LaCroix Sparkling Water Reviews

Did you know that you can send us review requests?  If not, it’s ok, we didn’t know either!

But turns out, you can. Because recently we got an email from a fellow Bubblenaut requesting us to review this Apricot LaCroix, and, well, it kind of made our day.

We will confess, though, our excitement waned slightly at the request itself. Apricot LaCroix? Who is out there seeking that out on the reg? We weren’t entirely sure we would be able to replicate their love for this one.

We didn’t even quite put this together until the Apricot request was brought to our attention and we realized: We might be Peach Elitists.

But we also realized that maybe we just haven’t given Apricot a chance. We couldn’t even remember the last time we chose to drink an Apricot Lacroix.

And, look, it’s not like we don’t like LaCroix. We’ve been pounding Guava Sao Paulo and actually just purchased the pastel pens from their website that say #livelacroix as an office expense for Bubbleverse HQ. We realize that this has Big Basic Energy, but last we checked Aura Bora and Ugly didn’t make pens, ok?

But let’s talk Stone Fruits!

Perhaps one of the reasons we overlook La Croix Apricot is because we always tend to pick Apricot’s prettier Peach cousin. We adore Waterloo Peach and Nixie Peach Black Tea. Oh, honey-colored stone fruits of summer.

Whereas one conjures juices dripping down the chin and sweet fuzzy skins, the other…doesn’t really conjure much of anything. It’s like if Apricot and Peach were sisters, Peach would be the cute one. (You can be the funny one, Apricot!)

But one of us grew up in Georgia, so have we just led sheltered, peach-centric lives up until now, ignoring the Apricots out there to our loss?  Who knows?

All we know is that Justin Bieber gets his peaches out in Georgia, so he either

1. doesn’t think Apricots are worth singing about or
2. like us, he has no idea where they come from or how to get them.

(Suffice it to say, there are no pop songs about Apricots.)

We quickly realized there’s so much we don’t know. What even is the difference between a peach and apricot, anyway?

When we did a shallow dive into the stone fruit pool of the Internet, we learned that both Peaches and Apricots belong to our favorite family, The Rose Family, albeit in the genus Prunus. (Almonds, Apples and Pears are also in that group, so today we also learned a Rose by any other name is actually an Almond.)

But even though they’re all Prunuses, Apricots are basically less juicy, less sweet Peaches.

And look, we love tasting a fresh Apricot sample at the South Pasadena farmer’s market once in a while, but it really kinda just seems like a lesser peach.

But we’re game to see if we can be converted to Team Apricot, so let’s go!

Upon first crack of the can, we get the sweet peachy notes on the nose. But if you sniff closely, there is something distinct and tart about the Apricot before you, a je ne sais quoi that separates it out and gives you a definite Apricot essence.

We’re intrigued.

Tasting Notes

This is a subtle exploration of the Apricot Quintessence. Even though we have to keep repeating “apricot, apricot, apricot” over and over in our heads while drinking this to keep our brains from registering it as Peach, and even though the LaCroix Apricot can is cloaked in that tacky orange color, the flavor, when you actually contemplate it, has some nuance to it.

It’s actually a pretty subtle and sophisticated flavor, all things considered. We were kind of prepping for an Apricot Explosion, but instead it’s mellow, juicy, and slightly tart.  In our minds we were imagining the concentrated sweetness of a dried apricot, while LaCroix actually serves up a delicate freshy.

The hint of tartness in the finish takes the edge off the sweeter notes, which helps separate this from peach terrority. And as we drink this, we find that we don’t actually miss the peachy sweetness! Turns out we like a little tart in our stone fruit.

Overall, this is genuinely refreshing. Especially on those days when you’re stuck in a heat dome, this is a cool summer reverie, Apricot Cobbler and Crisps adorning the picnic table. We genuinely appreciate what LaCroix has done here.

So thank you, intrepid bubblenaut, for bringing Apricot to our attention!  We hadn’t quite realized that LaCroix had put together such a thoughtful exploration of this flavor. And as far as we can tell, this is one of the rare Apricot Sparkling Waters around!

We may still be Team Peach in our hearts, but in truth, we do like a tarter and less sugary vibe.  So maybe we are secretly Apricot people after all??

And honestly, it was super delightful for us to get to do a review that was also a dedication, so shout out to our Bubbleverse friends.

Send us review requests, say hi. Whether you get your Peaches out in Georgia, or your Apricots in Alaska. (Okay, we know there are no Apricots growing in Alaska now, but pretty sure in five to ten years, it’ll have the perfect growing season.)

New LaCroixs!!!

It’s been about two or three weeks since LaCroix announced their newest trio of flavors, which they vaguely claim are inspired by “summer.”  But it’s felt like two or three years to us, because we have been dying to get our hands on this evocative new lineup ever since they graced our Instagram feed.

The names Beach Plum, Guava São Paolo and Black Razzberry are disjointed and intriguing. LaCroix’s attempt at creating some kind of cohesive “summer” narrative with these three flavors is total chaos, and we’re living for it.

We finally managed to get our mitts on all three just yesterday!  (LaCroix posted a hot tip on Instagram that these are now available at Albertsons and their progeny: Safeway, Vons, etc, if you want to track these down yourself.)

Beach Plum was the one we were most excited about.  White sand and the ocean plus stone fruit was just not a flavor combination we saw coming, so we had to know what it was all about.

Let’s first discuss the elephant clip art in the room: THIS CAN.

This is LaCroix’s first foray into an image (dare we say art?) on their cans, and it’s a wobbly initial step. We know this is LaCroix’s branding aesthetic in general, but honestly, it looks lazy. Goofy. It’s pretty endearing, tbh, but wtf.

We imagine the genesis of this can went something like this:

The team crowds around the graphic designer’s laptop while they discuss the color palette for the can: something golden and pinkish purply. But we can’t make it too attractive!  LaCroix’s brand guide is always tip-toeing on the line of good taste.

Suddenly, the graphic designer’s screensaver comes on.  It’s a basic-ass beach, some random default sandy white thing. The assembled crowd gasps, and an A-ha! Moment descends. That’s the can.

Once that’s done, slap on a weak 2D rendering of a “plum” that looks more hairy and veiny then the world might have wanted, and call it a day!

End scene.

All of it feels deeply inspired by a Sandals commercial.

Thankfully, we think they spent a little more time on the flavor. Because, well, Beach Plum is really good.

Beach Plum, take us away.

Upon first crack of the can, we get a whiff of what we’re in for.  The nose alludes to a freshly cut coconut by way of a Piña Colada machine.

This isn’t the Suntan Explosion of LaCroix’s Coconut, but the more subdued vibe of a creamy coconut mixer.  Big Cabo All-Inclusive Resort Energy.

(Also, weirdly it smells like a green apple. We promise once you smell it, it will be all you can smell.)

Tasting Notes

🥥🍹😎

It took us a while to put our finger on this one. It’s definitely giving us beach.

And then we realized:

RUM. This tastes like rum. Possibly even Malibu Rum, as something at first ethereal on our tongue suddenly coalesces into unfortunate memories from High School + that saccharine poison.

But there’s a warm, toasty sugar flavor in here, that caramelly sweetness that is super specific to Rum.

The fruit flavors in this combo roll like beachy waves between that crisp green apple on the nose to ripe pineapple. Plum is one of those fruits that varies wildly in terms of expression for us.  Underripe plums are sharp and tangy, with a bit of a bite.

But the Beach Plum would fall into the overripe plum category.  There’s an expansive, mellow fruitiness in here that could be interpreted as an approximation of a plum, but which could also be any number of other fruits headed towards the mush phase of life.

When LaCroix announced this flavor, we were deeply perplexed.  We weren’t exactly sure why Plum specifically was the fruit they decided to orient this flavor around. Plum isn’t the beachiest of fruits. It’s no papaya or pineapple. Plum evokes fruit pies and midwestern picnics.

It’s an odd choice.

But then it struck us: it’s because plum rhymes with RUM and they were dropping clues for us along the way!  The Bubbleverse always solves the Mystery of the Vague Flavor.

Beach + Plum = Rum is the equation LaCroix came up with, and it works.

The finish manages to achieve a kind of biting alcohol-ish note which leaves you with a big Rum impression.

We don’t know how they did it or why they wanted to do it, but we’re glad they did.

The more you drink this, the more you realize how truly bizarre Beach Plum is (from whose brain did this idea spring forth??), and yet the more you drink it the more you love it.

We think this might be LaCroix’s finest creation.

It’s confusing, it’s tacky, it’s delicious.

If this is the future of LaCroix, the future tastes very bright. Consider us Beach Plums.

We found a LaCroix Berry in the back of our fridge when scrounging around for today’s review and shrugged.

(Possibly what everyone does when they find a LaCroix Berry in their fridge?)

We haven’t reviewed a LaCroix in a while, so why not Berry? Even though it’s been sitting there all by its lonesome for quite some time now, continually getting passed up for the Rōzus and Uglys of the world.  Flashy, spirited young things always pulling our focus and our taste buds.

Poor sad, LaCroix Berry.

So let’s just get this out of the way: we’ve never really thought much about this particular LaCroix offering. The flavor is frustratingly unspecific. There’s a big difference between a raspberry and a blueberry, so which is it? Or is it both, like some Waterloo Summer Berry? Unclear.

Even the can is muted in color, as if it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be pink or purple. It’s pretty and pleasant enough, but it certainly lacks the firecracker appeal of, say, an AHA.

Berry is clearly not one of Roi LaCroix’s chosen enfants, the prosaic moniker dolefully lacking the exotification LaCroix bestowed upon cherished babies “Pamplemousse” and “Pastèque”. Berry gives us big middle child energy.

Even for LaCroix it seems like an afterthought, pushed to the back of their own metaphorical fridge to let the newer, bigger and brighter Limoncellos take center stage.

Especially in LaCroix’s current incarnation, with hypercolor zany flavor combinations like “Beach Plum” coming out, Berry feels old-timey and a little bit dusty on the shelves.

