Langers Organic

Blood Orange

We recently stumbled upon this brand at our local Bristol Farms, and if you aren’t familiar with this pretentious grocery store, Bristol Farms is a “gourmet grocer” in California, self-described as “Your Extraordinary Food Store”, and it basically has a much smaller selection than a regular grocery store (as if Whole Foods was bizarrely stripped down, but intentionally curated for maximum affectation).

So you walk in already knowing you’re not going to find everything on your list, every item is marked up to high heaven, and yet, you still feel like it’s a goddamn privilege to be stepping foot in there, gleefully giving them all your money. Honestly, sometimes the avocado prices make Whole Foods look like a bargain basement.

Basically: we love it. We’re particularly obsessed with these “wrapped” cashews we discovered on our last visit. Cashews with Skins. Did you know cashews naturally have skins, and the cashews you’ve been eating this entire time have been unceremoniously denuded?

Well, Bristol Farms is exactly the kind of place where you learn you’ve been eating declassé, stripped bare cashews your entire life, less delicious and less nutritious.  Bristol Farms is aspirational living at its finest, and possibly also the reason we can no longer afford to live in California.

So back to the sparkling water at hand. When we noticed Langers Organic alongside soingée organic brand Nixie, we assumed that we had found some primo Bristol Farms merchandise. And yet…

Is there a word that describes the chasm between someone’s social media profile and what they look like in real life? (If there is such a word, please @ us.)

We basically had that for this brand, but in reverse.

As we sat down to write this review, we decided to do a little online recon on Langers, and learn a little more about the brand. Typically that kind of thing leads to clarification and insight, not confusion and second-hand embarrassment. Definitely not a straight up, no thank you.

I mean this is their site. 🥴

We couldn’t even find the sparkling water on the site, because it’s not listed under their products menu. (But a Disney collab is?)

We just happened to catch a glimpse of a slide for the waters on the homepage’s scrolling marquee as we sat there, staring in a stupor trying to figure out why we couldn’t find the site for Langers Organic Sparkling Water. Turns out we did.

We were so impressed with their minimal, bold, solid presentation in-store and then when we tried to find them online, we were horrified by their profile pic. Like, honestly yikes.

How can a posh organic sparkling water brand also peddle frozen non-alcoholic Cosmo mixers from concentrate called “No Worries” with an aesthetic that can only be described as 1980’s Bartles & James Inspired?

But let’s not dwell anymore. Let’s not judge the bubbler by the cover.

Already you forget that site ever existed when you crack it open. It’s the juiciest orange you’ve ever smelled. Yes, we know that blood orange is a specific fruit, but this truly smells like the blood of an orange.

Did they accidentally put some of that juice in there? That would be Sprindrift levels of disappointing, but based on the smell alone, we might be convinced to buy a “No Worries” mixer at some point. It’s that good.

Tasting Notes

🩸🍊💥💥

No juice here. Just the juiciest sparkling water we’ve just about ever had.

Maybe more juice companies should get in the sparkling water game if this is the kind of ripe and robust, dripping-down-your-chin goodness they’re going to deliver.

Seriously, who knew you could even make a sparkling water so luscious?

We’ve been known to pound a case of the Orange LaCroix on occasion, and while we’ve never been under the impression that it’s particularly lifelike, sipping the Langer Blood Orange is like realizing you’ve been living in Flatland your whole, orangey life, and suddenly some kind of hyper-orange rises out of a dimension you didn’t even realize existed.

Honestly, we kind of love this brand so much after just a can or two, we just wish they would just make it a little easier for our shallow eyes to love their “aesthetic”.

We don’t know what to make of Langers. Their website makes it seem like they are fully committed to selling giant, cheap-looking juices. And yet, they have organic sparkling water in Kalamatsi Lime flavor. It boggles the mind.

And side note: we cannot wait to try the Kalamatsi Life if the Blood Orange is any indicator of how they do things.  Oh btw, these are also non-GMO and certified organic.

Is this sparkling water the future of the Langers brand?  Or an outlier, an anomaly, in a sad marketing miasma we don’t want to be a part of?

Only time will tell.