CalNaturale - 4 Reviews

This drink is more soymilk than it is coffee and it shows. For some people that might be a turnoff, but for me it's a green light to keep on drinking. The coffee taste is at a level that puts it at "fancy coffee drink" status. Something that you would order at a local coffeehouse with a wacky name. It still has a coffee flavor, but it's smoothed out. If you drink your coffee black, this will taste insanely weak to you, but for those of us who only dabble in coffee drinks that are flavored with other things, this may be a stepping stone for getting into the hard stuff.

This drink is good. So high in calories that I felt like only drinking half, but whatever. It goes down really smooth and that's because it's a thick drink. Not milkshake thick, unless you leave your milkshakes in the car when you run into the store to get your pre-packaged noodle dinners that you feel like you need to get because you've got a coupon that makes them free so you can feel like you're on Extreme Couponing. The erythritol doesn't kick in until the drink is long gone down your seemingly endless gullet and last for a strangely long time, like minutes. Erythritol, to me at least, makes my mouth water, and although it's not a bad thing, and I can deal with it, it lets me know that "something" is going on continuously with what I just ingested.

As a protein drink this is awesome. Although it's only got 16 grams of protein on top of a whopping 260 calories, you've probably just burned it off whilst running a half marathon. Don't worry, pal, you'll hit that 26.2 soon enough and you can tear that "13.1" sticker off your Rav 4 and slap on a fresh, new, impressive "26.2" sticker. No one thinks you're less of a person because you've got that on there. I don't think that I could put a "6.55" sticker on my car. Cheer up. Put those sweet shoes, extra short shorts, and dumb hat on and go run that marathon.

Even though coffee was never my think I drank obscene amounts of it in high school. My friends and I would hang out at Perkins and just down coffee for hours. It was what we did, so I joined in. I added so much sugar and cream to mine that I don't know if it could technically still be called coffee, but it is what it is. As we got older, meaning we got cars, we would go into the city and hang out at Topic Coffee in Allentown. The first couple of times I got coffee, but then a random person we met exposed me to chai. I love tea now and drink it all the time, but when I was younger all I knew about it was that my grandmother drank it. When someone had me try their chai tea bells and whistles went off in my brain. This was delicious. It wasn't bitter like what my grandmother drank, and the spices made it seem so exotic (keep in mind I was 16 at the time). Since then chai has been a favorite of mine, and the times I find myself in a coffee shop it's generally what I order (Unless Nina is working and she makes me this magical peanut butter mocha thing with tons of whipped cream).

I had expected this to be a soymilk with a light chai flavoring, but the chai was way stronger than I anticipated. I love it. It is a completely vegan drink chock full of vitamins and minerals that actually tastes incredible. At first the chai hits you nice and strong. As that fades out a dry soy aftertaste creeps in. It's subtle and nice. I've finished the carton and now I already want more. If only this were available in Western New York.

CalNaturale is better known for their wine that comes in these little cartons. They have fairly recently branched out with their Svelte line. It's a vegan friendly line of nutritional/protein drinks. Their website claims to provide you with "the lasting nutrition and sustained energy you need for your active and busy day." We've had a handful of protein style drinks lately. Most of them have been surprisingly good.

I have proclaimed many times (to the rolling eyes of my girlfriend) that a bowl of cereal in the morning does not count as food for the day. It is simply part of a routine, a crucial part at that. Being that I need my morning cereal (fake Cinnamon Toast Crunch, because I am a child after all) I use a decent amount of soy/almond milk. For a while I always used the vanilla versions to give the cereal a little extra kick. None of the stuff that I had tried had an eighth of the vanilla punch that this little carton does. You get punched right in the uvula by that little vanilla bean. While you're recovering the soy aftertaste sets in. When I first started drinking this carton I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. The further in I got the more I enjoyed it. I guess I just needed to get accustomed to it.