While some of the newer LaCroix creations are beating us over the head with their overhyped uniqueness, Berry remains a throwback to LaCroix’s 1980s midwestern origins.

We suppose LaCroix needs to retain some of its earlier flavors to stock the shelves of Michigan & Wisconsin, lest it be accused of committing the cardinal midwestern sin: tasting like anything.

So on today’s journey our ultimate questions will be: what berry is this actually trying to replicate? Does anyone care about this flavor? And ultimately, does LaCroix even care about this flavor?

Join us on this adventure into half-heartedness!

We try and suss out what we’re in for when we crack open the can. It’s hard to make out something specific, the nose is mostly giving us major Fruit on the Bottom vibes. Definitely a muddled compote of vagueness.

That said it’s not bad, it’s appealing!

We’ll take a sip of that.

Tasting Notes

🌬🫐🤷🏻‍♀️

If you close your eyes, and just let the flavors take you on a journey, the place it almost takes us is Waterloo’s dreamy Blueberry.

But like a stripped down, ghost version: a spectre of the buoyant, round juicy thing Waterloo created.  And here is its memory, rendered in liquid form.

Still, it’s a pretty taste.

Then the flavor suddenly twists into bubly Blackberry territory. There’s some of the chalkier, Flintstone notes that come with bubly’s berries, as well as something a little more tart and astringent to finish the flavor arc.

It’s nice, a welcome development, but also slightly confusing. Is it a blackberry? Maybe it’s a raspberry? Wait. Could it even be a blue raspberry?

For how mellow and easy it is, it’s certainly a confounding process to understand the what, why and how of this Berry.  The “why” especially.

Because let’s be honest: it’s an easy drink. It’s refreshing. But it’s also kind of unremarkable and unmemorable. And this isn’t because it’s bad.  It’s just that even from the commodity brands, we’re expecting a little more these days.

AHA is churning out electric, bold flavors and combinations. Waterloo consistently executes interesting, stand out solo flavors, and even LaCroix has stepped up their own flavors and branding. (Their Beach Plum has a beach on the can!)

So who left Berry behind?

This flavor could easily be rebranded. Wrap the can in some chic royal purple color, rename it “Baie” (that’s French for berry!), have it join its frenchy Pamplemousse and Pasteque siblings and perhaps breathe in some of that rarefied top shelf air.

But it feels a little like it got lost in the shuffle, forgotten, and by the end of this can we’ve moved onto a can of AHA’s Raspberry Acai and forgot about it, too.

So to sum it all up:

What berry is this trying to replicate?

Blueberry with a hint of sour blackberry. Final answer.

Does anyone care about this flavor?

If you made it this far, maybe it’s you. Otherwise, probably no one.

Does LaCroix care about this flavor?

Definitely not.

Roi LaCroix is already onto grooming Black Razzberry for the throne.

Black Razzberry is the third and final offering in LaCroix’s new 2021 trinity of “summer” flavors, along with Beach Plum and Guava São Paulo.

This new LaCroix lineup is a real thinker, the titles of each flavor densely packed with confusing wordplay, the can art exploring new modes of expression for LaCroix’s questionable aesthetic.

Black Razzberry is perhaps the strangest one, even though it seems straightforward and innocuous at first glance.

Spelling raspberry with two Zs is pretty played out at this point, as a way of indicating that your raspberry flavor isn’t some run of the mill raspberry. No, with two Zs, this raspberry is zany! Full of pizzazz and razzmatazz.

This isn’t even LaCroix’s first Razz Rodeo, having renamed Cran-Raspberry to Razz-Cranberry about a year ago.  That must have been market research to see if “Razz” sells.

(Never mind that the established technical definition of a Razzberry is the farting sound your lips make when you press your mouth against someone else’s stomach and blow. Also, definitions.net helpfully notes that the numerical value of Razzberry in Chaldean Numerology is 2, whereas in Pythagorean Numerology it’s 4. The mysteries of Razzberry!)

But anyway, LaCroix doesn’t just want you to know that they’ve got a zany-ass (azz?) razzberry, they want you to know that they’ve got a zany-ass Jazzberry.

They try to establish this reading of Razz/Jazz by depicting a stream of musical notation coming from some stock-photo clump of berries, each music note made of blackberries and raspberries, the stems literally stems.

And as LaCroix says of Black Razzberry on their website: “An innocently sweet twist that Makes [sic] your taste buds sing !!”, and reiterates in a lilting refrain on the box: “…makes your tastebuds sing !!”

All of this musical allusion really forces the question: why didn’t they just call this Jazzberry in the first place?

Well, our guess is that they did plan on calling this Jazzberry until some zoomer intern gently pointed out that “Black Jazzberry” was gonna get LaCroix cancelled in the year 2021.

Unfortunately, though, they had already done up all the graphic design.  So rather than re-do that work (as if we can call what LaCroix’s graphic designers do “work”), they changed the J to an R and shipped it out.

Also, apparently Crayola already has a breakfast cereal(?!!) called Jazzberry.  So maybe LaCroix wanted to avoid any confusion.

Either way, we’re going to ignore how hard LaCroix wants us to read this as “Black Jazzberry,” because LaCroix’s deep Wisconsin roots preclude them from ever making anything genuinely jazzy anyway.

Instead, we’ll assume that the music LaCroix wants us to hear in our head and on our taste buds is something more midwestern. Like Don Henley.

Out on the road today, we saw a LaCroix sticker on a Cadillac. A little voice inside our head said “Don’t look back, you can never look back.”

Ok!  With that firmly in your head now, let’s drink this.

On first crack of the can, the nose is similar to the LaCroix Berry, although crisper, cleaner, less fruit on the bottom, with a tang of green apple and a slight whiff of…bubblegum.

Tasting Notes

🎷🎶🤷🏻‍♀️

Black Razzberry is really good. It’s a bright, tangy berry, closer to blackberry than LaCroix managed to get with the Mure Pepino. It’s not quite as blackberry-y as bubly’s blackberry, but maybe that’s ok because, again, this isn’t blackberry, it’s Black Razzberry.

While the Black Raspberry is an actual fruit (as opposed to the Blue Raspberry), we think LaCroix uses those two Zs so that this doesn’t have to taste like any particular berry. It’s not a blackberry, it’s not a raspberry, it’s not a black raspberry, it’s all and none of them at the same time. We do detect some notes of blueberry in here too.

Why, in 30 years of existence, has LaCroix never committed to a single, specific berry flavor? They’ve given us the generic Berry, the Razz-Cranberry, the Múre Pepino, and now the Black Razzberry, but never a simple, solo berry.

In a world with Boylan Raspberry, Waterloo Blueberry, and bubly Blackberry, we have to assume either LaCroix just can’t pull off a convincing single berry flavor for some reason, or they made so much Mixed Berry “essence” in 1991 that they’re still trying to use up their supply.

This ever-morphing cascade of vague berries all of the sudden coalesces into a bubblegum overload!

We’ve pondered the mysteries of bubblegum flavor many times over here in The Bubbleverse, but the common thread has always been that it appears in watermelon flavors. We’ve never encountered the phantom bubblegum in a berry flavor before! This is exciting.

It’s exciting but also strange, because it seems like the secret to bubblegum flavor is a melange of various fruit esters like banana, pineapple, cherry, etc. combined with something slightly minty. No blackberries or raspberries in that list.

Some bubblegum experts claim that strawberry is a dominant note.  Are we to assume LaCroix snuck a strawberry into this Razzberry?

We really can’t taste anything in the Razzberry resembling a strawberry, though. So perhaps where LaCroix’s flavor chemists have repeatedly failed to create a convincing single berry, they have stumbled upon a brand new bubblegum formulation.

The Black Razzberry winds up being one of the more confounding LaCroix flavors, both in flavor and in life. We really like this one, but we’ll pick the Guava São Paulo or the Beach Plum over the Razzberry at the end of the day.

Thus concludes our LaCroix Summer of Fun 2021, catch you in the fall when LaCroix releases Plum-kin Spice, Apple Great Barrington, and Black Acornzz.

I can see you
Your pamplemousse shining in the sun
You got the pop tab down and the
Taste buds singing
I can tell you, my love for you will still be strong
After the LaCroixs of summer have gone

Spring has sprung!

The Bubbleverse is finally shaking off the shackles of low key/high key Seasonal Affective Disorder, as we slowly emerge from the deep underworld journey that is Winter in the Northeast in a 150 year old stone church. Apologies that our frozen fingers have been out of commission for so long.

But like a sparkling miracle, LaCroix’s newest flavor drop, Cherry Blossom, was waiting for us in full bloom on the other side, as we emerged blinking and pale, like parched Persephones crawling out from our wintery abyss. Doth our social media feeds deceive us? A Cherry Blossom LaCroix? The idea of a blossom of any kind seems like a hallucination to our wintery minds at this point, but a blossom sparkling water? We could barely believe our good fortune.

Not to be dramatic, but these northeastern winters are no joke.

So yes, not only is LaCroix back just in time for our spring rebirth, but it’s giving us what we know and love about LaCroix first and foremost: their bizarre insistence on vague and unnecessary cultural appropriation!

Just look at that blatantly Asian-esque font. The flower delicately etched on the side of the can.

And truly, they didn’t reallllly have to do that. While Cherry Blossoms are native to Asia, they are also deeply entrenched in the States at this point.  In fact, our nation’s capital is famous for its idyllic Cherry Blossom-lined streets. Possibly the only idyllic thing about our nation’s capital. If only we had a government as stunning as DC’s cherry blossoms. Zing!

So anyway, LaCroix had some home-grown blossom aesthetics to utilize, but like an Instagram Priestess, they just couldn’t help but take and commodify whatever cultural traditions it damn well pleased. We suppose it’s a time-honored American tradition at this point.

And look, we’ll be honest, as far as LaCroix’s famously bad taste/judgment goes, this is no Cubana.  But it’s unclear why LaCroix is leaning so hard into it being Cherry Blossom, unless they really perfected some kind of flower flavor here. Knowing LaCroix, we had zero hopes that any kind of subtle, delicate blossom flavor a la Rozu was going to happen. But our excitement about a new flavor extended a little bit of charitable good faith. We came here willing to like Cherry Blossom, even as our enthusiasm for any truly floral expression was deeply curbed.

