drinking. Again, not that kind.

Mmmmmmmm. My three new favourite beverages.

The first is Spring Valley's Springwater with a hint of Mandarin Juice. This is the closest that I've found to my beloved (and frustratingly out of reach) Japan Airlines exclusive 'Skytime Yuzu'. It advertises itself as 'no artificial colours or flavours, no preservatives, low calorie'. I guess that's true, because I know what all the ingredients mean, and at 48kj/12 cal per 100mL, it's less than 1/3 as sugary as Coke, or most juices. I don't know if that actually makes it good for you though, per se, but it's certainly not as overpoweringly sweet as almost all other drinks on the market though, and nice and refreshing. Also, being a subsidiary of the Cadbury Schweppes group, it should be available everywhere.

Parker's Organic juices are off the planet unbelievable. This one, the raspberry and apple juice, lists it's ingredients as 'the juice of four apples, and 12 raspberries'. Woah. It's fresh pressed though, which means it doesn't keep. I was enjoying it so much that I was having little sips and putting it back in the fridge. Bad move, because after a day or two it's now fizzy and off and I'm going to have to tip it. Which almost makes me cry - it's that good. Also, it's currently only available in Victoria and NSW. Typical. We bought it from the mega organic shop on Bridge Road, but the Parker's website has a place where you can request it, so maybe it'll be in our little provincial shops soon. Go forth and email.

Mmm, and last but not least, Sunzest Organic. This one's a bit hard to track down, and I suspect at best you'll only find it in Victoria. The coffee shop in Tom's building stocks it, if you're in the neighbourhood. It's a pretty plain looking bottle with a green lid and MY GOD it's good. I thought I was drinking orange drink, not orange juice it was so sweet and lovely. But no. 100% orange juice, with only a little preservative added. Yum yum yum. I'm fence-sitting about whether this stuff is actually tastier than freshly home squeezed home grown oranges. But that's something in itself!

And here's an old favourite thrown in for good measure, because I've realised rather late in the piece that two of the above three are unobtainable to most people. I'm completely in love with Santa Cruz's raspberry lemonade. It tastes like it has real raspberries crushed up and added to some old-school made-with-real-lemons lemonade. Because it does! Amazing! I may be biased because raspberries are my favourite fruit, but this stuff is good. And available (if expensive). You can get it at Good Life Pizza, and the 7 day supermarket in North Adelaide, and I've definitely seen it around in other places too. Keep your eyes peeled!

Update: Today I went to the markets and came home with these two new finds. On the left is a Sanpellegrino 'BBThe' still Peach Iced Tea. This was very nice and very peachy indeed, and all the writing is in Italian which is fun. It's quite sweet, but somehow has less sugar than most drinks: at 141kj/100ml it's a third less sugary than the chocolate milk. And because it's only 330ml it's probably only just worse for you than the 'low calorie' Spring Valley drink which is almost twice as big. Pleasantly (I thought) it doesn't have the bitterness of many Italian drinks. It's got a foil lid that you have to peel off before you get to the regular can ring pull, which as much as it's pointless overkill and bad for the environment, was admittedly kind of novel and fun.

On the right is Pura's 'new' choc mint drink. I could've sworn they've had a mint drink for ages so I thought this was more a promo than anything else, but actually it does taste different than I remember. Very much like an after dinner mint. Yum! Not so good for your love handles though, this one...