Waterbridge – Wine Gums Red & Black Berries

Companies have realized that sometimes variety is not always the spice of life. In the past few years we’ve seen brands like Starburst double down on clear favourites with lines of just one or two flavours like selling strawberry and cherry flavours on their own and cutting out the citrus. Waterbridge’s answer to this conundrum is to just keep the berry flavours in the classic wine gum mix. As much as I love blackcurrant, I feel like pineapple or the clear colour are just as enjoyable for me. I tend not to enjoy citrus flavours as much, so having this cut that out helps.

The main selling point of this is that it features only red and black coloured wine gums. That translates to just the raspberry and blackcurrant flavours. Raspberry is a solid flavour by my books, but the main draw of this is the blackcurrant. If you didn’t know, it’s kind of my favourite flavour apart from grape. Something about purple fruits just speaks to me. I’m curious how these are, mainly because I haven’t had Waterbridge Wine Gums, and also because I’ve discovered in my old age that sometimes assortments serve a purpose. Even if you find yourself preferring a single flavour, a good assortment helps even and balance things out so that you don’t get burnt out on the one flavour. A good wine gum assortment for example, has a good mix of flavours so that the citrus and the berries balance each other out.

Let’s start with the texture – these are less firm than some of the other wine gums I’ve had. That can be both good and bad, the good being that they aren’t as hard on the jaw, but the bad being these are a tad on the sticky side. In fact, these remind me more of Jujube candies in that they are kinda soft, not that chewy and just kind of sticky, getting stuck everywhere. I contemplated whether I should leave this out to get a bit stale to see if that would change things, but I decided against it. Not worth the risk.

The flavour is really the only saving grace of these, since the texture is a bit of let down for me, an avid dis-liker or Jujubes. The raspberry has a distinct berry, and floral flavour that you expect from standard wine gum flavours. The blackcurrant is also basically the same as other wine gums, it has the tart currant flavour that’s mostly sweet.

Something I did find kind of weird though, and I don’t know if it’s linked to how these are made, but the flavour almost seems a bit muted – like someone forgot to add the right amount of flavour. It could also be due to lack of sugar as these seem to taste a bit less sweet, which while good doesn’t seem to any better for you since they still contain quite a bit of sugar.

While I enjoyed the flavour, it wasn’t enough of a saving grace to make up for the disappointing texture. I wouldn’t mind having these again, but not sure I would pay for these normally.