So: cracking it open like the first optimistic seedling of spring, we have to admit that the nose on this is chaos. It smells like Hawaiian Punch with a few dashes of Angostura bitters.  No wafting blossom or airy floral.

Surely the blossoming awaits us inside?

Tasting Notes

🍒🤷🏻‍♀️🌸🔍

Nope. Lol. What did you expect? An actual cherry blossom?

LaCroix remains “Blossom” in Japanese font and appropriation only.

And it’s a genuine disappointment, because we know a “blossom” can be well executed. Between Dram, Rozu and Aura Bora, there are a plethora of sparkling waters that deliver herbaceous and flowery expressions of everything from rose to elderflower. We truly aren’t sure why LaCroix wanted to hammer the blossom other than as a marketing hook, because at this point in the sparkling water game, how can you just churn out a basic ass cherry and still hold your head high? Even AHA’s latest is a dazzling passionfruit-pineapple combo.

The blossom in the name here is a straight up gimmick, intended to subliminally convince your tongue that this is sophisticated in some way.

But the basic ass cherry flavor here is actually pretty decent! Cherry is a pretty tired flavor at this point, but there’s a strain of something original in this one. It’s a deep-throated, weirdly guttural cherry, unlike a lot of the more candy-like, medicinal ones running around.

There’s still the tinge of Angostura on the tongue, deepening into a full maraschino spectrum of cocktail cherry. But of course since it’s LaCroix, there’s no sophistication. It’s Curaté-esque, a weakly attempted handwave towards Japanese cosmopolitanism.

More Maraschino Shirley Temple than Luxardo Manhattan.

We’re assuming that the slight spicy bitterness in here is meant to evoke some vegetal, earthen blossom, but it never quite gets there. Especially when we already have a variety of aromatic flavor artistry to compare it to.  LaCroix didn’t do themselves any favors by teasing us with flowers.

But either way, this isn’t their worst offering by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just hard to imagine we’d ever pick this over our continual fascination with Beach Plum, the genuinely good Guava Sao Paulo or the tap water of our generation, Pamplemousse. And if we are in the mood for a cherry flavor, we’d reach for the succulent Black Cherry Waterloo.

That said, we’re not dispirited and always eagerly anticipate any new LaCroix. We’re hoping they roll out a trifecta like they did last year. And we can’t wait to see what “culturally-inspired” marketing they pick next!

Okay.

We’ve been avoiding doing a Coconut LaCroix review for a long time. In fact, we’ve been avoiding it since we first started this site.

We’ve been a little downright tongue-tied around it, because (and here’s a big confession that will no doubt induce a Vulnerability Hangover), LaCroix Coconut is the most-consumed sparkling water in our lives.

Please go easy on us, sharing this makes us feel a little delicate and fragile.

But it’s true: for one of us in the Bubbleverse, this is our go-to pounder. A mindless carousel of Effervescent Approximate Coconut and Questionable Discernment rules our days.

Lest you judge us and cast aside the rest of our carefully considered reviews, we would like to disclaim: this fact of our lives is not because we think Coconut LaCroix is the “best” sparkling water around. Nor do we believe that this is for everyone. Hardly. We totally hear people when they think this is a bizarre dumpster fire of an offering. You aren’t wrong. We see you.

AND YET.

There is something in this obnoxious suntanned abomination that we can’t get enough of. We’re held in thrall to its vulgarity and dubious decency.

Understandably, we’ve been avoiding admitting this to you. But as we’ve mentioned, review requests for LaCroix keep coming in, and when the request for Coconut landed in our inbox, we knew that we couldn’t avoid writing this review any longer.

But writing this hasn’t been easy.  Beyond the vague shame we feel around our inexplicable fascination with Coconut LaCroix, it’s been hard for us to mentally and spiritually process, much less explain in any articulate way, the conflicting emotions, the campiness, the crassness.

And then one day it hit us like a lightning bolt.

There was only one metaphorical summer’s day to compare thee coco to:

That’s right. SHOWGIRLS. Our favorite movie of all time.

In other words: it’s a masterpiece.

Now, we understand that this review has now devolved into yet another way in which you judge our bad taste and proclivity for camp.  But let’s break it all down, starting from the moment you crack the can and the coconut enters your olfactory sense-memory.

The first aromas of coconut give you everything you need to know: the tackiness of spring break, the stickiness of regret, somehow we even detect notes of Survivor-esque cultural appropriation. Everything about the taste level is questionable.

It’s intoxicating. Our Nomi Malone in Vegas, grinding in nightclubs, strip clubs and pools and embedding her ambitious esprit into our souls.

Tasting Notes

🌊🥥👅

You take a sip. And the comical grinding deepens.

Much like Showgirls, the Coconut performance/flavor is hyper-serious to the point of broad comedy. The coconut flavor that LaCroix pulls out here is not healthy, hydrating coconut water. Which, considering this is water, could be an option. But nah. Nor is it the festive shaved coconut of whimsical desserts.

Oh, no. This coconut takes itself very seriously.  A coconut that’s so cartoonish it renders itself incapable of parody.  A D-movie delusionally angling for an Oscar.

This coconut is depravity, a deep Hawaiian Tropic. A humid oil not meant to protect your skin, but bake it into a deep, inadvisable bronze that’s essentially an eff-you to your epidermis.

Maybe it’s these end-of-days vibes the world has been giving us starting sometime around 2016 (or since the 1980s, who can say anymore), but something about our daily Coconut fix brings some sparkling Theater of the Absurd for our taste buds. It sends us into some Calgon-take-us-away reverie, if the Calgon in question here was a seedy all-inclusive resort on the outskirts of Cabo.

Each and every time we throw away yet another empty box of LaCroix coconut, we question our moral compass and our life choices, yet we bask in the glow of something wonderfully garish and profoundly satisfying.

Sadly: we’ve noticed that Coconut’s presence has waned on the shelves over the past few years. We don’t know if LaCroix needed more space for Berry and Peach-Pear (they’re certainly not packing the shelves with Beach Plum. Has anyone else noticed that it’s nearly impossible to find?), but we genuinely don’t appreciate them depriving us of this classic.

And not just that, we were super bummed when Waterloo discontinued their Coconut. We never got a chance to review it here, but briefly: Waterloo Coconut was like the All About Eve to LaCroix’s Showgirls.  Whereas All About Eve is a cinematic classic from 1950 earning a record fourteen Academy Award nominations, Showgirls remains one of the worst movies of all time.

Basically, Waterloo’s coconut was the more dignified and less tawdry coconut. Let’s just say Waterloo was the one you’d bring home to meet the parents.

Ultimately though, there’s no point in comparing coconuts.  “LaCroix Coconut” is definitively its own flavor, at this point.  You’re not here to drink something coconut-flavored: there’s no coconut that tastes like this.  There’s only one thing that tastes like this.

LaCroix Coconut.

Also, let’s just say it while we’re here: pronouncing “LaCroix” is arguably the “Versayce” of our time.  If you haven’t seen Showgirls and get that reference, this is your sign from the Universe that you don’t delay another moment.

Welcome, once again, to another voyage into “the romance of French and Spanish cultures,” this time with one of the OG Cúrates: Cerise Limón.

Yes, along with Pomme Bayá, this was one of two flavor combinations that LaCroix picked in 2014 to launch their culturally appropriative blends of otherwise normal fruits, in an attempt to cloak their Pure Wisconsin sparkling water in an aura of exoticism.

We assume the multicultural reference here is supposed to be Sangria, even though Cherry Lime is more associated with Sonic Drive In’s Cherry Limeade than anything that may have emerged from the romance language bloc.

Either way, here’s what we’re really excited about with this one: according to LaCroix, at least, the literal translation of cúrate is “heal yourself,” and there’s nothing more healing and medicinal than the flavor of cherries.

And the syrupy, cough-syrup maraschino that awaits us on the first crack of the can, wafting through the nose, cut with only the slightest hint of lime, lets us know we are in for a curative journey par excellence. Right?

Tasting Notes

🐦🍒📦

Right! The first sip ushers the Plague Doctor through the door, as we lay comatose on our straw-filled cot, in the serfdom of the lime fields. Our small hut mouth fills with the most medicinal cherry since bubly’s cherry, so we know some powerful healing is about to take place.*

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

There are other, less profoundly analeptic cherries out there in the sparkling water cosmos, including Good & Gather’s Tropical Cherry and Waterloo’s Black Cherry. But we have to assume that there’s an inverse relationship between how good a cherry flavor tastes, and how curative the effects of that cherry flavor are. Otherwise, why would they make it taste like this?

As the “doctor” fills our orifices and sinuses with his cherry medicine, we notice, in our delirium, that the mattress we’re sprawled upon is not filled with straw afterall: in fact, it’s filled with wet cardboard.

There’s a deep and strange undercurrent of wet cardboard drifting through the Cerise Limón like a fever dream, constantly leaving us wondering if we’re hallucinating it, or if somehow the box these cans came in imparted their own flavor. But it’s consistent as we work our way through the case, only dissipating slightly towards the end of each can, as the aromatics fade away & we’re left confronting the essence of this Curaté.

It’s only during this phase of our treatment that we encounter the lime, as the beak-faced Cherry Charlatan removes the leeches, packing his bags to disappear into the French countryside, never lingering too long in any one village lest he be guillotined as the fraud he is.

As he departs, the fainted dregs of lime arise from the bottom of the can, mingling with the bitter cherry aftertaste, to create something that’s not refreshing exactly, but possibly relieving. It’s at least a cold comfort that we’re not eternally fated to be operated on by docteur cerise, and some succor is achieved in the last few sips of flat, citric acid tinged physic.

With all these new razzle dazzle functional beverages and the endless parade of caffeinated waters tickling our fancy, sometimes we forget about the simpler things in life, like LaCroix’s Curaté line, the sparkling water that captures the “romance” of Europe and Latin America for people who’ve never been to Europe or Latin America.

