Post #406469 by oysterschnapps on Sun, Sep 7, 2008 1:03 PM

I found four different brands of mango nectar at three different stores and opened them all up this morning. Keeping in mind that neither my wife nor I have tasted an actual mango in some time, here are our impressions of each:

Looza Mango Nectar 1L "35% Juice" Ingredients: Water, mango puree, sugar. Found in the bottled juice aisle.

Has the characteristic Looza "canned" flavor and is the most sweetened of all, but seems to have the richest fruit flavor.

Galil Mango Nectar 330 mL "50% Fruit Juice - All Natural - No Colorants - No Preservatives" Ingredients: Water, mango puree, sugar acidulant, thickner: pectin, vitamin C, natural flavorings. Found in the Kosher foods aisle.

The least processed-tasting but slightly more watered down than the others. The weaker flavor might mean that you'd need to add more of it to mango drinks. Since this one contained a thickener and the Looza didn't, we were surprised this one poured a bit thinner, although that's probably due to the higher sugar content in the Looza. (The Looza has 50% more sugar per ounce.)

Del Valle Mango Juice Nectar 335 mL "19% Fruit Juice - No Preservatives Added" Ingredients: Water, mango puree from concentrate, high fructose corn syrup, concentrated Mexican hawthorn puree as stabilizer, less than 0.5% of: citric acid, natural flavor, vitamin C. Found in the Mexican foods aisle.

Tastes rather different than the others, with a lot more of a tart flavor. If it was labeled with a different fruit I would have believed it. It's probably just all the additives I'm tasting. Not entirely unpleasant, but not our preference.

Jumex Mango Nectar 335 mL"30% Juice" Ingredients: water, mango puree from concentrate, sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, ascorbic acid (preservative), beta carotene (color). Found in the Mexican foods aisle.

Bad artificial/chemical aftertaste. Our least favorite.

Conclusion: we'll be using Looza or Galil in our tiki drinks. Any of them should be fine, though, if mango isn't the dominant flavor in the drink.

I haven't found Hansen's or Kern's nectars around here, although I haven't looked very hard. If TCers think these two or some other brand is a big improvement over the four I listed above, I'll make an effort to find it.

[ Edited by: oysterschnapps 2008-09-07 13:10 ]