The Maple Guild - 5 Reviews

This tastes more like maple than any of their other products I've tasted. The thing is that as strong as the maple taste is, the blueberry flavor is there to match it. I liked another flavor in this line to Vitamin Water, but this does not bring that company's products to mind, even if they are similar in vitamin and electrolyte content. This is a new class of "sports drink” that is more suited for those from the north. It tastes less of vitamins and sugar and more of the two ingredients it is advertised as being flavored as.

Does water not have to be put on ingredients lists anymore? The reason I ask is that it is nowhere to be found on this bottle and the first two things listed are organic maple sap concentrate and organic maple syrup. I know that when maple is tapped from a tree it is very liquidy and only acquires its sticky, syrupy state when cooked, but I didn't realize you could use it as the base for a beverage on its own. I would have assumed you needed to mix it with water. If you were to ask me I would say that I would think this would be a very viscous beverage but it really has the consistency of water.

What we have here is essentially Vitamin Water made with maple. It doesn't taste like maple syrup at all, it's just there as that watery base. It really tastes like a cranberry pomegranate Vitamin Water. It's full of antioxidants, electrolytes, and vitamins. Not what I expected, but enjoyable enough.

Green tea and mint is a nice match but something...something about mint is strange. We brush our teeth with mint and chew mint gum and eat mint candy. Mint is synonymous with dental hygiene and it's sometimes tough to disassociate it and enjoy it in a nice drink.

Bad breath aside, this is good. It's a very subtle mint and if it was more overpowering, I couldn't get past it. The green tea isn't bitter at all and it's lightly sweetened. The illustrious Maple Guild does a good job of sweetened but not over-sweetening these drinks and for that I am appreciative. Personally I don't know if I would be a repeat customer for this but the dude I split it with said it was better than the lemon. Different strokes, I guess.

This is a nice guy. The maple syrup actually rounds out the taste and allows it to be a bit smoother than even a cane sugar pop and somehow, sweetens it enough while somehow keeping the calorie count in half. This whole bottle is 90 calories while a Snapple lemon black tea, for instance is 150. Snapple uses real sugar and tacks on an additional 60 calories and that might not seem like much, but for those who are counting calories, it might make or break your decision.

The whole drink is really just a delight. I shared it with a buddy at work and he thought the same thing. It was decently sweetened. This isn't "a tad sweet" to use the Lipton sweetening verbiage. It's between that and the teeth disintegrating sweetness of a Southern style sweet tea. Not to make a pun but "the sweet spot." I have yet to see this on shelves and they sent it to us so that leads me to believe this is a new line. If you see it, I'd put down what you're used to and trying something new. They know what's going on inside the confines of this bottle and they're letting us in on the secrets of maple sugars.

Let me start this off by telling you all that I am a goddamn weirdo. Not only do I not put syrup on my pancakes and waffles, but I also don't put butter on them. 99% of the time I eat them plain with no added condiment (do they count as condiments?). Occasionally if I'm eating out and it comes with it I will eat them with some sort of fruit and whipped cream. I get weird looks by anyone who has never eaten breakfast food with me. I am by no means a maple man. My maple intake is limited to one day of year at the fair I go to the maple stand and try some super dark syrup and maybe have a maple donut or some popcorn. I like maple, but I like it sparingly, because it all too easily can become an overpowering taste.

This tea could get me to consume maple more often. It uses just enough of it to sweeten the tea (10g of sugar) and give it a light maple flavor. There is nothing heavy handed about it. It is not thick and syrupy and the flavor doesn't overpower the taste of the tea. I would say that the peach and maple ratio are about dead even in the flavor category. The result is that this is also a very smooth tea. It just glides right down your throat.

I want to drink this out in the woods while I am camping. Everyone else can get their pancakes sopping wet with cheap syrup and I will eat mine dry, but wash them down with this tea. It will be magnificent. Also, who makes pancakes while camping? It seems like a needless amount of extra things to bring. I suppose I am a minimalist though, who lives slim and goes often of tangents often.