Thursday, January 21, 2010

Nectars

There was a time when nectars were extremely popular. There used to be a US standard for nectars, which was 35 - 45% fruit puree sweetened with sugar or HFCS. The flavor was always great if you used a good puree, and the texture made the drinks rather filling and more interesting than typical juice drinks, especially for products like guava and mango.

Since the standard was dropped there have always been nectars available in stores of variable quality. They have always been strong in the "Hispanic" section in the supermarket as they are very traditional drinks in central and south America, but mainstream products have been rarer.

I believe it has been hard to compromise between price and quality - cheaper products are more competitive with juice drinks, but if the lower price is achieved by using poor quality puree and/or very little of it the product tends to be very disappointing.

However, since we're a flavor house and quite good at true-to-type fruit flavors, we've had some success in making nectar bases that are both competitive and have an excellent flavor, color and mouthfeel (texture). We are offering these products as 10:1 concentrate bases that reconstitute with HFCS or sugar to make 20% juice nectars. Presently we have formulae for mango, guava and peach nectar bases, but of course we can make a wide range of alternatives if there is some interest.

We'd be happy to send samples of these products and some pricing if you'd like to give them a try.

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