I love flavoured lube conceptually. While I do also love the natural tastes of giving oral sex, I think flavoured lube can add such a fun, playful element to it. Sometimes I want my strap-on to taste like a birthday cake, you know?
The trouble I have with flavoured lubes in reality is a lot of them have ingredients that I either personally don’t get on well with or don’t recommend in general. If you’ve stepped into a sex shop or sex positive boutique, you’ll notice that a lot of the tastes lubes tend to go for are sweet tasting — there’s a lot of chocolate flavoured lube and not many ‘wine and cheese’ flavoured lubes. Perhaps partly because of this — as well as its more usual role as a preservative — a lot of flavoured lubes contain glycerine.
Some people find this isn’t a huge issue for them, but I personally find that glycerin-containing lubes always cause me some kind of gynae problems after I use them, whether that’s my pH being thrown off, some level of pain, or yeast infections. Again, this might not happen to everyone who uses a glycerine lube and I do want to emphasise that not all glycerine is made equally, but it is enough of a relationship that I personally steer clear of glycerine-containing lubes.
While non-flavoured lubes that don’t contain glycerine are relatively common and only growing more accessible, flavoured lubes tend to be an area where this is more difficult. Generally, I’ve stuck with Sliquid’s flavoured lubes, occasionally branching out for ‘this goes on my partners’ penises or my strap-on only’ for other lubes. However, when I saw SheVibe was stocking a line of lube from a new-to-me company and that they were glycerine and propylene glycol (another ingredient I don’t get on well with) free… well I had to ask for a bottle to review.
La Nua
As well as the Honey Vanilla flavour that I’m reviewing, La Nua has a range of lubes. Other flavours they offer include Cucumber Aloe, Watermelon Mint (which was a close second in terms of flavour I wanted to try), and Strawberry Coconut. They also have a silicone lube and a water-based lube, as well as toy cleaning mists and a foaming toy cleaner.
While their lube is a little on the pricey side — with 100 ml bottles costing $19.99 and 200 ml costing $22.99, with the exception of the silicone lube, which is $29.99 and $44.99 — the presentation is absolutely lovely. The bottles are glass, with a bamboo trim and general design sensibilities that remind me of pricey skincare products.
It feels really luxurious. I can sometimes be a bit function-focused when it comes to the products I review, even when I’m using them outside of testing sessions — blame it on owning so many, or them entering my life in the context of work, or both. Either way, I did notice that I actually felt encouraged to slow down with using it, because this felt like the type of use the packaging was encouraging me towards. It was a really interesting experience, and is now making me want to do all kinds of experiments with what bottles I put my lubes into (as well as try out the La Nua water based lube).
The Honey Vanilla Taste Test
I think the Honey Vanilla flavour of La Nua will be… divisive. I personally really liked it, but my partner (who had helped me choose it out of La Nua’s range) really disliked it.
When I asked her for some details on why she disliked the flavour, she remarked on the vanilla in particular. While the honey was nice and subtle — adding a little sweetness to the lube — she found the vanilla too overpowering. She also felt it was too synthetic tasting, rather than the light touch of real vanilla, and disliked how sweet it tasted.
I personally really liked the vanilla. It reminded me a bit of birthday cake flavoured things, so I understand where she was coming from with the criticism. I do think there’s an undertone of bitterness to the vanilla that could have been avoided, but I only tended to notice it when I consumed quite large amounts of lube (and taste testing amounts, rather than amounts I would use in sex). I do think it’s quite sweet, but in the context of being a flavoured lube is a lot less sugary-tasting than pretty much every comparison lube I had (including a Blue Raspberry Sliquid and a Lovehoney Birthday Cake lube).
Consistency, Texture, Application and Reapplication
So one thing I found surprising about the La Nua Honey Vanilla Lube was its consistency. I’m used to flavoured lubes being a bit more gel-like consistency. The La Nua lube, by contrast, is quite thin and watery. Because of this, I have found that using the cap can be a bit of a crapshoot, with lube sometimes coming out in a predictable way and at other times shooting across the room.
While this thin consistency does mean I don’t find I’m left with any sticky reside (either on silicone toys or on body parts), it does mean that I find the lube is used up relatively quickly. This isn’t as huge a deal for genitals that self-lubricate, but I do find with strap-ons and giving oral to penises that don’t have as much pre-cum that I need to re-apply the La Nua Honey Vanilla lube pretty frequently.
I’m not totally upset by this, as I’m very particular about what lubes I use for different kinds of sex. For penetrative strap-on anal or vaginal sex, I prefer Sliquid Sassy, so the La Nua being used up by this point in partnered sex is honestly quite useful. However, the La Nua lube isn’t long lasting or thick enough to really be used for handjobs, which is where I do find issue with its consistency. I like to mix giving oral sex with hand sex, and not being able to effectively use the La Nua lube for both is a serious downside.
Overall
I love the presentation of the La Nua Honey Vanilla Lube, and while I recognise it’s not for everyone I actually love the taste as well! However, I do think the consistency is thinner than I would like to to be.
If you’re somebody who doesn’t mind frequent reapplication of lube and doesn’t mix oral sex with handjobs, I can see it working for you. However, for me, the consistency is a deal-breaker. I’ll happily use up the bottle I have because I do really like the taste (and I am interested to see if the water-based La Nua has a similar consistency issue), but I’m going to stick with Sliquid Swirl when it comes to my flavoured lubes.
Buy the La Nua Honey Vanilla lube from SheVibe from $19.99
This product was sent to me by SheVibe, in return for a fair and impartial review. Affiliate links were used in this post.
