Summer drinks: our healthy and tasty beverages to enjoy.

To combat the summer heat, it is recommended to drink a lot. The summer beverages, drinks, juices, smoothies, and shakes are becoming the most consumed products again, although one should not overindulge. A proper diversification of products helps to keep any excesses of sugars and polysaccharides at bay, which can have detrimental effects on the body over time. Today, we find more and more natural products on the market, drinks that combine pleasure and health. The fruit juices that are beneficial are those that do not contain added sugars and come solely from a freshly squeezed fruit. The use of natural syrups to flavor water is a new perspective that avoids brightly colored concentrates full of sweeteners and unsuitable for a healthy diet.

Homemade summer drinks: cold infusions

Among the various solutions available to quench thirst, one can start with simple fruit-infused waters. Real cold infusions obtained by placing pieces of fruit inside a container of water, along with leaves of aromatic herbs or even spices. A simple example is ginger and lemon water infused with mint. An excellent refreshing tonic and digestive. The advice is to slice a Sicilian femminello lemon or a sfusato lemon from Amalfi, place it inside a pitcher with slices of ginger and mint leaves. Leave it in the fridge overnight, and the next day you’ll have a delicious natural summer drink.

A product that is very fashionable today is also tomato water, which has a high antioxidant content like few other vegetables and has a significant thirst-quenching power. To obtain an excellent product, an extractor is needed: the liquid obtained should be consumed immediately after extraction.

Organic fruit juice for a healthy summer drink

If you prefer a fruit juice and do not have an extractor available, it is better to choose fruit juices that are not excessive in sugars and, above all, that contain organic fruit, far from any synthetic agronomic treatment practices. Always check the labels carefully! If there are more than three ingredients, be cautious. Look for labels with three simple elements: percentage of fruit, water, cane sugar. Juices can also be made without preservatives, sweeteners, or worse, acidifiers. We have chosen Punto Verde, a historic organic reality in Italy that, with its Frullabio, offers exactly such a label: 80% fruit, water, and cane sugar. In products like these, one can truly taste the pleasure of natural fruit.

Summer drinks for a little indulgence

Natural, yes, but sometimes we also like to indulge a little, always without overdoing it. Today, there are producers of drinks that thankfully come to our aid and help us choose good, intriguing products that are also healthy. These are the summer beverage lines created by companies that tend to prefer typical products, sometimes rare and forgotten, organic with very "short" labels. We have chosen the Sicilian company Tomarchio which is achieving great public success with its organic drinks. Their choice to revive products like the Mandarino Tardivo di Ciaculli, the Limone Femminello di Siracusa IGP, the Sanguinelle Oranges from Catania, the Sicilian Verde Mandarin, and the Ribera Oranges DOP adds value to the final product. For those who enjoy treating themselves to a delightful alcoholic beverage, we recommend pairing Tomarchio's sodas and lemonades with good Gin for excellent Gin and tonic on the rocks.

The summer drink of the moment: the mother drink

To conclude this overview of various drinks, we must mention the mother drinks from the genius of Simone Sabaini of Sabadì, the producer of the legendary chocolate that has been awarded as the best Cioccolato di Modica IGP for eight consecutive times. Simone has produced a Mother Lemonade and a Mother Orangeade starting from the raw materials of his Sicily: Bio Femminello lemons and Sicilian Bio oranges. Through an advanced technological process, he cold-pressed this fruit, without altering the original organoleptic profile too much, and added little water and organic cane sugar. Dissolving a part of this preparation in three parts of sparkling water yields an extraordinary orangeade or lemonade. With a small bottle of Mother Lemonade or Mother Orangeade, you can produce up to 6 small bottles of 200ml orangeade. And I guarantee you, there is no comparison with any other beverage currently available!

Bernardo Pasquali