Does this contain aspartame?

Hi Drew, no it does not here are all the Ingredients: water, sugar, carbon dioxide, acidifier citric acid, colouring sulphite ammonia caramel, natural herbal extracts.

Why is the price ridiculously high?!?

Shipping cost $10-$13 ( depends where is shipped )

why is the shiping so high ?

Lieber Werner, dear Werner, the short answer is: because we are in business not to lose money and we have to charge accordingly so it actually covers the cost of shipping! The somewhat longer answer is: we are on the Amazon platform, like on many other ones including our own website. We offer our products on that platform and we pay a monthly fee to do so as well as a 15% commission on the price of the product as well as on shipping (you see, why we have to charge 15% more at least on shipping than it actually costs, just to cover that fee!). We would not be in business if we would have a business model like Amazon, which is on the stock market, has a P/E ratio of : 296.54 for Dec. 22, 2017 and also lost 7.2 billion dollars in shipping in 2016 (on a volume of approximately 17 billion in shipping expenditures). More in detail: under 450 gram we can ship via USPS and the cost is about $5 maximum. Once it goes over 450 gram it has to be Priority Mail, which starts at about $7 to $9, depending where it is (distance from shipper, rural or city, business or privat). One bottle of Almdudler is 500 gram and then some (the bottle also weighs a little bit, plus the packaging). For 4 bottles it is 2000 gram plus the aforementioned packaging material and the weight of the empty bottles..we are talking now $12 to $17 for Priority Mail, which arrives in 2 to 4 days. Hope that will shed some light on this..do I wish that shipping would be free..oh yeah, but we all know..there is no free lunch..it is added somewhere. And, if somebody does it for free..it will not last long..economic reality will hit pretty soon right there, where it hurts most. Thank you for asking and Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!