Mary Anna's Sweet Tea

Product Type:Tea: Sweetened; Container: 16 oz glass bottle
BevNET Review: Unlike the flagship Summer Sweet Tea variety, this one has added flavoring in the form of natural raspberry flavor. As a result, Berry Sweet Tea tastes very much like other bottled raspberry flavored teas -- and this definitely reduces the homemade feeling that we loved about their Summer Sweet Tea. It’s still a pretty good drink, but we have to guess that consumers who try the Summer Sweet Tea will be much more wowed than those who try Berry Sweet Tea first. Really, we’d rather see a peach flavored tea than raspberry – it’s generally more popular and tastes more natural. On the other hand, we like the color scheme of this label more than the light green tone of its counterpart. The purple has a nice pop to it, plus the text is more readable. The beach graphics help with the summer theme, which certainly helps whet the appetite for a nice bottle of sweet tea. Overall, it’s enjoyable, but we much prefer the Summer Sweet Tea variety. Reviewed on: 7/31/2009

Product Type:Tea: Sweetened; Container: 16 oz glass bottle
BevNET Review: From a flavor point of view, Mary Anna’s Summer Sweet Tea is a really well crafted product that tastes just like what you’d get if you made sweet tea at home. Made with only four ingredients (water, sugar, lemon juice, black tea), this product has a very wholesome flavor to it, with the tea, lemon, and sugar easily distinguishable from the mix. There’s a fair amount of black tea flavor to the drink, which tastes like a medium-bodied brew. While the drink has 160 calories and 38g of sugar per bottle, it feels surprisingly light in your mouth. It’s sweet, but not too sweet – and the splash of lemon gives it a very pleasant finish (plus, it lacks that acidic finish that we often find in mainstream bottled teas). All in all, we’re big fans of what’s inside this bottle. On the outside, they’ve gone with a 16 oz. bottle and a colorful stuck-on label. There’s something about the brand name “Mary Anna’s” (that’s the name of the founder) that doesn’t seem as “sticky” as something like Sweet Leaf or Honest Tea. In addition, we’d suggest promoting the lemon flavor a bit more by placing the text higher (the “a rich infusion of custom blended teas” could go – it doesn’t really add anything) and adding a lemon graphic somewhere. Overall, this is a great first effort in terms of what’s on the inside of the bottle, but we think that the outside needs a bit of improvement. Reviewed on: 7/31/2009