Marquis - 3 Reviews

Perhaps this company chose its name because they felt a certain kinship with the Marquis de Sade. The term sadism was derived from the Marquis name, and if you don't know it's when you receive pleasure from causing others pain. Now this drink doesn't exactly dole out pain, but there is something about its initial taste that is uncomfortable. The thing is that it is similar to the Super Berry version in that although it is uncomfortable, you learn to enjoy it. Thus the drinker becomes the masochist. I blame the combination of the lemon juice and the erythritol for the oddness of the beverage. It's bitter, dry and naturally diet tasting. It's like you're getting the taste of the erythritol/stevia, but not the sweetness. The mango ginger flavor should combat that, but the flavor that is there doesn't really taste of mango or ginger. Nothing about this drink tastes right, but for some reason the more I drink, the more I enjoy it. With each sip I feel like I'm punishing myself, but I can't stop, and I want more. I no longer even know how I feel about myself. This is a strange world that I live in.

I can see the headlines now; “Such a daring portrayal of an energy drink” and “Never before have such bold flavors toyed with our emotions in mysterious ways.” With a name like Marquis I expect something fancy and highbrow. I thought that was going to be exactly what I was in for. It sounds so refined when you think of it as a combination of green tea, yerba mate and organic raspberry. Unsweetened this would have been a wonderful, dry treat that would stand out in a sea of copycat energy drinks. The problems started when they sweetened it with erythritol, and then continued to sweeten it even more with stevia. There are my two preferred zero calorie sweeteners, but it's just too much in this beverage. The result is that this tastes dry, and yet overly diet at the same time. I don't know how they achieved it, but they did. The diet overpowers the berry flavor as well, which is just unfortunate.

When I took my first sip of this I was immediately put off, but for the sake of the review I persevered. The more I drank the more palatable it became. I learned to ignore the dietness of it as much as I could. About half way through the can I started to enjoy it, but I couldn't give high marks to a beverage that I had to work to enjoy. It could have been a brilliant career beverage, but the general public wants things overly sweet, and companies make sacrifices to give them what they want and in the end sometimes flavor suffers.

Steve, I need to make a change in my life. I need to calm down with the burgers and go organic. We have been eating like garbage for decades so we need a change. What've you got there? If it's organic, I'll slam it. That's going to be my new mantra going forward. I'll eat anything organic. That's healthy, right? I mean, it's organic.

What is this? Is this organic? You know my new rule. Is this grapefruit beer? Marquis? What's that? You're saying this isn't it? I'm looking at the ingredients and this isn't alcoholic but man it tastes like it is. It's a little bitter and tastes really diet. It certainly is "Citrus" but that's a bit of a vague flavor, don't you think?

You know what? You can have organic hamburgers, right? Alright, hand me one of those. Maybe I don't need to go so "cold turkey" on everything. I might go half junk food and half organic. That will naturally put me right in the middle, right? Cool. Give me that burger, dude.