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GOURMET NEWS OCTOBER 2018 www.gourmetnews.com SPECIAL FEATURE 1 9 Craft Beverages BY LORRIE BAUMANN DRY Soda Company creates beautifully flavored, lightly-sweet sodas, made with just a handful of ingredients. Its corner- stone DRY Sparkling line features lightly sweetened craft sodas with culinary-in- spired flavors especially designed to pair with food. The line comes from CEO and Founder Sharelle Klaus, who launched DRY Sparkling in 2005 with a Lavender soda that is today the only fla- vor from the original collection that's still in production. It's DRY Sparkling's best seller. "We just had to change the way Americans were thinking about sodas," Klaus said. "They could be ele- vated; they could be elegant. They could be an experience like having a nice glass of champagne." Over the years since the brand debuted, its distribution has grown, and DRY Sparkling has become known as an option for celebratory occasions that don't include alcohol – so much so that DRY Sparkling is now offering, in addition to its full line of flavors in 12-ounce cans and bottles, sea- sonal flavors in 750mL bottles labeled with art that celebrates the season. The seasonal flavors for the winter holi- day season are Cranberry and Blood Or- ange. Watermelon and Pineapple are offered for the summer season. "We were looking at more refreshing flavors that would be fun to drink on a hot summer day or bring on a picnic," Klaus said. Like the other flavors in the line, they're flavorful but low in sugar, with about 60 percent less sugar than other sodas. Flavors include, in addition to the Lavender, Fuji Apple, Vanilla, Cucumber, Rainier Cherry, Watermelon, Blood Orange and Ginger. Watermelon is available in a 12-ounce bot- tle as well as the 750mL celebration battle. All of the flavors are natural. DRY Soda Co. has also just introduced DRY Zero Sugar sodas, a new line that's or- ganic and sweetened with organic stevia leaf extract for a sugarless soda that con- tains no artificial sweeteners. DRY Zero Sugar is offered in four flavors – two with caffeine and two without. The two flavors that contain caffeine are Cola and Peach Tea, while Island Fruit and Mountain Berry contain no caffeine. "They're a much bolder flavor, but still less sweet than regu- lar diet soda," Klaus said. The entire DRY Soda Co. product range carries the Non-GMO Project's verified seal, and they all work as cocktail mixers as well as ready-to-drink sodas. DRY Soda Co. en- courages that with a cocktail generator on its website: the visitor to the website can choose a spirit and a DRY Sparkling flavor that's on hand, and the website will offer a couple of different recipes. "Some we create ourselves, but a lot of them came from mixologists from around the country," Klaus said. GN Sodas Worthy of a Celebration BY LORRIE BAUMANN TÖST is a beverage designed to impart many of the aspects of an alcoholic bever- age but not have any alcohol for all of us looking to celebrate the everyday. "About 60 percent of the U.S. population either doesn't drink or drinks less than one alco- holic beverage a week, yet the consumer wants something to drink that's meaning- ful, that has a sophisticated taste," says Brooks Addington, the Chief Executive Of- ficer of TÖST Beverages. "There's a large number of people out there who don't want to drink but don't have a lot of options to choose from. People are looking for some- thing that's meaningful, that has some so- phistication and pairs well with food, but doesn't have a lot of sugar in it.... We see that void in the market, and that's what we're going after." TÖST is dry and has some astringency – it has many of the benefits of a prosecco but none of the alcohol. "It's accessible as a kind of non-alcoholic prosecco that you might have at home while you're making dinner, and it's fun," Addington says. "Sparkling water is great, but sometimes you may want something more than that." Addington notes that sparkling water sales have grown greatly in the U.S. over the past five years, and the American mar- ket is registering strong interest in alterna- tives to traditional sodas. For those who do drink alcohol, TOST also makes a great mixer, Addington says. "Bourbon and TÖST is great," he says. "Vodka and TÖST with a lime wedge is pretty special." TÖST has launched with one flavor, with additional flavors planned for re- lease in the spring of 2019. "You're going to see flavors that are in line with where we are today," Addington says. "We're not going to have super esoteric flavors – they'll be refreshing and light, yet mean- ingful and sophisticated. I don't see us as having a dozen flavors down the road – we'll be very focused on ensuring that product #2 and product #3 are as good as product #1." TÖST is offered in 750 ml bottles