At this point, Curaté as an idea harkens back to simpler times, when Curaté was the only opportunity you had to get something more exotic than Pamplemousse. And well, sometimes the world makes us curl up in the fetal position and we yearn for those simpler times.

Hence cracking open a pretty, pastel Melón Pomelo to give our frazzled minds a buoy to cling to in this uncertain world.

Besides, the newly launched LaCroix flavors have reignited our affection for our Wisconsin queen, like a stale 1970s marriage getting a jolt of friskiness after a trip to Esalen. Thanks, Beach Plum!

So let’s unpack this Curaté!

Unlike the more loud, primary colors of most Curaté cans, we appreciate that the Melón Pomelo skews towards the Muré Pepino in pastel grace. The muted pinks and oranges with a sandy earth tone background, an earth tone so tasteful it could almost be a Benjamin Moore living room choice.

We also find the use of “Pomelo” fun here. It sounds like it should be Spanish for grapefruit (that would be toronja, however), particularly because LaCroix loves to throw around a fancy sounding foreign word like Pepino or Pomme Baya or Pastèque.

But Pomelo is actually just a regular-ass name you can use in English. Pomelo is its own fruit.

In fact, it’s the “principal ancestor of grapefruit”, which conjures images of a bearded citroid smiling down upon its rosey, dimpled descendent grapefruit from a pastel pink cloud in the heavens, while incarnate grapefruit attends numerous workshops and retreats, meditating valiantly to process trauma out of the family line for future generations of tart citrus.

Another note: the can says, underneath Melón Pomelo in very basic print, “Cantaloupe” and “Pink Grapefruit”. Classic LaCroix.

They clearly can’t fully commit to their flair for the international monikers, always having to clarify what it is.  Curaté truly is at the heart of the LaCroix identity.

You’d think they wouldn’t want to make things difficult on themselves, but what do we really expect from a company with an emphatically French name cringily Americanized as Luh Croy?

Anyway, let’s drink!

The nose on this is surprisingly candied and lush. We tend to associate LaCroix flavors with words like “ok” and “fine” (their new summertime roster notwithstanding as they appear to be upping their game).

But this has something juicy and evocative that we don’t get from some of the other Curatés.  Kiwi Sandia and Piña Fraise in particular are laughably underwhelming.

There’s definitely a distinct strain of cantaloupe floating through the air, which we love. Melón/Cantaloupe isn’t exactly the most universal of flavors.  No one’s doing cantaloupe, really, unless you count the accidental appearance in Weller’s Watermelon.

But that’s not all! There is a sharp, acidic Pomelo, shooting across the background of the scent like a citroid comet. It’s a great symphonic noseful of things happening here.

Tasting Notes

🎊🍈🎊

Okay. Now this is a solid cantaloupe showing. Most LaCroix flavors taste a bit watered down and somehow vague, even when what you’re tasting is very specific. They just don’t dial it up the way a brand like AHA does, or aim for pristine precision like a Waterloo. But this Curaté has a solid presence, especially with the Melón half of the bargain.

Alas, just when you think they’ve knocked it out of the park, you realize you’re not tasting anything that could remotely be considered “citrus”.

Sadly, the Pomelo appears to be in name alone, unable to meet us halfway.

Melón Pomelo is indeed one of the cuter Curate names, almost sounding like a fluffy hybrid toy dog breed in its adorability. Come here, Melly Pomelo! Good boy. So, we get that they couldn’t pass up something so darling sounding. Especially with that melange of delightful pastels on the can. It takes us on some twee Amelie journey to a Parisian farmers market.

But sadly, the journey is all in the mind. No Pomelo rendered in the tangy flesh.

There’s an overarching brightness to the overall impression of the flavor that we suppose is a stand-in for Pomelo. An effervescent quality that keeps the flavor from getting too mired in the heavy, honeyed sweetness that can accompany a melon. But honestly it’s painted in the negative space of the flavor profile. It’s hard to credit LaCroix with any outstanding flavor sorcery. We wish we could taste it more.

Still, the melón is truly spot on. We love cantaloupe as a fruit because it’s never bitter or sour. It’s mellow and juicy, and even when it skews towards end-of-life mush it has a distinct flavor that still retains something unique and satisfying.

This is one of the lone cantaloupe offerings in the bubbleverse, so we’ll continue to come back to it from time to time. We’d never reach for this one for the “pomelo”, unless pomelos secretly taste like nothing.

We look up to the sky, supplicating insight from the great ancestral Pomelo in the sky. Alas, nothing.

As Pomelo above, so Pomelo below.

If you are a loyal and dedicated Sparkling Water Devotee, then you are familiar with LaCroix.

And you are no doubt familiar with the fact that there are different strains of LaCroix, like strains of cannabis. Ok, maybe not quite like that. But there are strange, evocative names that make us want to partake of the dankest bubble flavors. Cúrate, Nicola.

So what is cúrate? At first we thought it was given its own distinct line because the flavors come in combinations. There are no single flavors of cúrate, instead, they’re always an intriguing blend of something tropical, tangy and refreshing. Pomme Baya!  Kiwi Sandía!

But, then we remembered no, there’s cran-raspberry and peach-pear, regular old LaCroix flavors that come in blends, too. So what exactly sets this exotic, non-english-language-labeled can apart?

We did a little Nancy Drew-ing on the Internet, and unearthed a 2014 LaCroix press release announcing the launch of cúrate. We learned some valuable information, and feel it is our duty to pass it along. 

First of all, cúrate literally translates to “cure yourself”, which is a hilarious and bold statement, considering that sparkling water is just carbonated water and some flavor essences. We appreciate the moxy though, and certainly enjoy outlandish claims. We mean, we are creating a towering monument to all things bubble water here, so we’re kind of on that wavelength.

And let’s be honest, sparkling water always cures some deep-seated pit of sadness in our hearts, so it’s kind of accurate.

Second of all, the cúrate line is “inspired by the romance of French and Spanish cultures.”  So next time you crack open a Piña Fraise, don’t forget to bathe yourself in all of the cultural romance you’re about to ingest. It’s right there on the front of the palate. 

But, once again, let’s be honest: when we talk about “curing” ourselves, we are almost always really referring to going on a trip to France or Spain. So actually, this tracks, too.

Also, they also keep saying “fantastique” instead of “fantastic” in the press release.  We thought we were extra here in the Bubbleverse, but this press release is next level. We really just can’t get enough of the masterminds behind LaCroix PR. Can someone introduce us, please?

And this brings us to our favorite cúrate of them all: Múre Pepino.

Let’s get down to brass bubbles: The nose. We absolutely adore the vague aroma that wafts up on first pop. It’s a delightful combination of faded floral potpourri and lavender pastilles. We are getting French countryside and Proustian daydreams, and it’s not just the Monet/Manet-like cucumbers painted on the can.

Tasting notes

This is where things get tricky and we can’t quite explain why this works. Cause this works. But this doesn’t really taste like blackberry…or cucumber. And yet because of the subtle fruitiness cut by the aromatic idea of cucumber, we totally agree that this is created in l’esprit de múre-pepino. We love it.

Sometimes you don’t want to be beaten over the head with an accurate flavor, you just want to bask in the flow of their vibe. Like a sweet nostalgia for your Parisian lover. 

This is blackberry-cucumber impressionism, the flavors mimicking the fanciful art of the can. And perhaps the foreign language twist is also emulated in the flavor profile: something grows hazy in translation.  The harshness glossed over in the vowel-driven French of it all.

The bubble structure in cúrates is slightly more gentle and reserved than in normal LaCroixs, too. 

We don’t want to tilt at windmills here, but if we had a suggestion, it would be for the blackberry to actually have just a little bit more tang.  Impressionism isn’t just muted dreamhaze, afterall.  We’ll leave you here with this quote from the master himself:

“Color makes its impact from contrasts rather than from its inherent qualities….the primary colors seem more brilliant when they are in contrast with their complementary colors.”

Claude Monet

What do you think? If you can actually find the taste of cucumber in this let us know! We love to parlez pepino around here. 

Welcome to another edition of LaCroix Curaté, aka Wisconsin Carbonated Water Studies Abroad.

We like to indulge in enchanting sparkling water fantasies where Cerise Limón, a homespun girl-next-door from Racine, goes Full French during her summer in Provence. A Cherry returning to the farm as beret-wearing resplendent “Cerise”. Everyone call me Odette now, si vous plaît.

As the saying goes, how can you gonna keep that Lemon on the farm after they’ve seen Gay Paree?

Anyway, today’s Bon Voyage is Pomme Bayá, which is a real fancy Frenchified way of sayin’…Cran-Apple.

Excusez-moi?

The Curaté line is supposed to be “inspired by the romance of French and Spanish cultures,” but nothing says run-of-the-mill domestic US flavor combo like “cran-apple”. We hear the Midwestern nasal twang even as we write the words.

We want to feel like this is about to take us to Monaco via Isla Mujeres, but instead we feel the first crunch of Ohio’s leaves beneath our feet mixed with a heavy dose of confusion.

So what’s happening here?

While we’re examining the wool LaCroix has pulled over our eyes, we spent a fair amount of time searching for some language in which “Bayá” means “Cranberry”. And we turned up nothing.

Baya (without the superfluous accent) means “berry” in Spanish, but what monster hears the word “berry” and instantly conjures up a “cranberry” in their mind? Is that person out there?

Bayá in this instance is a loose & inappropriately accented interpretation at best.

Beyond that, we have a predominantly chartreuse can splattered with splashy orange and bright red “berries” that says ill-advised Caribbean Cruise, not subdued New England harvest, which is our go-to Cran-Apple association.

Because let’s be honest, when someone says “cran-apple”, you inevitably say to yourself, bust out the cider and pumpkin spice candles, it’s “spooky season”! (“Spooky Season”, née. 2018)

But let’s move on for now. Our detective work is done for today.

