Ooya

I first discovered Ooya at a tradeshow a year or two back, and they were one of my favourite companies that I’d come across. So, I was very excited to see they’d released some new flavours since I had last sampled there teas!

Peach and kiwi as a combination feels so fresh to me. I’m so used to the very played out combination of peach and mango or strawberry and kiwi. Those are, of course, delicious but there are some fruit flavours that are sooooo played out in the RTD space that they just read as overly commercial to the point of being safe/boring. I don’t know if I’ve seen a peach kiwi RTD before – it just feels like a brilliant way to take two staple flavours and give them just enough of a twist to be different while not being novel and unfamiliar.

The drink was very good, though it’s certainly much more peach forward than kiwi. I’d expected as much, though, given that Ooya has used this soft peachy orange colour across all of the branding of the product – it sort of subtley implies that this is first and foremost a peach drink. It tastes natural and fresh though like the tender end-of-Summer peaches that melt in your mouth when you eat them. The kiwi adds a little top note brightness and a bit of a tropical acidity that elevates without distracting. Best way I can think to describe it is that the kiwi is a backup dancer for the Peach. This is not a duo.

I still need to find the new Apple Lychee – I’ll be keeping an eye out!

Tried this one at the same time I tried Ooya’s Original flavour.

I definitely think this is really tasty – it’s got a similar light, effervescent, and sweetly refreshing profile. Not something I would call heavy or cloying at all. The watermelon was stronger that the raspberry to me, but I got a bit more of the tartness of the raspberry in the finish.

I’m glad I had the original next to me to do that side by side though, because I don’t really taste the guayusa in this RTD at all. If I didn’t have the Original as proof that (when they want to) this company can actually highlight the natural flavours of the Guayusa in a very balanced and authentic way then I would probably have been less impressed with this company overall just based on this drink alone. It’s tasty, but almost a little too polished and commercial to be nearly as interesting/noteworthy.

At least to me personally.

I met this company at SIAL earlier this year and they were just absolutely kind and pleasant to talk with! Also, I swear they had the busiest booth out of the whole trade show – Marika and I had to wait like twenty minutes for a moment to sneak in and talk with them! It was worth it though.

I’ve tried a lot of Guayusa/Yerba Mate RTDs and they tend to range between “gross” to “kinda just fine”. This one was impressively good! I think the best part about it was that on top of just being pretty light and refreshing it was also just genuinely very well balanced. Like, equal parts an effervescent sweet and just slightly tart natural lemon/citrus flavour with that trademark “rainforest” flavour of the guayusa. A little grassy and earthy with that sweet rain/petrichor finish. I just adored how true to the flavour of the Guayusa the drink was without any of the mineral/metallic taste I often get with Guayusa RTDs. It’s also rare to see one of these trendier RTDs focused around clean energy that doesn’t shy away from tasting like the thing it’s deriving that energy from!

You could easily crush a full can of this without even thinking about it! I am definitely going to be keeping an eye on this company within the RTD space!