What’s refreshing, comes in a wide assortment of fruit flavors, and is the hottest beverage to hit grocery store shelves in recent years?
Sparkling water.
If you visit any grocery store canned beverage section, you will see numerous brands and varieties of sparkling water. The new drink trend reveals the changing American palate, with a step away from corn-syrup laden sugary sodas and artificially sweetened diet sodas to calorie-free, sodium free effervescent water with a splash of essential fruit oils. This trend has exploded into a 1.2 billion dollar industry.
Two of the biggest soft drink companies, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, have jumped into the ring, vying for the title of best selling sparkling water brand with AHA and bubly, respectively. However, the clear category leader is National Beverage, with its LaCroix line, which commands about 80% of the sparkling water market.
Admittedly, I have become a huge fan of AHA and bubly, and have determined the best flavors after trying the majority of the ones which appealed to me. Apparently, the flavors which captured me the most (AHA Orange-Grapefruit, AHA Blueberry-Pomegranate, bubly Mango and bubly Pineapple) have also appealed to others, because I keep having a devil of a time finding those particular flavors. I’m definitely tempted to check out LaCroix varieties since I have also sampled Spindrift, Waterloo, Perrier, and S. Pellegrino, but have yet to do so. According to some sparkling water aficionados, LaCroix reigns supreme in the flavor department.
Now that summer has hit in all its blazing glory, this is a perfect time to try some of the sparkling water brands if you haven’t yet done so.
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