Let’s get back to the “bayá” at hand. 🙄 Maybe this will take us on our promised exotic journey and we’ll leave the caramel-colored cornucopias in the dust?

Well, the nose on this does take us somewhere. We get heavy banana notes spun up with some cotton candy sugar, so already we’re stopping at an unforeseen port that wasn’t on the itinerary. We’re game, even though we’re still not sure LaCroix isn’t just playing us.

Tasting Notes

🍌🕺🏼

LaCroix claims that Curaté flavors “dance on the palate”. And dancing can run the gamut from a dignified minuet to a full-on “Yo Perreo Sola” discoteca grind, so analogically, curaté can be real good or leave you wanting to socially distance for an indefinite amount of time.

This one falls somewhere in the Drunk Tourist Trying to Dance Sexy But Totally Failing category. Yes, you are feeling yourself, but maybe you need to tone it down a bit, none of those movements you’re making make any sense.

It’s hard to escape the banana vibes once you feel them. There’s a tartness at the end that telegraphs “cranberry”, but this is not a reverent expression of either Apple or Cranberry. If you’re looking for those, we highly recommend Good and Gather’s Cranberry Citrus or AHA’s Apple Ginger.

There is some apple in here, but it’s a sweet, candied apple, morphing back and forth into the banana like you just ate a handful of Runts and they are in your mouth screaming “fruuuit” at each other.

That aforementioned tartness arrives in time to pucker this silliness, cleansing your tastebuds and sobering you up just enough before you go back to the candy buffet on the next sip.

Over time, the aromatics from the fruit diminish, and by the bottom half of the can you’re actually left with a fairly subtle and refreshing walk through the baya bog on a crisp evening.

In fact, you know what? We like this. We went around the world in rancor, and arrived back in our homes deciding it’s a pretty pleasant and enjoyable sip afterall.

And just so you know we’re not some sinister Curaté haters, the radiant Múre Pepino is one of our all time favorite bubblers, and we actually do prefer this CranApple over some of the more generically sweet Curaté combinations like Kiwi Sandía and Piña Fraise.

So, we’ll give LaCroix a pass for launching a flavor for this upcoming summer named after a place that’s currently headed into winter.  No hemispheres in LaCroix’s world, it seems.

But São Paulo?  The largest city in all of the Americas??  The number one. (For scale, New York is number four on that list, after Mexico City and Lima).

What we’re trying to say is when we saw a tropical fruity sparkling water named after a city bigger than New York, we scratched our heads a little bit.   It’s like naming it Papaya Beijing: jungle fruit with a hit of smog and traffic?

If you’re trying to evoke tropical Brazilian vibes, at least give us Guava Rio or even Guava Manaus.

On top of that, guava is native to Central America/Southern Mexico, so Guava Guatemala City would have made just as much sense, while simultaneously bestowing upon us some darling alliteration.

But from Brazilian waxes to Brazilian blowouts and slathering our bums with Bum Bum Cream, Americans have been trying to groom ourselves into Brazilians for a while now, so sure, why not Guava São Paulo.

And let’s be honest, this is from the team that brought us “Beach Plum” so we don’t know why we had hopes for LaCroix when it comes to “things that go with the beach/tropics”.  LaCroix, you midwestern charmer. We adore your attempts to be not Wisconsin.

This is not to say we’re not fans of this lewk!

We actually think LaCroix stepped up its visual game here, because even the can is cute. (For LaCroix. Not, like, for the world.)

The cursive evokes a certain vintage Brazilian aesthetic. The color is a pretty pink and the guava rendering brings to mind the brightly fruit-patterned oilcloths of Latin American cafes. We can hear Samba gently in the background just looking at the can.

But enough preamble, let’s drink up. Vamo vamo! (👈  we learned that expression from our Brazilian friend who loves Corinthians.)

When you crack Guava São Paulo open, you can smell the tantalizing aroma of tropical fruit from a foot away. It’s genuinely mouth-watering.

(We are so excited for what this portends, we mentally said a prayer for it to not let us down. We want this to be good so bad.)

Tasting Notes

🥭🥰🍓🤯

Thank you, Christ the Redeemer! (another Brazil reference!) This is everything we could ever want from a guava bubbler.

Now here’s where all our surly shit talk melts away into a Bossa Nova dream. And we’ll be honest: of the three new LaCroixs for 2021, this one is our favorite.

It’s so perfectly tangy and piquant that it almost feels like some actual guava juice was lightly squeezed in here. But no, there’s no juice: it’s just LaCroix’s “naturally essenced” magic.

Now we’ll be honest, we don’t eat a lot of actual guava fruit, mostly just the Guava Rolls from Panadería Rosetta, so we’re not exactly experts on what fresh guava tastes like.  But something deep in our marrow tells us this is accurate. We just know.

If we try and find another flavor reference for what this conjures, we realize this also kind of gives us a perfect tart strawberry. Once you taste that strawberry note, it’s hard to untaste.

We asked the internet how people describe the flavor of guava, and immediately we saw people describing guava as tasting like a strawberry, often like a combination of strawberry and pear.

We’re glad we’re not alone, because the presence of strawberry is actually quite distinct. We don’t detect any pear, but we’re not missing it.

This is a lush, sultry bubbler and pretty much perfect.

You can practically hear a macaw in the background as a coati creeps up to try and steal the LaCroix out of your hand. That is how much of a journey this takes us on.

(Unless we’re actually in São Paulo, in which case we’re probably just drinking a LaCroix in a hipster cafe.)

LaCroix has really stepped up their flavor game with Guava São Paulo, and truly, with all three of these 2021 sparkling waters, even the confusing Black Razzberry.

Part of LaCroix’s appeal has always been that their product seems phoned in, and flavor is kind of an afterthought. Cute packaging not even a thought. We’re not unconvinced that Pamplemousse‘s astonishing popularity is not a tinge ironic.

But this seems like a new LaCroix. As if they did some serious soul searching during all that quarantine last year and realized they wanted to do more with their lives.

And we’re glad that LaCroix is emerging from the pandemic hellscape cuter, tastier and more engaged with the bubblenauts of the universe. It’s time.

And we said earlier this year that we think Topo Chico’s delicious Twist of Tangerine might be our top of 2021.  But Guava São Paulo is now a serious contender, the best American interpretation of something Brazilian since Fogo de Chão.

Okay, that’s a joke. Fogo de Chão sucks.

Aloha from Hi-Biscus!

This LaCroix offering was the first new flavor for the brand in two years when it debuted in 2019, and the internet was not a fan. They wanted watermelon! The people wanted watermelon!

Okay, we can kind of understand that. But let’s see how this stands on its own, away from the angry millennial mobs, now that they’ve been subdued by 2020’s Pasteque.

First of all, why does the Hi-Biscus! have a dash and an explanation point here? We don’t know, but it’s certainly a friendly flourish! It exudes a warm holiday welcome, as if a luau awaits your mouth, and a hula dancer lulls you into a Hi-blissful state. Just us?

We love the over-the-top pink of this can, the neon swoops and dramatically rendered hibiscus flower, seen here in full bloom, ready to burst off the can and into your hi-hole.

But what is the hibiscus flavor and why is it so popular? If you’re not familiar with this exuberant, tropical flower we recommend you plop some hibiscus syrup into your morning glass of Prosecco and settle in.

Btw, the combination of dry, effervescent sparkling wine with a tinge of tangy, yet decadent hibiscus syrup is even better than a mimosa, and infinitely more chic. Especially if you have the hibiscus flower on the bottom. Romantique!

And that’s not all: hibiscus flowers have also been used as a tea for centuries, not just for that pleasantly tangy flavor, but because consuming hibiscus has health benefits!

We’re sure these benefits don’t extend to the LaCroix sparkling water, despite its “natural” tagline, but just in case you’re curious about the perennial lure of ingesting hibiscus: it turns out hibiscus is packed with antioxidants. And it can potentially help lower blood pressure and boost liver health.  So make sure to drink hibiscus tea after drinking your hibiscus mimosa.

Anyway. Getting back to the Hi-biscus!  Let’s pop open this friendly hot pink paradise, shall we?

What greets us upon first opening? Wafting heavenwards towards your nose is the slightest hint of tangy candy. Is that a Sweetart we detect??

Tasting Notes

🌺🤔🍬💦😳

We never knew that our beloved childhood candy could be a drink, but wow, this is certainly exactly that. And thank god it is.

The sharp familiar sour lands on the palate first, softening into that pink (cherry-ish?) sweetness that we associate with those addictively melty sugar patties. Sometimes the joys of childhood transform and take on new forms in adulthood. We relish these small bright spots in a dark world.

Beyond the overarching and unmistakable sweetart flavor, a rich combination of tangy and sweet, there lingers a floral herbaciousness to remind you that you’re drinking a flower.

It’s slightly off balance, veering wildly from candy to a tart, dry finish.  It somehow manages to be both a cartoon of hibiscus, a plastic lei woven from the bargain bin at Michael’s, and a delicately rendered watercolor still-life, crystal vase backgrounded by a misty tropical waterfall.

We don’t mind the sort of chaotic, whimsical and ridiculous flavor profile. It emulates and replicates the spirit of the can art. And every time we pop one open, we know we’re in for some “innocent” fun.

Mahalo, LaCroix, for giving us this Hawaiian-inspired sparkling magic.

Let’s have ourselves a Key Lime kiki, shall we? 

Lovers of sparkling water know that Lime reigns supreme in the flavor category, so it makes sense that at some point bubbler creators wanted to tap that Lime Contingent even harder and create funky combinations that didn’t need to exist, and there was no one around to stop them. 

So the sparkle scientists got all improv on us, but instead of “Yes, and” they said “Lime, and,” and here we are today, living with needlessly over-the-top concoctions like AHA Lime + Watermelon. 

To be fair, we’re into it. 

So here’s a “Yes and” from LaCroix. Their 2017 New Flavor of the year and Obnoxious Can Color Combination Nominee. (We’re just assuming they were nominated, because wow, this can is ugly.) 

