off with? A sparkling pomegranate joint. It's good, too. I didn't get a lot of apple but the pomegranate was nice and honest and sparkly. It wasn't too sweet and, according to the promises of the company, all that is in this lil' bottle is sweetening this is the fruit juice itself. There are some natural colors from fruit and vegetable and some preservatives but it's good. I would give this to a child. I think that's pretty telling. Sure, I gave my 9 month old half a sugar cookie which he promptly dropped half on the sidewalk and some mini marshmallows yesterday but he was being good and good kids deserve little treats. I might not be the world's best dad but my kids would like me because I gave them sweet treats.

This, this was a pleasant surprise. I've been sitting on it awhile and I thought it was a boring old lemon soda. You know, the kind that only vaguely tastes like lemon and mainly tastes like sugar. At best I was hoping it would taste like a carbonated lemonade, since it's 4% real lemon juice. It was none of those things. Instead what I got was a boring seltzer water with lemon juice in it, which as it turns out isn't all that boring and rather tasty.

I find lemon water unnecessary. I'm the jerk that requests no lemon in my water when I go out to eat. I prefer plain old water. I love water; I don't need to spice it up with a fruit that has generally been ruined by household cleaners. Something about this is quite nice though. It thankfully doesn't taste like something I used to polish my furniture. It tastes like go ordered a plain seltzer and then instead of squeezing a single slice of lemon that was cut four hours ago into it, you grabbed one of those squeeze bottles that looks like the fruit and pressed it for longer than you are recommended to. Sometimes I look back on what I've been drinking lately and I don't recognize that man reflected in my glass anymore.

So here we are, two for five with Sotea. Most of these flavors don't really work. Carbonating tea is always a crapshoot, and more likely than not turns out less than stellar. The same thing can be said for putting mint in drinks. I don't really want my drink to taste like I just brushed my teeth or I'm chewing gum while drinking it. Somehow this Mojito Mist beat both of those odds and is actually pretty darn good. It launches past acceptable into really enjoyable territory.

While I've never had a real mojito, every virgin version of one that I have drunk has been great. There is something about lime that counteracts the weirdness of mint and makes it acceptable for it to exist in beverage form. Neither are overly strong and blend together into a new uber flavor. The tea in this tastes a little weird, but it works with the lime and the mint. This is one unusual soda, but I find myself with an empty bottle wishing that there was more. That doesn't happen often these days.

Do you identify with the majority of Americans who ingest far too much sugar, but find it hard to give up soda pop? Do you just crave the bubbles, but seltzer doesn't taste right to you? At the same time do you think that artificial sweeteners are just the worst? I was once where you are friend. I wanted out of the sugar game, but I had my vices. For me the change came in the form of Polar vanilla seltzer. It bridged a gap for me and led me down a path where I drink an abundance of seltzer, to a point where I had to look it up if it was bad for me. I understand that this might not be the gateway beverage for everyone, but I have good news. Izze is here to hold your hand while you eliminate a lot of sugar from your diet, at least of the soda variety. Their Sparkling Water line is essentially seltzer water with 2g of sugar added. I know what you're thinking; 2g is not a lot when a can of Coke has 39g. The thing is that it's just enough to give a faint hint of sweetness and overpower the weirdness of seltzer and help you acclimate yourself to it.

This actually tastes sweet to me. I don't know if it's because I don't drink much sugar these days, or if it would taste like that to anyone. Would Coke taste sweet enough with only 1/3 of the sugar they use? I would really like to taste Coke with different levels of sugar and see where it really needs to fall. I feel like the current amount it a bit extreme. Whatever the case may be with that, I think there is enough sugar in here for anyone to enjoy. Then once their body gets used to the lower sugar content they can ween off of it. I know that's probably not the Izze plan, as they need to maintain sales, but it's probably for the betterment of our countries health. Hell, people could just stay with these instead of normal sodas and I bet the effects would be astounding.

Did I mention at some point in my tirade that it also tastes great? I don't really get much watermelon, but it has a nice berry flavor. It's light, due to the lack of sugar, but it's just where I want it to be. Nothing is disguising it and that is how I like things. Low sugar, great taste. It's like a 90's beer ad.

If your company makes an apple soda, it's more than likely that you are doing it all wrong. Chances are you have loaded it with sugar, or even worse, tried to make it sour apple. You needn't bother my friends. There are only two ingredients needed for an apple soda and they are apple juice and sparkling water. I mean you could probably directly carbonate the juice and it would turn out just as good. The people at Apple Rush are smart folks. They know that sometimes people crave carbonation, but at the same time they don't need loads of added sugar (there are 36g of sugar in this bottle, but it's all from the fruit directly).

This is fantastic. It tastes like high quality apple juice with bubbles in it. Why would anyone need anything else out of an apple soda? I mean sure maybe you want to throw some other fruit in there, or perhaps some spices, but if you're looking for straight up apple pop, look no further. I'm going to come close to guaranteeing that you won't find a company who does it better.

Spindrift has been good to me. For the past five years I have enjoyed their sparkling beverages with no added sugar. At first they proved to me that soda can exist in a delicious way without being full of sweetener. Then they were a gateway for me to start enjoying seltzer, which I drink constantly now. I thank them for helping keep me on a healthy track. I didn't always have their products available to me in Buffalo, but because of them I found other companies that filled the void. I cut a ton of soda out of my diet, and transitioned to drinking a lot of unsweetened iced tea.

Now it's summer and it's the most humid it's ever been in Buffalo (not an exaggeration, records have been broken). The heat is nearly unbearable, but I have my beverages to help me get through it, which I promptly sweat out.

I love watermelon, but I never get it for some reason. It's probably due to laziness, or maybe it's because eating it outside of a picnic/beach type scenario seems off. I was excited for this drink. It's in their sparkling water line and not the seltzer one because there is juice added to the sparkling water and that leads to a whopping 3g of sugar. This is the first time Spindrift has really left me wanting. Overall this would be great, except for one thing. The watermelon tastes more like the rind than it does the red mushy fruit part. I don't know if they just ground up the whole melon, but it's not really what I'm looking for when I think of watermelon. It's not horrible, but I wanted something different that they did not deliver. Oh well, one misstep does not ruin a company for me and I will continue to enjoy their other products.

Sparkles with a lil' bit of citrus. That's it and that's all, friends. This is the simplest seltzer that money can buy. It's got a strong lemon flavor and tastes like seltzer. You can call me an idiot for that review if you aren't doing that already but it's true. It's good in its simplicity and that will win the race if you ask me. They've got more ambitious flavors so this is the gateway drug, if you will, to more dynamic and interesting flavors. Start with the lemon wedge, go to the watermelon and end with the cilantro lime. It's a trip worth taking.

Whenever someone offers me a fruit flavored soda that I have never tried before this is what I secretly hope it will be like. I'm in my late 30's and I have no need for sparkly sugar water anymore. If I drank that stuff the way I used to I would be way overweight and feel like garbage all of the time. This though, this is the dream. This is just sparkling juice with no sugar added. The base is very much apple juice, which makes me wish it was autumn, well that and I'm sick of these obscenely humid 90+ degree days. So they start off with a sparkling apple juice, which would be great on its own, then they added a bunch of straight up blueberry juice, and sent the thing through the roof. When was the last time you had a blueberry beverage that actually tastes like you had a mouth full of berries instead of a mouthful of dumb candy? Like dry land (and dry air) delicious fruit sodas are not a myth. They can be found and are produced in Florida of all places. Oh man, I just imagined how humid it must be down there right now. How are there not mass suicides? My thoughts go out to you denizens of the south.