I think I might have mentioned this before in a previous review, but I hate water.  I absolutely abhor it.  I drink it, simply because of the little fact that I will die if I don’t get it, but unless I’m dripping sweat, I literally have to force it down.  Literally.  My body cringes just thinking about it.  Sometimes I like to put in the little flavor packets, but I’m sure those have so many chemicals in them that they’re probably bad for me, so I keep that to a minimum.

Another thing I rarely buy is the flavored sparkling water.  I’m not talking the bitter stuff that tastes like someone just put a teaspoon of actual fruit juice inside a large container of sparkling water.  That stuff is even worse than normal water.  I’m talking the artificially sweet, completely artificially-flavored, calorie- and vitamin-free sparkling water.  Even though I don’t buy them very often, I really enjoy them, and at 59 cents for a 33.8 oz bottle, it never breaks the bank.

Surprisingly, on the last visit, it was my wife that decided to give them a try.  What made it so shocking is that we have completely different palates–she’s the one that usually hates sweet stuff, yet loves the crappy bitter sparkling waters that I can‘t stand–and so I wasn’t expecting her to purchase these.  Needless to say, she wasn’t very impressed, so I swooped in to take them off her hands.

Today we’re looking at the white grape variety.  Typical of most of these types of beverages, PurAqua’s White Grape Sparkling Water has absolutely no fruit juice.  It does have “natural flavor”, which is essentially FDA-speak for “something, or a combination of some things, that create a flavor very close to the flavor you think you’re drinking”, so that doesn’t really reveal too much.  Aside from that, we have aspartame, some acids, and clearly the most natural thing in the ingredient list, carbonated water.

There isn’t much authentic white grape scent in the smell–it smells kind of…cheap.  Which it is, so I guess I can’t complain.  The taste doesn’t fare much better, as it doesn’t taste much like white grape, either, instead coming sorta close, and then just kind of veering off into a kind of diet-ish blandness.  Speaking of diet drinks, there’s also a rather tart, annoying aftertaste that’s similar to the aftertaste you get from diet sodas.  The culprit is probably aspartame, an artificial sweetener that people are up in arms about, because it supposedly has been linked to cancer.  I’ve also noticed that some diet beverages are removing it from their drinks due to public demand, so they can replace it with a new, different artificial sweetener that will also be linked to cancer in a few years.  My biggest complaint isn’t the whole cancer thing, but that it often tastes like crap, which is the case here.  I’m not sure I can even justify the meager price tag for something that tastes so…boring.  I guess it’s a notch above regular water, but not something I would get more than once a year.  Pass.

Overall: 3/10.  The sixty cent price tag is enticing, and at least most of the bottle is made up of water (if we can believe the nutrition label), but PurAqua’s White Grape Sparkling Water tastes like crap.  The chemically-induced white grape flavor is nowhere near crisp or inviting enough to be considered believable, and there’s a rather gross aftertaste, courtesy of the aspartame (an artificial sweetener).  The peach isn’t bad for what it is (see below), but I can’t see myself buying this variety ever again.