The eyesore emerald paired with inexplicable chalky swipes of aggressive orange and look-at-me yellow. Okay, LaCroix. We get it. You’re telegraphing this flavor is going to be bold and your fan base loves you unconditionally. You can put together any old ill-advised colors you want and people will still buy it. We see you. 

But still — it’s gonna be just a slightly different lime, right? Seemingly not much more than regular lime. Because what is a Key Lime after all?  They’re essentially just limes that are smaller and sweeter. 

By these guesstimations, it can’t be that much different than the subdued stately solo “lime”. Can it?

On first crack, the nose indicates, indeed, not that much. The scent here is very quiet. You might think that you’re in for a regular ol’ lime. 

But no. Oh, no no.

Strap in and sip on.

Tasting Notes 

🥧🐎

This is wild. This is a flavor careening unhinged. Manic Key Lime Pie off to the races.

It greets you with a faceful of lime, but doesn’t stop there. It throws the pie in your face like you’ve just won the Grand Lime Game.

You got the whole shebang here. The burst of classic citrus. The sweet familiarity that comes from the keys. The vanilla of delicious pie insides. We swear you can even taste the pie crust.  You’re hanging out with Hemingway’s grandma in Key West and she’s serving dessert.  

Weirdly, while the nose of the Waterloo Lemon-Lime contains some vanilla, the taste has none.  But while the nose on the Key Lime keeps its secrets, the vanilla comes out to play in your mouth.  We also almost swear we can taste a little toasted coconut.

Key Lime is actually, according to Wikipedia, a “citrus hybrid”, and LaCroix has managed to create the perfect homage, blending the intensity of confection with the crispness and refreshment of the actual fruit.

This is all to say we are total fans! We love the dizzying, unfortunate color combinations on the can and the ridiculous flavor profile.  

LaCroix has been veering into the dessert flavors as of late, first with this one, and then again with this year’s Limoncello, and while we might’ve been skeptical at first, we find ourselves asking grandma for second helpings.

Truly, a moveable feast.

Living in the flashy and exhilarating sparkling world where new brands like Aura Bora and Nixie are locked in a veritable arms races for novel and quixiotic flavor combinations, circling back around to LaCroix Lime feels a bit anticlimactic.

It’s not that lime isn’t a perennial flavor dominator, particularly when it comes to singular flavors!  In fact, lime forever abounds. It’s certainly not going anywhere. But even LaCroix has upped its quirky flavor roster with offerings like Hibiscus and Limoncello.  They even rolled out a hotter, younger version of the Lime, Key Lime.

So intentionally journeying through a LaCroix Lime feels like taking a ride in the Way Back Machine. To a time when Free Range Parenting was just called parenting, and we all dressed like an episode of Stranger Things. Ah, simpler times.

And in a world of endless Lime Offerings and Lime Hybrids (hello, AHA’s Lime + Watermelon oral juggernaut), sometimes you just need to get back to your sparkling citrus roots, taking it back all the way to the 80’s and checking out the aromatics and tangs from whence we came.

So, as we sip upon one of the original bubbles, we ask ourselves: how does this hold up in the current creative climate? Has this stood the test of Flavor Time? (And yes, we imagine Flavor Time to be a figure like Father Time, but like a cool dad with an 80’s mullet.)

But we digress. It’s Lime Time.

The nose on this is full of gentle aromatics. Not the juiciest lime in the box, but it’s certainly appealing and inviting. This isn’t here to hammer you over the nose with piquant limery. No, this is a subtle spritz of the green stuff. In fact, we just want to get to sippin’.

Tasting Notes

🔍🔍

The lime on the palate is even less of a lime reverie than the one that greeted us on the nose. It kind of fades instantly, in a way we didn’t quite see coming.

Dare we say, this is totally underwhelming. Not tubular at all. Not much of anything is going on in here, which is pretty disappointing considering how the olfactory aromatics that greeted us upon first crack spoke of something fresher and more defined. There’s none of that happening in the mouth.

If Topo Chico’s (genuinely refreshing!) lime foray is called “Twist of Lime”, this Lacroix should be called “Slight Bend of Lime”.  This is your dinner date ordering a lime to spritz in their water glass, and a little squirt lands in your glass from across the table.

And this is kind of the LaCroix Way. While we’ve found ourselves reaching for Waterloo over LaCroix in the same flavor categories, due to their more robust and interesting flavor expressions, we’ve spoken with other Sparkling Water Devotees who have said LaCroix is their preferred go-to precisely due to the fact that the flavors are less discernible and overwhelming. Waterloo is too extra for them!

So we get that this is part of LaCroix’s irrepressible appeal that has clearly stood the test of Flavor Time. (Hello again, in your neon windbreaker.) And honestly, we’d never be disappointed to find this lime in the back of our fridge, having exhausted all other options.

Overall, however, we are left underwhelmed, longing for our tangy green friend, and will instead reach for Waterloo’s Lemon-Lime when we want for a real citrus explosion, or go with the exquisite and (possibly) reigning Lime Time champ, Perrier Lime, the exquisitely crafted French Lime sparkling water with a salty, mineral finish. What can we say? It’s the Veronica to LaCroix’s Betty.

One thing’s for certain, though: the LaCroix Lime at least reigns supreme over the bubly lime.  Low bar, but it’s not nothin’.

Ciao, Bella! is all we have to say about this epic southern Italia-inspired sparkling water.

This is LaCroix’s 2020 addition to their growing list of bubbler staples, and in the blur of this year’s disappointments, the arrival of Limoncello to the LaCroix roster is one of the lone bright spots. 

Plus, we get memories of that one time in Positano… but we digress. 🤫

Upon first glance, the can’s bright yellow evokes joy: just try and be sad gazing upon that sunshiney slice of Lisa Frank heaven. Here, the lemon is the sun itself, emitting heavenly rays from its delicious fruit-bearing body. With hot pink and purple swirls and accents, you know that this didn’t come to be a wallflower. This is star power. 

And the nose on this one is wild. It is at once subtle and unassuming, but when you really get in there, you get a distinct lemon poppyseed muffin. We dare you to unsmell this now. 

Tasting Notes

🍋🍰💦🤯 

Wow. This is not for the faint of heart. We are at peak birthday cake here. A lemony cake that somehow has managed to retain its moistness for an ungodly amount of time. This is a liquid dessert — in the best way. You’re not hammering your palate with one note sweetness. You’re getting layers of confection. This is an explosion of taste.

As you sip further and ponder the universe/this can of LaCroix, you can even get undercurrents of almond. The flavors in this continually have us drifting back to memories and desserts of yore. Do you know what Blue Moon ice cream is?  It’s in here too, somehow, even though no one really knows exactly what that flavor is. 

What we’re trying to say is that this sparkling water fills the spirit with both optimism and nostalgia, an impressive feat. 

Much like real limoncello, the sweetness of the lemon here is a buoyant, round Meyer lemon flavor, not the bitter sourness that you usually associate with the yellow puckermeister.  That’s because real limoncello is produced with lemon zest, not that fleshy middle that you squeeze into your tea. 

So speaking of actual limoncello: did LaCroix actually come up with a flavor that could compare to the dreamy candied liquor of the Mediterranean? 

How’s it stand up?

If you think we didn’t taste test this alongside the real thing, think again, because oh, we definitely did. If there’s ever a reason to relive your trip to Capri through libation, it’s the heroic task of writing sparkling water reviews.

We were pretty sure that for as much as we fell for the outlandishness of this sparkling water, that this particular LaCroix flavor was something unto itself, with actual limoncello a literal and figurative continent away. But lo and behold! This comes really close! Hats off, because we didn’t think such a singular liquor could translate to a mere sparkling water, but it does. And it makes us appreciate this little can of sunshine even more. 

One minor thing, the lemon in the genuine limoncello is stronger. The LaCroix doppleganger skews towards the muffin a little more than maybe it should.  Something bright to cut the dominant vanilla cake here would be appreciated.  

But this flavor is bold cartoonishness at its best. Quite frankly, this is exactly what 2020 needed.  Grazie, LaCroix!

We didn’t believe these actually existed. Show of hands for who has seen these at their local market ever.

Yeah, that’s what we thought. Crickets.

So we sort of thought we were hallucinating when we saw these on the shelves of a Meier supermarket in the middle of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We don’t associate “Pure Michigan” with anything tropical, fun or mojito-esque, so we were genuinely shocked. Northern Michigan? (Mosquito-esque, yes.)

But maybe they need all that effervescent liquid tropical sunshine pretty desperately up here. Maybe NiCola Mojito is only sold in places like Fargo and Siberia. Either way, we didn’t see this coming. But we immediately snagged two cases and never looked back, just in case it was all a fever dream.

And we were pumped.  With Beach Plum delivering some strong Rum Vibes, we know LaCroix has a thing for rum and beachiness apparently, so we went ahead and assumed they could pull off a sparkling water that emulates an island cocktail (along with some cola too? 🤷🏻‍♀️) All in, we said.

But let’s start with the can itself. We had forgotten about these Other Nicolas, since we weren’t convinced they lived anywhere other than the bottom of the LaCroix website. So therefore we had forgotten, when we lol-ed over the Beach Plum clip art, that Beach Plum wasn’t LaCroix’s first foray into beachy cans. Oh, no. They had a full Caribbean narrative happening long before Beach Plum was born.

But as always, there are some questionable graphic design choices.

LaCroix appears to not care that their light green palm frond washes out the yellow text font so intensely that you can barely read it, but we guess they know that you’re so pumped to finally be holding this can in the flesh that you don’t care either. We know you can’t get drunk off of this, but our excitement is truly intoxicating us. (And luckily, for whatever reason, they thought to color the “j” and the “i’ in mojito red, so at least you can read “ji” loud and clear.)

And we will now draw your attention to the woman booty-tooching in the mojito glass (shout out  to Tyra Banks, who taught us how to smize, even when fully dead inside). This “Cubana” hovers magically just off the rim of the glass. Is she sitting on ice, floating in the water? Either way, there’s enough muddled lime and mint shoved in the mojito that you could probably fit three more partygoers on top of it all without sinking in, but this lady flies solo apparently. We wish her well on her Eat, Pray, Rum travels.

