BECAUSE I COULD BE WRITING GRAD SCHOOL APPLICATION ESSAYS…

…Let me talk about Veryfine Grape Drink instead.

Back when I was a wee lad, so wee I was still living in the bowels of Brooklyn, Veryfine Grape Drink was my favorite beverage. Granted, it was full of sugar, bereft of actual juice, and tended to leave a lasting stain on a white T-shirt. But it was also the perfect antidote to a hot summer day, and the bottle had the coolest label ever: Plain white, with a simple, cartoony drawing of a bunch of purple grapes.

I associate so many happy times with Veryfine Grape Drink. The summer right before my family up and moved to Miami, my cousin R., whose parents were going through a separation, stayed over at our house. R., my brother K., and I would spend our carefree summer days playing tee-ball in Marine Park. We’d come home, sweaty and our hair matted, and we’d immediately run to the fridge, where we’d be sure to find it stocked with Veryfine Grape Drink. It always hit the spot!

Unfortunately, Veryfine products were bottled in Massachusetts, so when I got to Miami, I found to my distress that none of the supermarkets carried them. No bottles with the plain white labels and simple drawings of fruit were anywhere to be found! I couldn’t help feeling that an important era in my life was now over. Also, I went through extremely painful sugar withdrawal, which could only be tempered by a combination of Kool-Aid and methadone. But that’s another story…

Time passed, and eventually, I learned to live without my Veryfine Grape Drink. I heard a rumor that the company had gone out of business, having been squeezed out of the unhealthy kids drink market by such pretenders as "Hi-C" and "Capri-Sun." (Capri-Sun? Who drinks juice in a bag? What are we, Bedouins?) I admit that, during moments of weakness, I humbled myself and drank Hi-C in order to avoid juice, or worse, milk. But the experience always left me feeling cheapened. What can I say? Veryfine had the gift of making me feel "very fine," but Hi-C neither gave me a "high," or helped me to "see" anything, other than the mediocrity of Hi-C.

Perhaps I wouldn’t have taken the loss of Veryfine Grape Drink so badly if the adjustment to South Florida had been easier. But it wasn’t, and many times, I needed the comfort of a familiar beverage. When I was at my most desperate, after I heard that the company had gone out of business, I went to the library to see if I could find a recipe for Veryfine Grape Drink in the public domain, and I did. Unfortunately, my chemistry skills were non-existent at this time. While attempting to synthesize sucrose, I ended up manufacturing regular ethanol. On the bright side, the drink was a hit in the more rural areas upstate, and the blindness I experienced after first ingesting the strange brew was only temporary.

But there’s a happy ending to this story: Just this morning, on the way home from the bank, I stopped into my local newsstand to get the paper. I thought about purchasing a Snapple, and while perusing the soft drink freezer, I saw a product called "Veryfine Chillers." They had a flavor called "Glacial Grape" which sounded a lot like the old Veryfine Grape Drink from my youth, only this one contains actual juice concentrate. It contains 100% of the advised daily requirement of Vitamin C. But get this: It tastes just like Veryfine Grape Drink!

Apparently, Snapple bought the old line, and hopes "Chillers" will catch on with the health-conscious drink market. I don’t know whether they’ll succeed, but I hope they do, so I can still enjoy the happier part of my childhood on a hot summer day. Here’s a reason to think things might just turn out okay: Snapple has a monopoly on all the vending machines in New York City public schools. That means they can almost force students to purchase Veryfine Glacial Grape Chillers, or any other flavor Chiller. And security guards aren’t letting students bring in drinks or bottled water from home, lest they interfere with the monopoly. So take that, Capri Sun and Hi-C! Your reign of sugary drink mediocrity is over!