Xing Tea - 10 Reviews

Boy Scouts are trained for weeks to find specific berries. Which ones are poisonous and which ones are safe to eat. Badges are given out to scouts all around the nation who can tell the difference between the two. It's a crucial skill to people who spend any amount of time in the wilderness and don't always have the luxury of a grocery store that sells consistently nonpoisonous berries.

Grapes? Anyone can pick a grape. We've all seen green and purple grapes and can pick them. We don't need Boy Scouts for grapes, thank you very much.

We do need them to mix these two berries together. Anyone who says that the Boy Scouts do not have worth in today's society is full of nonsense. It's more important than ever because juice has to be made. Good juice. Quality juice. Quality juice such as this. This is a wonderful split between nonpoisonous blackberries and grapes. It's good. It's strong. It's sweet. It's juice. It's the type of juice that reminds you of the juice that used to be. Remember good juice? No, you don't, because companies have stopped making it. No, not all companies, but a lot of companies. It's not every day that you can get a blackberry juice. Grape is old hat. It's good, but you've had it. Everyone has had it. Blackberry is the main character, the protagonist. Grape is the supporting role. It's fine. Everyone is fine with the casting. The Boy Scouts are still a necessary organization, and the Girl Scouts aren't forgotten since they still sell Thin Mints. Everyone and everything is fine. This drink helps make it all possible.

You kind of know what this is going to taste like. Need I make the comparison? Alright, if you need me to. This tastes like Arizona Green Tea. There, I did it. I sank down to your level and just came out and did it. I don't like that I had to do that, but it's true.

Here's the thing, though; it's better than Arizona because it uses real cane sugar. It's a matter of ingredients. If you have one that uses corn syrup and one that uses all natural ingredients you would be completely stupid to not choose the natural one. They are that similar that after all the drinks that I've drank, the two taste the same.

You are not stupid, and you are not beneath me, I feel that I must address that, but I might say that if you have a side-by-side and they are only fifty cents difference and you choose Arizona over this, you might want to get your head inspected.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. I watched one episode of Miami Vice and I think that I could wear shoes and no socks like Don Johnson. It's not like I'm going to wear trainers and just sweat up the joint. I'm going to wear loafers or something. Obviously I've got to do some research into what Mr. Johnson wore. I mean, what a cool dude and what a classic look and summer? Come on. Who wants to wear socks anyhow?

While I'm walking around, wearing no socks and some killer loafers, I would most definitely be slurping on this can of Xing green tea with lemon because it's wonderful. It's a great mixture of flavors through and through. You can taste the green tea first and then, when you're done swallowing, you get a really good lemon taste. There's Arizona lemon tea, and that's all well and good, but this is something that you can tell Don Johnson about.

Hey, Don! You might want to give this a try. It's good. Oh, you don't know who this is? It's Mike from Thirsty Dudes. Thirsty Dudes? It's a drink review site. You still don't know? That's alright. Hey, two things...what do you think of this tea? It's great, right? Second, what shoes did you wear in that episode of Miami Vice where your God kid's dad, your friend from 'Nam was into all that bad stuff? They looked comfortable. Wait, Don...where are you going?

Can you get mad at someone if they only do 50% of a task but the 50% that they did do is stellar? I mean, you can't be totally mad at them, especially if it's something like your nephew coming over, telling you he's going to wash and detail your car, but right before he's supposed to start vacuuming up all your crumbs from eating toasted English muffins on your drive to work, you sister calls and tells you that little Mason has to come home. You assume that he's done so when you go into your car the next day and notice that there are still a mound of crumbs because you can't get up five minutes earlier to eat at the table like a civilized adult, you are a bit surprised. Here's the thing, though. He simply offered it to you. He didn't have to do any of it. He did half and to all of the people on your treacherous ride to work love the look of your clean Toyota Yaris sedan with the radio that looks like it had the display ripped off of a calculator you had in 3rd grade.

Xing has not let me down thus far. Yes, some drinks I like more than others. This I was interested in because it was their first endeavor to the realm of half and half. It's a tricky market because Arizona has been dominating the market and people's minds with their Arnold Palmer, which, in my opinion, isn't fantastic. This, though, is mostly just lemonade. I can't really taste the tea with the exception of at the very end where it might have been tea because it tasted differently but actually could have just been because the can was in the sun for a while.

Here's the thing...the lemonade was quite exceptional. It made me forget that it was a half and half at all. It's a strange predicament to be in where I have to rate a drink that I liked but didn't taste anything like what the label said. For that reason, I have to put it right in the middle.

If you like half and half, we've got tons on this site to check out, but if you like lemonade, you might just want to pick this up and forget that there is tea in it all together.

For years Arizona has run the tallboy can of tea game. They were fairly unchallenged. Peace Tea was a contender, but their drinks always left something to be desired. Xing Tea has now officially issued a challenge to Arizona. Just like in Mike Tyson's Punch Out you can't just come right out and fight the champ. You have to fight your way up the ranks. In the first two fights Xing held it's own. In all honesty when you're fighting the Glass Joe and Von Kaiser of iced teas you really don't need to put up much of a fight to get them down. In the third fight Xing's sweet tea went up against iced tea's version of Piston Honda. It was a long, drawn out fight but it ended with a TKO in favor of Xing when it noticed his eyebrow movements. After that Xing really started to shine. It plowed its way through its opponents, even beating that annoying fat slob King Hippo. He definitely would be some sort of ghetto tea that's over-saturated with high fructose corn syrup.

