Kiju - 3 Reviews

I'm going to start a petition to switch the places of black and mate teas. Black tea is everywhere and let's face it, while it is delectable it is also pretty boring, and far too easy to over sweeten. Mate is a rarity. It's exotic and you can't over sweeten it without it losing its special pizzazz. I know that if they were switched for long enough mate would begin to seem commonplace and lose it's exoticness. I just want this to be for a limited time. I want to go out to eat with my family to some garbage chain restaurant and be able to order a tea and have it be special. In shirt I'm bored with everyday teas.

Kiju is a nice answer to my problem. They make a nice, lightly sweetened mate iced tea. The fruit juice carries most of the flavor, but it has the very specific mate aftertaste. It has a very strong passionfruit taste with some mango around the edges. Did I mention that they use real fruit juices in this? Maybe that is why I like mate so much. If a company cares enough to use it, then they also care enough to use primo ingredients. I've never seen a mate sweetened with HFCS. That just doesn't fly in this world. It's the world I want to be in, well at least for the time being.

Ahh flowers. They look great. They bring color to this otherwise depressing world. When I lived in Boston for a few months, I didn't know that I would miss foliage and color. I spent six week not really seeing trees or grass too much and then someone told me about Boston Commons and I felt I needed to go. It was like I had never seen flowers before. I spent the whole time just not caring but really my body craved those little guys.

So, I self-admittedly enjoy a flower every not and then. It's fine. This drink was floral. It was like if you had a red tea that wasn't too bitter, infused a flower, and then added a little sugar to it. I will also admit that I clearly have no idea what hibiscus tastes like because sometimes it's the greatest thing I've ever had and then other times it's just...there. I'm not hating on it, but I wish that I could taste it in it's truest form so that I know which side of the fence I'm on; like or love. I guess either side is pretty non-confrontational, but still, I don't like this floral purgatory I'm in. It's terrible but the smell is relaxing and the sights from up here are quite scenic and well pruned.

Is it wrong of me to assume that when something is organic that it is just going to be solely what it is labeled as? I feel like ten years back that was the case, but not so much these days. I wanted there to be nothing in this bottle except for juices that came from mangos and oranges. Oh it would have been so delicious, perhaps a perfect drink. That is not what I received. While it still is better than 90% of the juices available to the world, there are other elements at work in this beverage that lessen its quality. Sure there are orange and mango juice in here, but right along side them, and in greater quantity according to the ingredient list, are their friends apple and grape. It's like orange and orange arranged this wonderful little get away together and then their two overbearing friends invited themselves along and rearranged the entire trip to suit their own needs. Jerks. What would have been the vacation of a lifetime ends up being more of an apple juice that is orange and mango flavored (grape got food poisoning and spent the weekend in bed). As I said I do really enjoy the drink a lot, and it's fairly unique tasting, but it's not what I was expecting, nor what I really wanted. Knowing what it is I think I would enjoy it a lot more in the future.