Two new bottled teas ... and an interesting new bottle design

When I stopped by a new organic grocery store last week, I was pleased to find several new varieties of bottled tea. I had a hard time choosing, but I finally selected the peach-flavored Moonshine Sweet Tea (don't worry; it has no moonshine) and the Citrus Mint Green Tea from Tea of a Kind. You'll note that the tea on the right appears clear because the tea is actually in the cap and hasn't been "brewed" in the water yet!

First I sampled the Moonshine Sweet Tea in the Sweet Peach flavor. Perhaps I should have been clued in by the fact that the word "sweet" appears on the label twice, and the bottle has 30 grams of sugar. I didn't detect a peach flavor, but I most certainly did detect the sugar, and as someone who grew  up drinking plenty of sweet tea, even *I* found this tea too sweet. I diluted it with water and then it was drinkable, but still not enjoyable, so I quit.

Then I tried that clear bottle of Citrus Mint Green Tea from Tea of a Kind. I was fascinated by this product! It says on the bottle that the tea is stored in "the patented Gizmo cap, which prevents degradation of key ingredients. By simply twisting the pressurized Gizmo cap, you transform this bottle of purified water into delicious real brewed tea with the full benefit of antioxidant Vitamin C, refreshing tea taste, zero calories."

Sure enough, I twisted the cap and felt a (slightly scary) pop from the vibration of the pressurized cap doing its thing.

This tea wasn't any more expensive than many other bottled teas (two dollars and some change, I believe), and I marveled at the design that went into this. Unfortunately, I also marveled at what a  medicinal-tasting tea this was! I can usually choke down an ounce or two of anything, but this tea tasted like the aftertaste from some kind of clear cough medicine, certainly not like "citrus" or "mint" or "green tea." I was intrigued with this bottle, but my goodness, why didn't they put more effort into simply making the tea taste good? