Holland - 6 Reviews

Long meetings. You spend all day at an office and sometimes it's alright. You've got your little desk and it's done up the way that you like and sometimes you can listen to music there. At my desk, I don't listen to metal because there are others around and the others wouldn't appreciate it. No, not like the movie "The Others," which was one of the most awful movies I've ever seen, next to "Bats" of course. I mean, come on. Nothing happened in the whole movie and even the payout was just discovery of nothing. Ugh, Nicole Kidman, you're the pits.

Long meetings. I'll start again. Nothing can save you short of a car hitting your building or someone smoking in the stairwell, which sets off the smoke alarms which means that the fire department come and evacuate the entire building. Since neither of these happen, I needed something. A guava juice is the perfect escape from reality and I was lucky enough to have one in cache.

I enjoyed this drink in all its gritty goodness. As I've said previously, I don't know what Maaza does to their drinks but they're right on the fence between nectar and juice and I don't want them to move. It has a great guava taste. Pretty sweet, but the flavor was on.

Since I'm writing this and I'm (usually) not a disrespectful jerk all the time, I am out of the meeting writing it, so I finally got out, but unless a meal is provided, there should be no such thing as a three and a half hour meeting. FACT!

Ahh, the tropics. I've never been. I've been to Florida, but never anywhere tropical. I feel that everything is sand, everyone drives beach buggies, everyone wears hula skirts, and there is an abundance of fresh fruit everywhere. I am certain this place exists somewhere in the geographic world. No, I will not put money on it, but I can still be certain that it's there. In the case that you can't come up with the $1,000 it takes to go there, you can probably stop over to your local grocery store and try and find this drink. Although I am second guessing some of their "tropical" fruits, the taste is pretty good. Yes, there is the dreaded banana in it, but apple, peach, and pineapple juices mask it.

If I had things my way, I would be in a palm tree, drinking this out of a coconut with a little umbrella. My straw would be made of bamboo because that sounds awesome and I would be waiting for the pig roast below to be complete so that I may eat until my heart and stomach is content. Also, if you don't know me, in this fantasy I have also given myself the ability to climb trees. In high school I had to do the rope climb and might have made it as high as I can jump and hold on. Someday I'll master that rope and as soon as I do, bon voyage.

This has been sitting in my fridge for quite some time. After drinking Malta Goya anything that is malted makes me weary. I'm also 99% sure I was racially profiled when I purchased this. I got it from a tiny African market. When I walked in all ongoing conversation ceased. When I brought my drink to the counter there was no price on it. The two employees shot each other a look, nodded, and then told me a price that was higher than expected. Oh well, it was the only drink they had that we had yet to review so, I won't have to deal with them again.

Tonight I decided I finally needed to get it over with. I grabbed the bottle (that eerily looks like a beer bottle) from the fridge, sighed, and twisted off the cap. I expected it to have a super malty smell, but was shocked to discover it had the scent of a freshly sliced green apple. Things were starting to look up so I took a big gulp. This is exactly what I want out of an apple soda. It tastes like a perfect apple. It tastes crisp and has a slight malt/barley aftertaste. It's not enough to distract you from the glorious apple taste. So many apple sodas out there have that disgusting fake green apple flavor, but Bavaria got it right. For that I salute them. I was expecting this to taste like liquid garbage, but it ended up being in the higher spectrum of drinks we reviewed.

Have you ever tried to eat a mango without the proper utensils? It's one of the sloppiest meals I've ever had. Once on tour in Indiana we were given a handful of these wonderful fruits. The only thing I had to eat them with was a pocketknife. I cut them in half lengthwise and then we basically ripped the fruit from it's casing with our teeth like we were the feral kid from Mad Max. We really didn't think it through. In a matter of moments we were a dripping sticky mess, with no means to clean ourselves up. Worth it. Mangoes are incredible and so is their juice. Maaza understands this and has done a great job bottling its greatness. They let you enjoy it without the mess. It may be less fun, but it's just as tasty.

Holland. There are a few places that I wish that I could go back in time to. One of them being Manchester in the early 80's to see The Smiths and Joy Division. The other would be the mid-to-late 80's to Holland to see Funeral Oration. While I would be there anticipating the next show, I would probably walk around and see what Holland has to offer. I would get some breads...what do they have in Holland? What does Holland have to offer? Where are Lego's from? Is that Holland? Let me Wiki this...no, that's Denmark. Well, regardless, Holland has Maaza to offer and that's something I can get behind. They do have a different definition of fruit punch, though, which I will go into right now.

This drink was bold and flavorful, but one thing that threw me off was the viscosity. Yes, viscosity made it strange. We've drunk things with chunks, bubbles, and other junk in it but this one set me back. It was right in between a melted smoothie and a juice. It was think. Viscous. It was not a bad flavor at all. Being so thick, it stayed with you for a while. If you love juice, try it out. If you know what you're getting into beforehand, you'll like it more. Promise.

Years ago on a trip to Toronto I was introduced to the wonderful beverage bubble tea. My first experience wasn't the greatest. I got plum flavored (I love plums, but I've learned that things plum flavored generally are pretty gross) and I didn't realize you were supposed to chew the tapioca balls. About halfway through I started to get a stomachache, and like any self-respecting person in their early 20's I started to use the tapioca as spitballs. What can I say? I'll always have childish tendencies. The amount of fun I had spitting the tapioca was enough for me to give bubble tea another try on my next trip up north. This time I tried the passion fruit (a flavor I wasn't familiar with) and I've never looked back. To this day it is one of my favorite fruit flavors. I've had the fruit itself a couple of times, but the effort never seemed worth the result. I never pass up the chance to try something passion fruit flavored though.

This juice is great. It's not as thick as nectar, but it's also not super watered down. There's no real way to describe it's flavor other than saying it's tropical. The amazing sweet yet tart taste of the passion fruit it right up in your face.