Opinion
The best in beverages, 2009
Despite the fact that I’m enjoying a drop of Christmas wine right now, my head is still full of the past year’s wonderful new product launches and innovations.
Agree or disagree, I’m sure you’ll concur that 2009 has been a great year for the energy shot sector, a trend that looks set to continue into 2010. Here are my favourites:
Energy shots
- 925 Energy Shot from Energy Beverage Worldwide
- Monster Hitman (the 3oz shot)
- Red Bull shot
- Big Shotz
- PurBlu all-natural health shots
- Go Fast value shots
- Target Energy Shot (the first shot drink aimed at women).
Soda
Some of the biggest companies have rolled out exciting product innovations across the world in the soda category, despite the recession.
- Pepsi Natural
- Spirit of Georgia (Coca-Cola)
- Dr Pepper Cherry
- Asahi Point Zero
- Zilch (Jones Soda).
And Coke Zero continues to gain ground.
Ingredients
It’s been a big year for ingredients, with stevia making significant inroads into the marketplace. Its launch has to be in my list of the year’s best ingredients:
- launch of Stevia
- chilli (everything, from tea bags to chilli-flavour drinks)
- ginger (such as in Ito En’s sparkling pink ginger and apple vinegar)
- quince (try Bionade, the fermented malt drink – it’s delicious!)
- hops (as in Hopper)
- dark chocolate (can’t leave that one out!).
Ready-to-drink teas
Riding the financial storm with perfectly brewed aplomb seems to be the RTD tea sector, which still seems to be serving up new products and delightful concoctions to keep us interested in all seasons. My particular favourites this year were:
- Good for me iced tea from Switzerland’s Bishofzel
- Nestea Red Tea pomegranate passion from Coca-Cola
- Good green tea from Fair Beverages
- Lipton Alpha
- Energizate, Purificate and Relajate from Nestea Moods of Mexico
- 3D pink grapefruit in cans from Revolution Tea Company.
Functional drinks
With Christmas and the New Year celebrations approaching, it’s wise to factor in a ‘recovery period’ in which to ease the trifles of too much rich food and alcohol. I may devise a simple diet that revolves around my favourite functional drinks of 2009:
- Winter honey and lime from Japan’s Vitasoy International (good as an anti-flu drink)
- David Kirsch 48-hour de-tox Lemon-Aid
- Teisseire isotonic dilutable cordial
- Gaba from Jones Soda
- Benevia from Arizona-based Health Span Solutions
- JU skin smooth, hair shine and skin glow variants from Daniels Group
- Slow Cow from Boisson Slow Cow
- Bravo Friscus from Probi and Skanemajerier of Sweden
- Neuro Brands with neuro sonic
- All-natural Vuka energy drinks.
Juice drinks
The juice drinks category has been particularly busy this past year, with new and inspiring packaging designs, delectable cocktails of flavours and ingredients, and some of the year’s most interesting and entertaining marketing campaigns. Here are a few of my favourite products:
- Preshafruit
- Masafi functional juices
- Jaffa Viva from Vitmark
- Yumberry from Yumberry UK
- Beet It from James White Drinks
- Bode functional juice drinks
- Sparkling Vege from Ito En of Japan
- Chiquita Fresh frozen fruit smoothies
- One Healthy Habit
- Tropicana Pure
- Eve from Baltika Breweries.
Flavoured/functional waters
Let’s not forget simple hydration, which has been a key topic for discussion in 2009. In our quest to drink enough water to function on a day-to-day basis, we’re now spoilt for choice in the variety of flavours and functionality we have on offer. This is my list of particular favourites:
- Next Generation Waters
- Skinny Water Wake Up
- AiQA intelligent water
- This Water
- Pokka’s Collagen Water
- Fonterra’s Wh2ole.
Kids’ drinks
Exhausted from the tearing and shredding of wrapping paper, you could hydrate the kids with any of these wonderful highlights of 2009:
- First Juice (blueberry purple carrot and peach purple carrot)
- Magic Potions from Little Bird
- Bottlegreen Party drink
- AiQA kids.
Dairy drinks
Last but not least, here’s my pick of the bunch from the dairy drinks sector, which was quite a task, I can assure you. 2009 has been a bumper year for this particular category, with no obvious slowdown in terms of innovation launches and creative thinking.
- Shake the cake (a dessert drink from Shaken Udder)
- Minute Maid pulpy super milky (fruit juice, milk powder, whey protein and coconut)
- Galaxy Chocolate probiotic drink (oh my god …)
- Protein Blitz from Next Protein
- Caribou iced coffee.
And that’s it for my lists of 2009 highlights. There were so many to choose from, but I look forward to the many wonderful drinks of 2010. For now, let’s raise a glass to 2009.
Merry Christmas to you all – see you in the new year!
About the author
Claire Phoenix is managing editor of Beverage Innovation magazine. Subscribe here.
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