But honestly, it’s weird. Why does she only have one arm?  What’s happening with her left thigh?  The more you look at it, the more it hurts your head. And the more uncomfortable you feel about the entire decision-making process behind it. The proportions and anatomy are comically unrealistic, and we’re questioning the taste level a la Nina Garcia.  (We discovered we’re not the only ones who feel this way.)

All of this leads us to believe a diverse workforce and/or women aren’t really dominating the graphic design department over at LaCroix HQ. But we could be wrong. We’re equal opportunity shaders around here, and are open to asking wtf to any and all of the genders behind this idea of a “Cubana”.

We will admit however, the white sands look inviting. We can practically hear those Caribbean waves crashing and are lulled into a Caribbean dream just gazing upon it.

And when you pop open the can, the dream wafts to life. The lime is gently spritzed and the mint freshly muddled. This is exactly how you want your Mojito to smell as you sip it while strolling along the Malecón in Havana.

But there’s also a distinctly sweet note in there, a sugary almost bubblegum air that we assume is the rum/cola part of the equation.  It’s all working and harmonizing in a way that’s so sophisticated you almost forget it’s a LaCroix. (But then you glance down and see the can art and you remember: Definitely a LaCroix.)

Tasting Notes

🥤🍃🍹😎🚫👙

It’s. All. Happening.

There’s a strong note of overall Cola when this Mojito first settles in your mouth. Herbal and bubblegum-y, like a little NiCola La Cola slipped in. You certainly understand why this is lumped in with the Nicola collection.

But when you begin to unravel the mojito’s mysteries , that’s when you start to realize that something really marvelous and impressive is happening. (Impressive for LaCroix, not, like, the history of human achievement.)

The mint and lime are right there, light and subtle, and yet clear, unmistakable and lucid expressions of the classic Mojito flavors.

And that’s when it hits you: This actually tastes like a mojito.

Whatever sort of weird cacophony is happening suddenly coalesces around something so accurate and delightful, you blink your eyes and discover You Are The Cubana.

We will point out that in all honesty we get more spot-on boozy rum vibes from the Beach Plum. For having “essense of rum” right on the can (well, barely, it’s in that yellow color that gets swallowed up by the yellow-green palm frond), it’s not a super specific flavor to be found in here.

Plus the mint is too much of a force in this mojito to let any other distinct flavor shine fully, although if there was a flavor that does peek its head out, it’s the cola, which also outpaces the deeper, more herbal rum notes.

We don’t know what is happening with this NiCola line, but it appears to be incredibly scarce, and we don’t understand why. Why would you spring for a basic Berry when you could be sipping on a crisp, cold Mojito sparkling water with some ill-conceived can art? Why isn’t LaCroix flooding the channels with one of their more interesting and well-executed flavors?

There’s so much that baffles us about LaCroix (see: can art, Black Razzberry)

We understand that probably the majority of you would prefer to drink a real mojito. That is a  natural desire. But when the sparkling water version is executed this well, it makes us believe we’d actually like to see more cocktail-inspired sparkling waters.

Please bless us with a Negroni and an Aviation sparkling water, LaCroix. The perfect way to get your cocktail fix before you’re able to drink actual cocktails.

Either way, between the latest summer lineup of Guava São Paulo and Beach Plum, and now this little tropical unicorn surfing into our lives, we are ready to have a Summer of LaCroix. Sorry, Waterloo. We love your Hot Girl Summer Pineapple, but LaCroix is delivering some serious Endless Summer right now.

And, well, we don’t want it to end.

The Maxim-y clip art woman on the can can go, but we’ll keep the rest.

Coke is it!  Or is it? 

Enter LaCroix’s NiCola LaCola: the sparkling water juggernaut’s attempt to replicate the addicting potion that has the world in its clutches, has a massive museum/shrine devoted to it, and is one of the most recognizable brands in the world. 

How did LaCroix fare?

The internet has strong opinions about it. But we’ll share ours. 

Fun fact: We avoided this flavor for foreverrrr because we don’t drink Coke, and don’t really have an affinity for Cola flavored soda in general. So soft drink fans, consider this your warning.

It is worth nothing that there are hordes of haters for this flavor, particularly by people that are well-versed in the sodacraft and who consider themselves downright Coke connoisseurs. (Including our parents, who actually worked for Coca-Cola in the 80s!) 

But let’s be honest: people really love the sugar rush and the lingering sweet aftershock.  And you will not find that with this “LaCola”. Therefore, we kinda love this one. All of the weird cola flavor mystique, none of the high fructose.

Also, the skinny, red, white and blue can of LaCola evokes some major French vibes for us, even though we’re pretty sure we’re supposed to feel patriotic. (Not quite sure what’s misfiring in our brains, because nothing says “America in the 21st century” like a sparkling water masquerading as Coke.)

On first crack, the nose on LaCola is definitely pure cola, particularly when cross-referenced with the Real Coke of the Iconic Glass Bottle and the Dark Mistress of Suburbia, Diet Coke.

All of the aromas here come from the same family, and if blind-folded, it would probably be pretty hard to distinguish the real thing. 

But where does it go from here?

Tasting Notes

Not the direction you think it might go. Maybe this dates us here in the Bubbleverse, but this is pure, unadulterated cocoa Necco Wafer. Yes, this is an old-timey reference, but if you know the flavor, that is pretty much the only thing you can taste at first.

But it becomes more refined the longer it lingers in your mouth, evoking notes of cardamom, chocolate and licorice, while still retaining a Cola-coated hue. It’s a nice balance for those who want the caramel-y warmth without the sugar OD. 

It exudes strong liquified tootsie roll vibes… in a good way?  It’s lighter, less syrupy, and can conjure that nostalgia for timeless American candy classics, sweets that have no discernible or specific flavor. 

“Cola” flavor is a catchall for an uber-flavor from the 19th century that included Kola Nut (the caffeine part), Citrus, Vanilla and Cinnamon. If you think about it, cola does taste like some rogue citrus got hot and heavy with some vanilla and cinnamon one night, while huffing rails of caffeinated tree nuts. 

Ah, the good old days. 

In summation, this stands on its own as a tasty “innocent” sparkling water, but won’t stand in as a substitute for the bubbling black gold that holds the modern world in a death grip.  LaCroix’s foray into the world of cola has been extremely polarizing. (Colarizing?) But, we actually highly recommend this!  Particularly if you don’t love cola flavor.

And while we’ll admit it’s no substitute for the real thing, maybe it’s time to set down that bottle anyway. Here’s a snippet from a 2015 Telegraph article on what happens to your body when you drink a Coke: 

“Based on research by health writer Wade Meredith, it explains that a 330ml can of Coca Cola contains so much sugar, your body should vomit – but the phosphoric acid “cuts the flavor”, helping you keep the liquid down. After 40 minutes, your blood sugar has spiked, your pupils dilated, and your blood pressure has risen.”

And let’s not get started with what happens to your teeth.

Maybe “LaCola” isn’t looking so bad afterall!

Where to start with this one? 

The resounding legend of our age, possibly single handedly responsible for the sparkling water supernova of the last several years.  The can that launched a thousand sips.  The taste of a generation.  Eau de millenial.

We’ve lost track of how many cases upon cases that we’ve drunk of this living legend over the last decade or so.

It’s difficult to review The Pamplemousse, unclouded by the accumulated years of memes, thinkpieces, and total LaCroix oversaturation.  But here we go:

The nose is juicy, ripe, full, crisp, clean: like you’ve just sliced open a fresh grapefruit, serrated spoon in hand.  There’s a genuine citrusy sour scent, too, a quality lacking in many of the other grapefruits in the bubbleverse.  One is prepared to enter the eleusis of pamplemousse. 

Basically: this smells really good.

Tasting Notes

But it all collapses on first sip.  A thin wisp of grapefruit echos from another dimension, flitting in and out of reality as it rolls through your mouth.  There’s a dryness, a bitterness, the watery ghost of that first hope.

A grapefruit is a fruit that contains multitudes, a lucious fractal spiralling through sweetness, acidity, and 50 shades of pink.  Every taste of one is a hero’s journey through kingdoms of light to the depths of the shadow realms.

LaCroix captures none of that.  They shave the multifaceted Citrus paradisi into a single plane, a homeopathic drop of pith in an ocean of carbonated water.  There is nothing of the glorious celestial citroid’s polyphonic choir, only a single, monotone note repeated like a sour OM resounding from the beginning to the end of the universe.

But somehow, this all works.  Do we contradict ourselves?  Very well then we contradict ourselves.   We could, and do, drink these all day.  They’re just so damn refreshing!

What is the naturally essenced black magic at the heart of the pamplemousse?  We may never be able to answer why these are so compelling even though there’s nothing specific to recommend it when placed under the tongue’s microscope.  

But that’s the mystery at the heart of all religious experiences: they leave no traces available to the scientist.  Or perhaps we’ve drank so much of the LaCroix kool-aid that the cult has permanently washed our minds.  Who can say?  

The star of LaCroix may have faded slightly as of late, but the pamplemousse remains as a pillar of an empire, a sphinx slowly eroding in a sparkling desert, but which still gives voice to the timeless riddle that stumped even Oedipus:  why is this so good?

Weirdly, peach-pear was only LaCroix’s 9th flavor, released in 2012.

Which is a little remarkable to us, because on first blush, peach + pear seems like kind of a strange combination, at least for your ninth flavor in twenty years. It’s a pairing usually found in cobblers, crisps, and pies, where the flavors are goo-illy fused with the help of a cup of sugar. But in a sparkling water?

After giving it a little thought, it makes some sense: peaches and pears are cousins in the Rose family, although twisting the family tree together a little can either bring out the best qualities, or you wind up in Deliverance.

Peach-pear does evoke some vision of a pastoral orchard, summertime canning and picnics, white sheets on a clothesline, gently aflutter in the spring breeze.

