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Sweet Leaf – Raspberry Sweet Tea Review

April 4th, 2010

Sweet Leaf Raspberry Sweet Tea

 

Greetings, Libationers!  I’ve come home from the store again with a basket full of new beverages, and it’s high time I started reviewing them off.  First up is Sweet Leaf’s Raspberry Sweet Tea flavor. 

You may remember that Sweet Leaf won a spot on our 2009 Top 10 Healthy Beverages list for their lip-smacking honey and mint green tea.  I’m curious to find out how this fruit-infused Southern classic will measure up.

The first thing I notice is a relatively low sugar quantity – 18g per serving.  Not too shabby, considering Coca-Cola is about 25g per serving.

Fragrance: I inhale deeply and get the earthy scent of black tea and raspberry.  (Mostly raspberry).

Taste: I take a sip and the first thing I notice is a sweet raspberry flavor jumping all over my tongue.  About a second later, the raspberry ducks out of the room, and in comes the mildly bitter black tea flavor to finish off the flavor profile.  All in all, it’s pleasant, with a strong focus on the raspberry flavor.  I did notice that they use “natural raspberry flavor” in the ingredients list rather than an actual raspberry juice or puree.  It is a good flavoring, but ideally I want to see the actual product being used to flavor my drinks.  Still, it is natural, and it tastes like a solid drink.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5 – A nice, refreshing sweet tea with raspberry

-Danithius-

User Ratings: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Another quick update

September 8th, 2008

Another exciting announcement at Better Libations -

As of today, we will also be located at www.healthdrinkreviews.com for SEO purposes. Our title will always remain as Better Libations, though, as well as our email addresses. In case you forgot:

Danithius@betterlibations.com (love letters and fiscal donations)
WiseGuise@betterlibations.com (hate mail, death threats)
drinkme@betterlibations.com (drink submissions)

The Beverage Revolution marches on!

- Danithius -

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50 Reviews!!

September 7th, 2008

We just reached a humble, but important milestone. We have accumulated fifty reviews in the past nine months, between me and Danithius. We appreciate all of our readers, and anyone who has commented. We hope to bring you many more reviews in the future; and please, continue to submit your suggestions and comments. Thanks, everyone.

Much love and Better Libations,

– WiseGuise

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A quick update…

August 17th, 2008

Hello Better Libationers!

As you may have noticed, we`ve taken the liberty of upgrading a few things, including our domain name. You can now find us at http://www.betterlibations.com/. Drink submissions will now be emailed to drinkme@betterlibations.com, while love letters, death threats, and random advice can be sent to either Danithius@betterlibations.com or Wiseguise@betterlibations.com.

I haven`t posted for the last two weeks because I`ve been away on a little excursion to the Land of the Rising Sun. I just needed to get away from the high-fructose rat race for a while, you see. How unhappy I was when I discovered some of my favorite drinks out here have the Devil`s Sweetener in them, too! (I had some nagging suspicions, I just never knew for sure – mostly because, well, the ingredients are in Japanese.) So that has cast a slightly sticky shadow on an otherwise wonderful vacation. That, and the Ninjas.

But never fear, I`ll be back in the states soon with some special edition Far Eastern reviews! Stay tuned!

-Danithius in Tokyo

Uncategorized

Ethos, Logos of Better Libations (Pathos is for losers)

December 15th, 2007

Welcome to Better Libations. Our mission is to deliver frequent fresh reviews of ‘healthier’ drinks, or as we like to call them, Drinks that probably won’t kill you(™). Why? Because we like you. And we’d hate to see you die so young.

Here are our basic criteria for drinks to be reviewed:

1. Non-alcoholic. (That’s a whole other ballpark, and there’s already plenty of wine connoisseurs to fill it.)
2. NO high-fructose corn syrup, unless there’s a bloody good reason to turn a blind eye to it. (HFCS is the trademark poster ingredient for Big Soda. Evidence shows it ain’t the healthiest thing to be putting in your body, but it’s cheap and easy, so they use it like it’s water. Fight the Machine!)
3. Must be available on the internet or widely distributed.
4. It needs to be a specific brand. It can be a bottled/canned drink or a drink mix, but it can’t for instance just be “green tea”.
5. Independent smaller companies are preferred over large international behemoths. (I’m looking at you, Coke.)
6. NO artificial sweeteners, i.e.; sucralose/phenylalanine, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, crystalline fructose, etc. Fructose, sucrose and anything with ‘cane’ in it is probably okay.

To submit your favorite drink for review consideration, simply send the name and where it’s available to drinkme@betterlibations.com. You can also post it as a comment.

Please note that we are not health Nazis, and we won’t tell you to throw away all your Coke and come live on our Vegan commune for a detox ritual. However, if you are drinking 64 ounces of soda or more (diet or not) every day, please understand that you will die an overweight, strung-out, diabetic shell of a human that has contributed to the downfall of America and the rise of the Soda Regime. That is all I’ll say on that.

I can already hear you all saying, “So, why you be hatin’ on Pepsi so bad?” Well sir, let me lay it out for you. The big soda companies out there are huge. Like, build-your-own-island-nation-just-for-the-hell-of-it-huge. And when you get this big, sometimes the power gets to your head. Sometimes the money starts talking louder than everything else. Whatever the reason, Big Soda has done some things we don’t agree with. We could go on and on about the high-fructose corn syrup thing, we could talk about Big Soda paying to get into public schools in order to establish brand loyalty from the first grade (all the while trumpeting their heartfelt charity for said schools), we could talk about the massive increase in the average person’s soda consumption and it’s possible link to massively increasing waistlines in America and around the world…the list goes on. As need arises, we will address these in new posts. For now, just know that Big Soda will always respond to market pressures. If we give in and drink their nutrient-void sugar-water, they will continue to make it. But if we rise up and demand better, healthier products and start going elsewhere to get them, they will respond.
Or die.
Either way.

In fact, they already are feeling the pressure. Recently Coca Cola and Pepsico have been grabbing up small nutrition-focused beverage manufacturers left and right in a hurried attempt to meet the market’s demands for drinks that won’t kill them. (Seems like a modest request, no?)

We at Better Libations strive to be the gadfly on the underbelly of Big Soda to further this revolution in the beverage market. We will always give some preferential treatment to the independent companies out there raging against the machine, but we will review some healthier products that the big guys release as well. Money talks, and higher sales of their “healthy alternatives” will make them sit up and take note.

Friends, no longer must we be confined to the cookie-cutter cola! There is a vast, glorious world of tasty wonder out there just waiting to be discovered! The revolution has begun, and we will not stop until the streets flow with the syrupy, high-fructose remains of our enemies, and the flag of nutritious freedom flies proudly for all to see!

(OK, maybe just a little pathos…)

-Danithius

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