Finally we are at the here and now. Xing is going to be battling against Great Tiger. I always hated that guy. He was always a thorn in my side via video game boxing. Xing has trained well and has put forth its best mango effort for this match. This is a smart tea. It's really sweet, but you can tell by taste and consistency that it's cane sugar sweet. It tastes like a summer sweet tea made with green tea instead of black. The mango flavor is attentive. It's knows when to hit Great Tiger's jewel with it's bite and when to hold back and block his teleportation attack. It's these great moves that helped Xing win this battle as well.

Xing still has a long way to the title fight, but if it keeps making the moves it's been making, it will be going toe to toe with Arizona Black & White in no time.

Way back when we restarted this wonderful, award winning website, I found a plethora of Xing Tea at a bodega in a multi-floor mall in Baltimore. I wanted two, but had to buy three since they had some stupid/ridiculous/unlawful minimum credit card rate. My girlfriend went to my parent's house and came back with a bag full of Xing and I was clearly excited. I wanted to start with blueberry and since I do what I want because I'm a man, I did just that. I've also had dreadlocks for a week and a half, got a Smith's chest tattoo, bought two corgi's, and filled a hole in my basement foundation with "Great Stuff" rather than becoming a professional mason and fixing it the right way. These are all examples of things I've done because I can do what I want.

This tea, a newcomer to my list of fallback delicious drinks, is simple magnificent. It's got a great blueberry taste. It's sweet, but it's a great, pure cane sugar taste. Not a whole lot of green tea flavor, but I don't miss it, honestly. If it was swapped with a black tea, I could probably tell, but since the sugar and the blueberry is so sweet, it's overpowered.

If this was on a shelf and I didn't see anything else that I haven't drank, I wouldn't hesitate to buy it. I often feel guilty for buying "old" drinks when I've got shelves of "new" drinks at home that need to be reviewed, but if I find myself riding my bike this summer, come across a store that sells this drink, it will be in my hand as quickly as can be. You have my word, son.

I like this company. With the exception of the sweet tea, which, in my opinion, was just something they did for fun, everything I've had from Xing is very good. Plus, it's an all-natural tea and it's got great flavor options. The green tea always has a nice bitterness that isn't lost in whatever flavor I've tried. This raspberry is no exception. It has a raspberry nose to it and to the tongue, you get raspberry and then a bitter, green tea aftertaste.

I don't know why it's not more available. I found it at a local "half way between corner store and bodega" place. They didn't have a lot of flavors, but beggars can't be choosers, and for that reason, I like this tea. I would easily say that it's better than Arizona Raspberry.

Mike reviewed this drink three and a half years ago, and just wasn't into it. As you can see below, it just didn't deliver what he wanted from a sweet tea. Cut to now, the company contacted us and said that from what he wrote, they thought something was wrong with his can, as in a bad batch or something. They ended up sending us a couple cans to try again, and I have to say they were absolutely right.

I will now address Mike's issues:
1) There is a difference between sweet tea and sweetened tea.

I can most definitely taste the sweet tea aspect of this. You can absolutely taste the cane sugar, and it's one of the driving tastes in this beverage. That is what makes a sweet tea to me.

2) He couldn't taste any actual tea, and it tasted fake.

There is both black and green tea in this, which I admit is odd in a sweet tea, and purists would scoff at it and claim it wasn't real sweet tea. Those people are snobs. I can definitely taste both type of tea very distinctively. It gives a new twist to an old standard. I am personally a fan, and during a sweltering summer I would drink this all of the live long day.

Sorry you got a bunk can Mike, because this is great and more than lives up to my Xing expectations.

**********************************************************************************
Mike's Old Review:
The more I am drinking Xing Tea the more I am getting disappointed. This sweet tea is, technically, sweetened tea, but there is a significant difference between "sweet tea" and sweetened tea. Also I taste no actual tea in this drink and something about it seems fake. I don't think I need to say anymore.

Better than the cherry? Possibly. Once again, not a strong tea flavor, but this time the pomegranate was the star. The aftertaste of the fruit was pretty spot on to the sweet, tartness of real pomegranate seeds.

The pomegranate green tea is a nice, drinkable alternative to the ten minutes and yellow fingers you have to deal with on a real pomegranate. I do love the bursting flavor of those lil' seeds, though.

I've had Xing Tea before. It was a nice change from the Arizona tall boys to these because of the totally different cane sugar taste. This cherry flavor was unique since I've never had that flavor iced tea before. It certainly was unique but it was so cherry flavored that they could almost remove "tea" from the title and change the title to a juice and get away with it. It's got green and black tea in it but it's so faint that it's almost non-existent.

Look, it was one tasty drink, and I recommended it and would get it again, but now I know to get it when I have the taste for juice and not iced tea.