Greetings, Libationers! Today I’m pleased to bring you another flavor from Sweet Leaf. Today I’m tackling their lemonade.
Now let me state from the start that I have never had much luck with pre-bottled lemonade. It’s really, really hard to find anything that doesn’t taste like a tin can of super-fake lemon concentrate. Sweet Leaf has had some solid entries in the past, though, so I’m willing to give them a try.
Let’s crack it open…
Fragrance – yep, smells like lemon all right. I do detect a little bit of that concentrate scent, too. (You know, the stuff from the little yellow plastic squeeze-lemon).
Taste – while it’s better than some other bottled lemonades that I’ve had, I still just can’t get over that concentrate taste. It just feels fake. The sweetness level is just right, and it could be great if it just tasted like a fresh lemon. But there’s just no getting around the fake taste.
To be fair to Sweet Leaf, there is only one bottled lemonade that I have ever really enjoyed, and that’s Simply Lemonade. (Which is pasteurized and kept under refrigeration like other fresh juices). It may be comparing apples to oranges here, but in order for me to like a lemonade it has to taste like real lemons! I simply can’t get over the concentrate taste.
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 – A worthy effort, but it still tastes like plastic lemons.
User Ratings: 
(1 votes, average: 2.00 out of 5)
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2-Star Reviews, Sweet Leaf drink reviews
Time for another Sweet Leaf review – last week was Mint & Honey Green Tea, and this week I’ll try out the Sweet Tea. Sweet Tea is a southern favorite – it’s a simple combo of black tea and sugar. I’ve had some of the real thing in Tennessee, so let’s see how this measures up.
First off, true to real sweet tea, the only ingredients here are water, sugar, black tea, and a bit of citric acid. (Could be in place of a squeeze of lemon, perhaps.) It has the scent of black tea with a hint of sour.
The black tea flavor in this is nice and potent, with the sweet cane sugar providing a nice background to counter the tea’s bitterness. The citric acid seems to give it an odd aftertaste after getting through about half the bottle, which takes away something from the crisp finish.
It doesn’t quite measure up to the stuff I sampled in the south, but it’s about the best stuff I’ve been able to find so far out here in the Sweet Tea-less desert of Utah.
Rating: 4.0/5 – A nice, strong sweet tea.
-Danithius-
User Rating: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, Sweet Leaf
Greetings, Libationers! Today it is my pleasure to break open a fresh new category – Sweet Leaf teas! Let’s see how these guys measure up.
Right off the bat, I notice there are 30 g of sugar in this 16 oz bottle, which is a little sweeter than Honest Tea’s “Just a Tad Sweet” beverages. As a company, Sweet Leaf caught my interest because they are one of those business that really started out of somebody’s garage and grew organically. Here’s an interesting article Inc. did on their start-up phase.
I crack open the bottle and take a whiff. It smells like (drumroll please): minty green tea. Big surprise there. I notice they use spearmint, which has a sharper flavor that will be interesting with the green tea’s unique bite. Time to try a sip.
Wow. This is some delicious stuff – it’s definitely sweeter than Honest Tea, but they use the extra sugar grams well. The green tea and honey are surprisingly smooth, and it finishes with a nice minty coolness. It’s immediately addicting. Normally I take a small sip or two when I’m initially reviewing a drink – with this one, I downed a third of the bottle before even realizing it. Given, the green tea is rather subtle in this, so if you’re a tea purist you’d probably do better with an unsweetened or lightly sweetened Honest Tea.
I like this flavor, though, it is appropriate for a company called “Sweet Leaf” that prides itself on using granny’s recipes. Compared to typical soft drinks, it still comes in low on the sugar scale – you could do a lot worse with a single 12 oz. can of soda.
Rating – 4.5/5 – a wonderful refreshing flavor that you can chug without feeling guilty about.
-Danithius-
User Rating: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, Sweet Leaf