that re- tail for $6.99, and the company just launched a 12-ounce bottle at this year's Summer Fancy Food Show. The 12-ounce bottle retails for $2.49 and is offered as a 4- pack that retails for $9.95. GN TÖST: Bubbly Without the Buzz BY LORRIE BAUMANN John Sculley, who was president of Apple in the 1980s, wrote of Steve Jobs and oth- ers like him that, "The future belongs to those who see the possibilities before they become obvious." Adam Lazar, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Asarasi Sparkling Tree Water, looked at the process by which maple syrup is made from tree sap and saw something that hadn't been obvious before – that the water that was a byproduct of the process was a product that could be a way to grab a piece of the bottled water market. Ac- cording to the International Bottled Water Association, sales revenues for the U.S. bottled water market in 2016 were nearly $16 billion in wholesale dollars, a 7.4 per- cent increase over the previous year. As of 2018, bottled water sales now total $18.5 billion, an increase of 8.8 percent over 2017. "Our mission is to replace the bottled water industry with a sustainable and re- newable pure plant-based water source," Lazar said. "If you're going to purchase bot- tled water as a consumer … you can make it a positive environmental choice with a strong agricultural impact at near the same retail price. It's a great opportunity, whereby providing people the opportunity to make better purchase decisions." Lazar thinks that Asarasi Sparkling Tree Water is the product that consumers will embrace as their better choice. "We have a tremen- dous environmental impact, provide maple farmers with significantly greater revenues for their [maple] crop, and provide con- sumers with absolute transparency in the bottled waters that they buy," Lazar said. "We're not consuming the water from the groundwater table; we're taking it from the maple tree, a truly renewable and sustain- able source." Maple trees pull more water up from the Earth through their roots than the trees ac- tually need and transpire it into the atmos- phere as they breathe. When the maple tree is tapped for its sap, most of that sap is the water that's left over after the sugar is ex- tracted. "We can tap into this 'living well,'" Lazar said. "We do analyze the water; we do test it. We have previously worked with Cornell University's Food Science Innova- tion Labs to validate our food safety processes and to ensure the finished prod- uct quality." Asarasi Sparkling Tree Water contains, according to laboratory analyses, mostly water with a little bit of manganese, potas- sium and calcium, which are trace minerals that the tree produces over the course of its life. Most of the minerals are removed from the maple sap by the reverse osmosis process that removes the sugar. "The farm keeps the sugar crop, and we simply buy their 97 percent remaining water byprod- ucts," Lazar said. "There is no harm that ac- tually comes to the trees themselves. When you tap a tree, a very small hole is made in the tree trunk and a tap is inserted to with- draw the sap. Every year the tap is removed and the hole closes up naturally." The scar tissue that's left by the tap also protects the tree from loggers, who regard that scar as a defect in the wood, and ignore the tapped tree when they're logging a for- est. That helps to prevent deforestation, ac- cording to Lazar. Asarasi Sparkling Tree Water is offered in four flavors, of which three were launched this year. "People want bubbles, but they also want flavor, which is fun, and desire to eliminate sugar from their diet," Lazar said. The original unflavored product was launched as the first certified organic bot- tled water – organic because it comes from a plant source. The new flavors are Lemon, Lime and Cherry Lime, and they're made by adding organic flavor extracts to the tree water. They're unsweetened and have no calories. "We don't have any desire to pro- duce the next elderberry-mint-organic- raspberry-infusion – those are the type of products that we feel do not truly provide a unique selling proposition other than a new flavor, Lazar said. "And best of all, Asarasi has zero sugar, zero calories and zero sodium. We have a hyper-interesting product that connects with consumers on multiple fronts, but with the newly added flavors, now it's also hyper-exciting. We're growing Asarasi's business by giving con- sumers what they want. We were con- stantly being asked for flavors, and so we've reacted accordingly." Asarasi Sparkling Tree Water is distrib- uted nationally by KeHE and on the West Coast by UNFI. It's packaged in glass bot- tles. For more information, visit www.asarasi.com. GN Asarasi Sparkling Tree Water Now Offered in Four Flavors

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