You are currently viewing Nature’s Nectar Wild Cherry Flavored Juice Pouches (Aldi)

Nature’s Nectar Wild Cherry Flavored Juice Pouches (Aldi)

Aaaah, the juice pouch. While other kids’ drinks were in boxes, one company had to come along and put it in a pouch instead. One of my favorite childhood memories involves trying to poke that sharp straw through the small hole at just the right angle that it would puncture it and go into the drink, instead of impaling the pouch all the way through, forcing me to basically shotgun it so that all the juice didn’t leak out. To be a kid again.

I’m actually finding I still have the same struggles…I managed to poke the hole open without getting the straw in, and when my wife went to show me how to do it (she’s a pro), she got juice all over the place, thanks to my error. Oops. (At least I can say from my failures that the drink is clear, so chances are good there aren’t any artificial colors inside). Thanks to the extra hole she pre-scored right underneath the manufacturer’s straw hole, I was able to finally get it in and take my first drink.

I have to say that I’m rather underwhelmed with this one. Granted, cherry would have never been my first choice (I knew my wife would want it and bought it for her), but it tastes a little watered down to me. I guess that was always a characteristic of the national brand, too…the tastes always seemed a little weaker to me than the ones in boxes. But that could also just be because I usually got the boxes and was more familiar with them. The cherry itself is made up of “natural flavors”, so there aren’t actual cherries anywhere to be had here, but from what I can taste of it, it’s pretty accurate. There is a strong cherry aftertaste that lingers in the back of the throat for a while.

Now that I’ve sipped it a few more times, it tastes like a white cherry Icee, which were passable, but never my favorites. It’s got that kind of syrupy taste that you can tell was created in a lab. Similarly, I find these to be decent, but nothing that I would get for myself—I don’t like this flavor nearly as much as my wife does. It is good for a change of pace between all the juices I’ve been getting, and these have 25% less sugar than most boxed drinks (according to the packaging, anyway), so there’s that. Now if only we could put some actual fruit juice in these, that would be even better…

Overall: 5.5/10. To be fair, cherry isn’t my favorite flavor (got them for the wife), so take my opinion with a grain of salt (as you should take any opinion anyway), but I was pretty underwhelmed by these. The taste reminds me of a white cherry Icee, though the cherry flavor seems a little watered down to me; it does lead to a strong cherry aftertaste that lingers. Apparently, they have 25% less sugar than regular juice drinks, but that still amounts to 16g per pouch, which seems pretty high. Still, $1.79 for ten pouches is pretty inexpensive, so there are some savings to be had for those that enjoy these more than I do. On a side note, I still suck at opening these pouches, 25 years later…

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