Sweet merciful goddamn, I love me some Izze.

I had my first Izze, a pomegranate, almost exactly one year ago, on a hot campsite in Wisconsin. It was heavenly. A cold, glass bottle of sparkling fruit juice, crisp and tart.

I had my second Izze about six months later. Blueberry. Also delicious.

My third and fourth Izze's were also pomegranate, the result of a Whole Foods sale. Because unfortunately, Izze's are as expensive as they are delicious. The normal going rate is six bucks for a four-pack. That's a buck fifty for twelve ounces, which is the kind of soda price you usually only get from an airport vending machine. As good as it is, regular-priced Izze is not something I can justify on a constant basis.

Did I mention I love Costco? I fucking love Costco. A few months ago, Costco started carrying a 12-bottle variety case of Izze. Four pomegranate, four clementine, and four blackberry. The cost? $10.99, or less than a buck a bottle. Combine that with a fairly sharp decrease in my traditional soda budget, and guess what I've been drinking all damn summer? Sparkling fruit juice. Delicious, sparkling fruit juice.

I am under no misconceptions that it's actually healthy, mind. I know there's no more nutritional content in an Izze than there is in a Mountain Dew. But there's also no high fructose corn syrup. There's no glycerol ester of wood rosin, which sounds nasty but is apparently vital to the pruduction of cheap orange soda. So while it's not necessarily good for me, it's at least not actively bad for me. Of course, it also doesn't have any caffeine in it, but it tastes so damn good I forgive that transgression.

Plus, there's a better than even chance that the introduction of caffeinated Izze would directly lead, six months later, to me being homeless and turning tricks on Franklin Ave. in the hopes of scoring another four-pack. So it's probably for the best.