New product Wednesday, in Dallas stores: Hola Fruta sherbet

by Teresa Gubbins

Hola Fruta, a new "super premium" sherbet, is out to single-handedly revive sherbet, whose place in the freezer aisle has been overtaken in the past few years by sorbet.

Hola Fruta comes from Pierre's Ice Cream, a regional ice cream company based in Cleveland, Ohio, which introduced the sherbet in 2007. Previously available exclusively at Kroger's, its distribution expanded in March to other locations including Brookshire's. It comes in eight flavors: mango, margarita, peach, pina colada, pomegranate, pomegranate-blueberry, raspberry, and strawberry, and is surely one of the most fabulous frozen dessert products to be invented.

The flavors are potent and satisfying, and the texture is intensely creamy, like a super-premium ice cream. When you lift up a spoonful, it leaves a small, creamy "tail", something you rarely see with regular icy-hard sherbet. The pomegranate-blueberry is especially A+ with a pleasing tart-sweet complexity. The two flavors are swirled in the carton, two shades of pink-purple with subtle variations; the slightly darker blueberry has shreds of fruit, contrasting the smooth, lighter-pink pomegranate.

The Hola Fruta line came about when Pierre's developed ambitions to break out of its regional mold with something they could take nation-wide. Skeptical that it could win over local fans of other regional ice cream companies such as Brigham's in the Northeast and Blue Bell in Texas, the company saw sherbet as an opportunity to try something different, says Hola Fruta spokesman John Pimpo.

"We initially wanted to do something with antioxidant fruits," he says. "We tried that in our ice cream. But the flavor of the fruit purees didn't pop out as much as we wanted. We tried sorbet, but it was very tart. That's when we got the idea to add a little dairy. That's the difference between sherbet and sorbet. So we put it in sherbet base, and it turned into a fantastic product."

They still face a challenge in convincing people to rethink sherbet.

"The sherbet category has been dead for years," he says. "We recognized that it had a stigma. People think of it as a graduation product or an ingredient for punch."

That's when they came up with the idea to make a "super-premium" version of sherbet by limiting the amount of air, or "overrun," pumped in. (Cheap ice cream products have lots of air.)

"We don't say how much air we put in -- that's proprietary -- but we put in the minimal amount, yet enough to make it be smooth and scoopable," he says.

While fine straight from the carton, the sherbets lend themselves to be used in cocktails, too. All the margarita sherbet needs to become a frozen margarita is tequila and ice, while a scoop of peach added to champagne = instant bellini.

Suggested retail is $4.79 to $4.99 for a quart, and $3.79 to $3.99 per pint.