I first started to hear about Hint about a month ago.

I swear, I must have received e-mails from three different publicists urging me to write an article about Hint, a naturally fruit-flavored water with no sugar, no artificial sweeteners, no preservatives and no dyes.

Finally, I asked one of the writers to send me samples, so they shipped two bottles of the stuff. One raspberry-lime; one hibiscus vanilla.

I was pretty excited about the beverage because I’ve long wished that a company would produce a product just like this. I hate the fruity waters flavored with artificial sweetener. They are often carbonated and just taste kind of salty and fake to me.

I wondered why someone couldn’t take real fruit juice and infuse it into water to make a refreshing beverage that tasted just a little more exciting than ordinary water, but not so sweet that it’s reminiscent of Kool-Aid, which is sort of what Sobe Life Water tastes like to me.

Hint has accomplished this. The drink is wonderful and refreshing served ice cold. But the fruit flavors are much more of a “hint” than I had even imagined. The raspberry-lime had a tiny essence of fruitiness, but it was barely discernable at all.

image source: www.drinkhint.com

I think you’d get more flavor from one wedge of lime in a glass of water than what’s detectable in the Hint water.

On the one hand, that’s a great thing — maybe they are trying to market it to folks who, like me, didn’t want some overwhelming, fakey flavors in their water. On the other hand, at $1.89 per bottle (that’s $44 for a 24 case….yeeesh!) I wonder if it ought to taste a little more special.

Essentially, though, Hint achieves a most important goal — to encourage more people who do not particularly like the taste of water to drink more water. Whether you do it by drinking Hint or adding a little fresh lime, lemon, cucumber and what have you, you’ll be doing your body a big favor.