Does LaCroix fulfil our pastoral fantasies? Or are we going somewhere where the pies have eyes? Let’s pop the can.

The nose is pure pear with a fuzz of peach softly twining through. Pears are best when they’re still a little crisp – by the time they fully ripen they get a little sweet and grainy for our taste. And the pear wafting from the can is a bright, crisp, green pear.

Off to a good start! No banjos in the distance yet.

Tasting Notes
🐷🥧🪕

Unfortunately, the pear has somehow over-ripened in the time between taking a sniff and taking a sip. There’s still a tart note of green flesh, but the body of the flavor is mushy pear.

The pear tastes sweeter than expected: we had thought that maybe the pear was here to bring a tart counterpoint to the peach, which it does a little bit, but mostly there’s a sweet overlap, cobbler-style.

It’s actually the peach to the rescue – there’s a certain bitterness to a slightly under-ripe peach, a little pit flavor, and that pittiness is present in LaCroix’s peach.

Generally we’d want a chin dribbling, luscious stonefruit in our peach sparkling water, but here the undeveloped peach actually works to help keep this flavor from crumbling into pure peach pear crumble.

Interestingly, as you work your way through the can, the flavors brighten and crisp up a little. This might be because whatever saccharine aromatics are in LaCroix’s pear “essence” evaporate slightly, greening up the pear and tartening up the overall flavor profile.

There’s a few sips in here where we are sitting in an orchard, fresh cut grass and clean linens dancing together in a verdant Rosaceae dream.

But with every sip it morphs, like we’re working our way through the genetic line and each time it becomes less like something we recognize, and geez, we’d love it if the peach-pear gene pool diversified just a smidge.

Towards the bottom of the can, we start to get into sour peach territory, the flavors are pretty thin at this point. Cue the banjos, this peach is about to squeal like a pig.

But in the end, the flavor is barely present, in classic LaCroix style. We didn’t wind up descending into some dark hollow, nor did we get to finish our picnic.

We both sigh and shudder at what could have been, and just conclude that it did have a real pretty mouth.

Back when we did our LaCroix Apricot review, written at the request of a Bubbleverse reader, we mentioned that we were actually quite tickled to take review requests, so send away. And then, much to our delight, more requests came in!

But what we didn’t see coming was that all of these review requests would be for…

LaCroix. LaCroix! Color us self-unaware, but we thought this site was calling in fans of boutique, artisanal brands.  And yet we have learned that all that you want to see reviews for are the most basic of all things: our prosaic, midwestern 1980’s baby.

You are an intriguing bunch, Bubblenauts.

Although with all of the boutique, artisanal adaptogenic offerings out there, maybe we’ve hit peak boutique and all just need something soothing, simple and 80’s-esque in these trying times.

So please forgive us if you’ve been out there, silently judging us for neglecting this underwhelming (or is it!?) LaCroix staple for too long. We’re here to quench your overly adaptongenized and tiktok-ed souls with something banal and pedestrian: Razz-Cranberry.

We’d like to point out that LaCroix has two raspberry offerings, both of which involve the specific decision to use the double-z “Razzberry,” rather than go with the traditional “rasp”. And these decisions were clearly made recently, because Black Razzberry debuted this summer, and Razz-Cran, the old standby, was actually called Cran-Raspberry up until about two years ago. We don’t know what happened in the branding department over the last few years, but Choices Were Made.

Seems like LaCroix decided to test the waters with “razz” circa late 2019, and then decided to double down in 2021. 2020 was a tough year for all of us, but clearly it was harder on LaCroix.

A quick perusal down Reddit Lane informs us that for the most part, people consider this Razz-Cranberry to be pretty identical to its previous incarnation.  Only LaCroix’s spelling of Raspberry got weirder.

Let’s quaff!

The nose on this is a fully embodied raspberry note. There’s a whiff of tartness, which we understand here to represent “cranberry”, but it could just as easily be a raspberry in a younger, less ripe chapter of its fleeting life cycle. You have to use your imagination on that one: close your eyes and envision the bog as you sniff.

We’ll see if they can deliver the cran, or if they’re just gonna razz us. (Zing!)

Tasting Notes

Well. It’s still mostly raspberry. We have chided LaCroix before for not concocting any specific, solo-berry flavors, instead just giving us vague mish-mashery every time: ideas of berries, but nothing specific or grounded in the 3D. (Subthought: Who knew LaCroix was delivering from the flavor astral?)

But Razz-Cran is actually pretty close to a Raspberry exclusive. This is in the Boylan category of large-and-in-charge fruitiness.

Now, there’s also a noticeable tartness on the tongue, which we still assume must be the “cran” part of all this. But tartness is an attribute that applies to both Cranberry and Raspberry. This isn’t necessarily a cranberry per se.

Maybe when they changed the name from Cran-Raspberry to Razz-Cran they did so to give us all a heads up that this is definitely more Razz than Cran.

Now to be honest, we really like a good Cranberry. It’s a weird flavor for a sparkling water, but we were surprisingly down for Bubly Cranberry, and we really think highly of Good & Gather’s Cranberry Citrus.

We want that specific kind of astringency that comes from a cranberry. Take us to the bog, LaCroix!  Especially because as we write this, we are striding into peak fall, and we’d love a little more autumnal splendor in our mouths and less summer-in-the-mosquito-filled-raspberry-bushes.

It’s not that we don’t like this, but we also don’t love it. Maybe this is just what you get when you mix seasons.  Or maybe this is the corner LaCroix has unwittingly backed itself into by choosing tart-on-tart flavors to combine.

Either way, if you’re gonna tease us with a double-z razz, we’re gonna expect some of the chaos that you gave us with Black Razzberry, and not some tepid Razz-Razzberry.

But then again, chaos is not what we’re here for this time: we want some of that gently tart midwestern normalcy, gosh darn it!  And if that’s what you crave, Razz-Cran can be considered a steadfast, mildly refreshing companion.

Keep the requests coming! 💫

Welcome to this edition of RuCroix’s Bubble Race, the competition where Sparkling Waters show off their charisma, uniqueness, nerve and carbonated talent in order to be crowned America’s Next Sparkle Superstar.

Today we’d like to enter Miss Tangie onto the runway for your consideration. (Sissy that walk, kitty girl).

The sassy, citrusy sparkler that stole the hearts of America by being that intoxicating mix of bubbly and bold. Had we ever sipped such a sight before?

Say it together now: Miss Tangie…Miss Tangie…Miss Tangie.

Sure, this Tangerine comes in flashy South Florida orange packaging, complete with some epically questionable aesthetics (that font!), but what’s beneath the surface that’s gonna enchant us with that succulent carbonation and an irrepressible flavor that can only be the unmistakable eau de Tangie?

When we first meet Miss Tangie, wafting her way to our nose, we’re hypnotized by sweet candied aromas. This is a freshly peeled Cutie, bright and intoxicating. It’s a good one and a total contender for the main prize. We want more.

We want to see this tangerine strutting down the runway in full Tangeranza Eleganza. Basically, save this one from elimination and let’s see how Miss Tangie measures up against the competition in our four main categories, shall we?

Tasting Notes

Charisma

If there’s one phrase that’s burned in your skull at this point, it’s “Miss Tangie”, and you’ll be repeating it over and over like an incantation because praise the lord, this is a well-timed death drop into our mouths.

This isn’t winning the mere mini-challenge, no, this is trouncing the competition in the Maxi Challenge, stomping all over the runway, snatched and slaying.

And this Citrus Queen is not to be confused with Orange!

Tangerine is a sweeter and stronger flavor than a simple orange, color and citrus similarities to the side. Tangerine oozes charisma over Orange. Yes, we said it. The library is always open in the Bubbleverse, and we already know, Reading is Fundamental.

Moving on:

Uniqueness

Well, yes! We had to wrack our brains to even think of another solo flavor Tangie out there. (We love you Simply Organic Tangerine Lemongrass, but you’re ineligible from competition here.)

And yes, there’s Weller’s Tangerine, along with a host of other tangerine cannabinoid sparklers out there, but any Tangerine + CBD is gonna be slightly danker and therefore the purity of the solo tangie is sullied.

(We discovered that Jelly Belly has a single-flavor Tangerine, but um, who is out there drinking Jelly Belly seltzer? Let us know if we’re missing out and we’ll get on it stat.)

Basically a Tangie by any other name would never be Miss Tangie.

Nerve

This tangie is all nerve. This is not a flavor that is afraid to make waves.

While some of the other flavors from LaCroix’s Bubble Family can be a little thin and forgettable (Looking at you Lime-i Imfurst and Peach-Pearlie Hides), this one isn’t afraid to do what it takes to return with a vengeance after getting eliminated first, based solely on their nerve (and the support of the entire internet).

This is sunshiney grit in a can. It’s serving us glow ups and waistlines cinched to the gods. Michelle Visage approves.

Nerve, check.

Talent

This tangerine sparkles and bubbles and it werks. It’s fierce to the last drop unlike some of the lesser bubbles who lose their aromas and fade into the citric acid also-rans. Yes, it’s maybe a little over-the-top and extra on the outside, but it’s a top notch flavor queen through and through.

So do we have our new reigning superstar? Well, it’s close.

Here are some fascinating metrics: In a study done by Priceonomics, LaCroix Tangerine is indeed as esteemed as we thought. Charting only behind the sparkler that’s beguiled a generation: Aquariamousse.)

Sadly, until Miss Tangie is crowned victor by the bubblemaker himself, RuCroix Charles, we’ll have to call this one a runner-up. But a truly deserving beloved fan favorite nonetheless. This tangerine will never have to lip sync for its life, only its LEGACY.

It’s that deep, gutteral voice taste for us.

And now, until we meet again for Bubble Race All Stars, where we’ll be rooting for you Miss Tangie, it’s time for us all to sashay away.

👉 In all seriousness, The Bubbleverse is a huge supporter of the LGBTQ community, and have been heartbroken at how the pandemic has impacted the drag community and their ability to bless us with their craft.

If you want to learn more and help out, check out feedthequeens.com.