Review: Black Tower B Fruitiful Passionfruit / Strawberry

I’ve been on something of a quest all summer to find the perfect low-syn tipple and today I’m going to tell you about another innovative low-calorie, low syn offering by Black Tower: the B Fruitiful range. It’s very exciting to see well-established brands responding to demand for lower calorie drinks with just as much variety and flavour as full sugar alternatives. Read on for a review of the range, and some fun ideas for how these can be enjoyed.

Black Tower are on a mission with their extensive lower calorie range. I reviewed the B Secco White and Rosé back in June, which we enjoyed as a toast to my bridesmaid proposal - it went down a storm!

This offering is a light wine infused with fruit flavours - there are two options on the market: B Fruitiful Passionfruit & Pineapple (in a White wine style) and B Fruitiful Strawberry & Raspberry which is in the style of a Rosé.

Each 125ml glass of B Fruitful wine is 5.5% alcohol and 55 calories, which is just 3 syns on slimming world. This is just half of the syn value of regular wine, meaning — more for you!

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With Cheese, Please:

I’m a sucker for anything with passionfruit in, so was very excited to try the passionfruit version first. The passionfruit and pineapple flavours were prominent but not overbearing - it was zingy and refreshing. I had a couple of glasses with a cheese board (Light Halloumi, Brie and Cheddar for my Healthy Extra A) - highly recommend! The combination was absolutely delicious.

Drunken Strawberries:

Later that week, I tried the B Fruitful Strawberry with dessert. I mean that quite literally — I made “Drunken Strawberries” which is a very simple dessert. Simply soak strawberries in about 75ml of B Fruitiful Strawberry, leave in the fridge for about an hour and serve with a large spray of Tesco Lighter Real Dairy Spray Cream (2 syns per portion). This dessert came to 4 syns and since I couldn’t resist an extra glass - my total for the day came to 7 syns. The strawberry version is sweeter than the passionfruit offering, and is nicely balanced with the wine flavours.

In summary, If you enjoy wine and have quite the sweet tooth - there is nothing really comparable on the market today. If you are usually into the very dry wines, you may prefer one of the B by Black Tower low calorie wines, but these can still be enjoyed as a dessert drink.

B Fruitiful wines are exclusively available at Tesco Ireland at the moment at a mere 5 Euro. There is still some nice weather left to be enjoyed - I recommend this as the perfect companion to the longer evenings!



The perfect summer sparkler - B Secco White and Rosé - 3 syns per glass

Breaking the pattern

I have to admit, this end of week sabotage has been a bit of a cycle for me - and I think I’ve finally found a way to break it. I recently had the opportunity to try Black Tower’s new offering - B Secco White and B Secco Rosé. At just 65 calories - this is a tiny 3 SYNS per glass. I’m thinking to myself — this has the potential to be a game changer.

As summer gets into a groove many of us feel the seasonal shift toward refreshing, fruity, fancy fizzy drinks of a Saturday evening. Typically this has us reaching for cider, wine or prosecco. Make one wrong move with our choices however, and our syns for the week are thrown off -- undoing all of the good work for the week. To put this into perspective, here are a couple of summer faves and their syn values:

  • Pint bottle of Original Bulmers: 12.5 syns (up to 16 for a flavoured version.)

  • Kopparberg Original / Pear (12/15 syns respectively)

  • Small glass of white wine: 6 syns

  • Glass of Rosé wine: 4.5 syns

The Taste Test

I fancy myself as a bit of a Connoisseur de Booze, sure I’ve been at this game for almost 20 years! So, quality is important - a sparkling drink needs a bit of complexity. I’ve tried other “low-calorie” offerings and this is where they fall short - there is often something lacking.

Myself and my pal Maria found the perfect occassion to try a glass of the B Secco Rosé. I had just “proposed” to her to be my bridesmaid, and we were having a little celebration with a few tines in my sunny back garden. We both enjoyed it immensely - it has that celebratory sparkling zing, gorgeous fruit flavour and it even tasted… expensive. We polished off the bottle happily-- by then I had only used 9 of my daily syns!

Availability / Cost

The clincher here is that at the time of writing, they are on sale in Tesco Ireland for a mere €5 for a bottle - normally €6.99. A little birdie told me that there are also two more offerings to be released soon in Tesco Ireland - B Fruitiful Strawberry and B Fruitiful Passionfruit - which will be only 55 calories (only 2.5 syns per glass)

So find an occasion and round up your pals, and enjoy this summery delight guilt free!

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