I go through this a lot myself. For me it makes it hard once you have seen the color version. There's definitely an impact with B&W that you can't achieve with color. But I believe that our minds crave color, and so once we see it in color, it makes it harder to appreciate the impact of B&W.
Anyway, with this picture I prefer the B&W. With the majority of the picture out of focus, the B&W takes advantage of that and brings attention to the in focus drops, while color seems to be distracting. Just my two (actually 0.2 with my voting power) cents worth.
Very smart observations! Thanks, Onza.