Sainsbury's Diet Cloudy Lemonade

Author's product rating:   

Value for money	Excellent
Product Quality	Excellent
Product package	Good
Taste	Delicious
How loyal are you to this brand?	Quite

Advantages:	Yum
Disadvantages:	None

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Sainsbury's diet cloudy lemonade is, apparently, made with real lemons. A whole 4% lemon juice (from concentrate) in fact. Always a bonus, don't you think, when a food product you buy actually contains what the label suggests is in it?

This cloudy lemonade is also available in a non-diet version, but it's the diet version that I'm going to concentrate on for this review. I'm reviewing the 2ltr bottle, which Sainsbury's sell at 41p each, but it is also available in a six-pack of 330ml cans, at £1.09 per pack

The 2ltr bottle is clear plastic with a blue lid and a picture of a glass of lemonade on the front, so as you can tell the packaging is nothing out of the ordinary. It should be fairly easy to spot on the shelves though, as it's cloudy (the clue is in the name) unlike the clear lemonade we're more used to buying nowadays.

The label tells me that a 250ml glass provides 8 cals, traces of fat and salt and 1.3g sugar. As far as I'm aware that's reasonable for a diet drink, but I can't pretend to be an expert, as I'm more interested in how a drink tastes than it's calorie content. However, I can reassure you that the Sainsbury's colour wheel on the front of the bottle is nicely green. The label also proudly proclaims 'only natural flavours' in pretty big writing on the front, and it's only when we get to the back of the label that the small print tells us that this drink does contain the preservatives Potassium Sorbate and Sulpher Dioxide, oh, and sulphites for you allergy sufferers, whatever they may be.

I was very intrigued by a note on the back of the label informing me that Sainbury's care about quality and that's why they're improved their soft drinks. Apparently, they are now made using only natural colours and flavours. They don't use Benzoate preservatives or Aspartame sweetener (this lemonade is sweetened with Sucralose). If you want more information they advise you to visit www.sainsburys.co.uk. I do, so I'm checking that right now. The website informs me that:

"From June 2007 Sainsbury's will be looking to use natural colours and fruit and vegetable extracts as colouring agents in drinks. Where flavourings are used, these will be from the named fruits and from other natural sources. In addition, Sainsbury's is replacing Aspartame amongst other sweeteners in low calorie drinks with Sucralose, a sweetener made from sugar that tastes like sugar."

So great news for all of those whose body is a temple.

There's also good news for me because this drink is suitable for vegetarians and vegans, though I'll be honest, I'd be pretty worried if it wasn't. What kind of lemonade would they be making that contained meat products?

To be absolutely honest there isn't really all that much more I can tell you about this product just from looking at it. It's your basic bottle of pop, we've all seen them and know what we're looking at, so lets get on with the important bit, the tasting.

Ok, first of all there's an impressive burst of fizz when I first remove the top. The label kindly informs me that this soft drink is best served chilled, so I've gone to great lengths to refrigerate it (moving a bottle of coke to one side to make room) and the lemonade is now nicely cold. My first taste (of this bottle, I've drunk many bottles before) reminds me of why I like this drink so much. It's obviously nicely chilled and refreshing, it is, after all, a glass of lemonade straight from the fridge. It's also got a nice fizz to it and a hint of sharpness from the lemons, thank heavens, there's nothing worse than a sickly sweet lemonade. Having said that, it's not too sharp, in fact, the sweet and sharp elements of the drink are very nicely balanced, with just enough bite to make this a proper, grown up soft drink.

If you're a cloudy lemonade virgin you may wonder what the difference is between this and ordinary lemonade. Well, as far as I can tell the only noticeable difference is that your ordinary lemonade is clear, and cloudy lemonade is cloudy (sometimes referred to as traditional). If there is any other difference between them I'm yet to spot it, although cloudy lemonades do tend to taste more of real lemons than some lemonades, which taste more of chemicals, to be honest.

The label informs me that this product is best within three days of opening, but I'll be honest with you, even with only me drinking it three days would be a very long time for one bottle to last. I tend to keep a bottle next to me on the desk and top my glass up as I go, this way a 2 ltr bottle tends to last me one day, sometimes a little longer. Drinking it this way does mean that by the time I've got to the bottom of the bottle, the lemonade is at room temperature, not it's preferred 'chilled' but that has really never been an issue for me. It may be at it's best served chilled, but it's also exceptionally nice served slightly warm. In fact, I'd bet this'd make a lovely warming drink served hot in winter with a spoonful of honey stirred in.

I haven't found anything to complain about in this cloudy lemonade, but if I absolutely had to criticize anything about it at all, I'd say that it does lose its fizz a little faster than it's competitors. Once the fizz has died down, the sharpness of the lemons is more noticeable, but as I actually prefer my lemonade to be a little on the bitter side, this is not a problem for me at all. The opposite, in fact.