Product Review: Martinelli's Prickly Passion Lemonade

I'm not really fond of passion fruit because it tastes too much like guava fruit.[1] But I was surprised to see that this lemonade also had juice from prickly pear fruit. In México the name for prickly pear fruit is tunas. While I was a missionary in the city of Matehuala, San Luis Potosí [2][3], I ate a lot of tunas. In fact, on one P-Day [4] we visited the ghost town of Real de Catorce.[5] The hillside up there was covered with fruiting prickly pear cacti, both the red and yellow-green varieties. I ate until my lips and fingers were too full of the tiny little spines to go on.[6] Since returning to the United States, I've found tunas in a few Mexican stores, but only rarely. So naturally I was intrigued to see them as an ingredient in a lemonade.

My verdict: Thankfully, the passion fruit was so muted as to be undetectable. The lemonade had a nice tang to it (partly because it also had raspberry juice in it) and the prickly pear fruit juice gave it a sweet undercurrent. If this came in larger bottles, I'd be tempted to purchase it again.

---

Notes:

[1] The first time I had guava fruit, in México, I thought it was fine. But then I was burping it up for the rest of the day. Now I can't stand it. Also, the durian fruit had a guava-like flavor to it (read more here).

[2] For those who are unsure why Latter-day Saints (Mormons) go on missions, I recommend you visit here and here, where you can learn more about LDS beliefs concerning sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you have more questions, ask and maybe I'll do a full post on the topic.

[3] San Luis Potosí is the origin of Enchiladas Potosinas.

[4] P-Day is short for "Preparation Day", the one day each week that LDS missionaries use to wash their clothes, clean their apartments, write letters home, get some exercise (which in México usually meant playing basketball or soccer), and visit cultural sites.

[5] Real de Catorce once had thriving silver mines and (according to the locals) almost became the capital city of México. The miners used their wealth to built a lavish cathedral for Saint Francis of Assisi. Eventually the price of silver collapsed, the silver mines were abandoned, and the population disappeared. But the cathedral remains and continues to thrive. Catholics from all around go on long pilgrimages to reach the chapel, especially the night before Saint Francis' feast day (October 4th). Real de Catorce was also one of the filming locations for the film The Mexican, starring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, which wrapped up a few weeks before I arrived. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real de Catorce#History.

[6] One of the Mexian missionaries later taught me that you can easily remove those spines from your hands simply by running your fingers through your hair. You just have to endure the spines in your lips and tongue.

Image attributions:

View of Real de Catorce down the Calle Constitución is by jflo23, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RealStreet.jpg.