I tried this blackberry juice for the first time at my hotel in Guayaquil, Ecuador. In Spanish it’s called Jugo de Mora. It’s maroon or magenta in color, and sweet, not bitter or sour at all. I’m not sure that it had such a strong blackberry flavor though. It tasted a bit like it had pineapple juice in it as well. It also had slight flavors of strawberry and raspberry. Blackberry juice is very refreshing and went well with my breakfast.
This Black Currant Juice drink comes from Connecticut, where I picked it up in a local grocery store. It’s a dark juice, and very strong smell, a lot like concord grape, and similar almost to wine. The taste is very much like a dark purple grape juice. There are slight tannins, but overall it’s a very smooth drink.
It only has 3 ingredients: water, black currant juice (from concentrate), and fructose. But it’s only 22% juice. How can that be? I’m not sure, maybe that means it’s only 22% concentrate, with the water as the majority of the other 78%. If you know how they calculate the percentage of juice, please leave a comment. Regardless, this leads me to imagine that straight-up black currant juice is probably either bitter or sour – which is why cranberry juice is usually sold as a juice blend. The water and sugar really easily cut that though if it’s the case, because it’s actually very good.
Black currant is a small black fruit very high in antioxidants and vitamins, including Vitamin C. It has four times the Vitamin C of oranges, and twice as many antioxidants as blueberries. I think that qualifies it as a superfruit. It comes from Europe, and is working on making a comeback in the United States where it was banned in the past because of a threat to the logging industry. It is still banned in some states.
The black currant juice I tried was made by Currant Affair. You can visit their website at www.ConnecticutCurrant.com
This bottle looks like a kid’s drink, with a cartoon bear hugging a giant ear of corn, but I think it may be marketed toward adults as a beauty drink because of the nutrients.
This corn juice was being sold in 500g bottles as well as 2-liter bottles, and it looked like there was only one flavor option: corn. The foil cap on the small bottle I bought was extremely hard to open. I tried peeling at first, but it seems like it was made for a straw. With no straw in sight, I had to stab it with a pen a couple times to get it to open up.
So, the long and short of it is: this tastes like (more…)
A blood orange is a fruit from Italy, which is a variety of orange that has red juice the color of blood. The juice is a dark orange color, but not quite red. It tastes a little bit more bitter and sour than regular orange juice, almost like a mix between orange and grapefruit. It has a nice tart flavor that would go really well in a cocktail. I think mixing blood orange juice with vodka would be a great variation on a screwdriver. I haven’t thought of a clever name for it yet though, leave your ideas in the comments.
It says on the bottle that this blood orange juice is made from blood oranges from Mt. Etna Volcano in Sicily, Italy. It’s imported into the US and registered USDA 100% Organic. It’s not from concentrate and it’s high in Vitamin C and antioxidants as most citrus fruits are. The best part about this brand is that it’s 100% organic blood orange juice, so you know it’s fresh and healthy. (more…)
Really, what sounds more appetizing than juice from a Jew’s ear, especially “Quality Jew’s ear selected from Changbai Mountain?”
I’m actually pretty nervous to try it. From the Chinese name, 黑木耳露 （Hei1 Mu4 Er3 Lu4）, I know that it’s wood ear juice. Wood ear (evidently a.k.a. Jew’s ear) is a fungus that’s pretty common in Chinese dishes, but I would never think about drinking it. (more…)
This blueberry drink comes from China, and is actually a specialty of Inner Mongolia. It’s called Ye Lao Da, which roughly translates to “Very Wild.” There’s a long story on the label about how the wild blueberries are hand-selected from the primordial forests in the mountains.
This drink is actually more blueberries than blueberry juice. It’s deep purple, and has a ton of little blueberries floating in it. These Chinese blueberries aren’t exactly the same as the standard North American variety, they’re a little bit bigger and look almost like small grapes. (more…)
Sugar Cane Juice from Bangkok, Thailand
I’ve had a lot of sugarcane in my lifetime, usually chewing the stalk to get the sweet juice out. This is tough on your jaw and quite a bit of work for a little juice. You can’t eat the fibers of the plant, so you have to spit them out and that can get a little messy sometimes too. Nevertheless, it is still one of my favorite snacks and I will get it whenever I see some. It’s seasonal in most parts of the world, so it makes it a special treat when it is in season.
Only last year I got to try juice from sugar cane that’s been pressed through a juicer machine that looks like a pasta roller. They stick the chopped up peeled cane into this machine and crank the handle, so these stands end up with fresh sugar cane juice plus a huge pile of dry flat stalk pieces. This particular one I got in a market in Bangkok, Thailand. (more…)