In what will be my last Snapple Antioxidant Water review for a little while (or at least until more Snapple shows up), I’ll give you the low down on the last bottle I have in the house; Grape Pomegranate. [UPDATE: Since my original draft, the good people at Snapple have sent me a re-up of sorts. I'll be back with another Snapple review as early as next week]

If you’ve been reading my Antioxidant Water reviews, there really isn’t much more in way of background I can give you about the Grape Pomegranate flavor.  As I pointed out in my review of Orange Starfruit, Snapple seems to paring the everyday with the more exotic.  Granted, pomegranate isn’t quite as exotic as acerola, but it’s not exactly apple either.

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you know what a grape is.  My buddy Harry is 3, his sister, Emma, not even 2, and the both of them know what a grape is so…well, let’s just say there are some prerequisites to this class and Fruit 101 is among them.

For those of you yet to enroll in Fruit 201, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the Pomegranate:

The Pomegranate (Punica granatum) is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub or small tree growing to 5–8 m tall. The pomegranate is native to the region from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran to the Himalayas in northern India and has been cultivated and naturalized over the whole Mediterranean region and the Caucasus since ancient times. It is widely cultivated throughout Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, India, the drier parts of southeast Asia, Peninsular Malaysia, the East Indies, and tropical Africa. Introduced into Latin America and California by Spanish settlers in 1769, pomegranate is now cultivated mainly in the drier parts of California and Arizona for its fruits exploited commercially as juice products gaining in popularity since 2001. In the global functional food industry, pomegranate is included among a novel category of exotic plant sources called superfruits.

After opening the pomegranate by scoring it with a knife and breaking it open, the arils (seed casings) are separated from the skin (peel) and internal white supporting structures (pith and carpellary membrane).

The taste differs depending on the variety of pomegranate and its state of ripeness. It can be very sweet or it can be very sour or tangy, but most fruits lie somewhere in between, which is the characteristic taste, laced with notes of its tannin.

Providing 16% of an adult’s daily vitamin C requirement per 100 ml serving, pomegranate aril juice is also a good source of the B vitamin, pantothenic acid, potassium and antioxidant polyphenols.

In case you skipped over the Wikipedia stuff, here are the highlights:

• Fruit-bearing shrub grown mostly in California and Arizona
• Lots of seeds that can taste sweet, sour, or tangy (Really narrows it down, doesn’t it)
• Lots of Vitamin C, B Vitamin, and antioxodants, also pith
• Most importantly, it’s a Superfruit (no word if it wears a cape)

Now in all honesty, I have absolutely no idea what a superfruit is, and actually researching it would be far less interesting than just making something up, so let’s go with…  Superfruits are most awesomest of all fruits because they taste good, and are high in healthy stuff, plus they give the power to fly (but only a couple of feet at a time, so don’t go jumping off of any buildings - and blaming me).

I’m thinking Snapple must be very selective about their pomegranates because only the sweet ones are getting into their antixodant water; at least that’s all that made it into my bottle.  No sour, no tart, not really any tangy either.  Any grape-tasting stuff is pretty much put in its place by the pomegranate.  That’s an important detail, and here’s why: Grape flavors can be tricky.  Occasionally someone gets it right (like Snapple’s Grapeade; the singe best grape drink every created), but more often than not you end up with something that tastes like watered down Kool-aid, or worse yet, children’s cough syrup.

Of the 4 Snapple Antioxidant Waters that I’ve tried thus far, Grape Pomagranate is the most qwowi (and I really did like the Orange Starfruit).  Although the calorie count per bottle is inline with the other flavors, it tastes sweeter, and not the least bit watered down.  As I said in my first review, I’m guessing it won’t compliment a filet mignon as well as a glass of red wine (although I did actually consider trying this at Easter dinner), but it was pretty damn good with my wife’s lunch (which I stole out of the fridge this morning and ate as my own not 15 minutes ago). It’s is as good as any nutrient enhanced water I’ve tried so far, and well worth the buck forty it will cost you to try it for yourself.

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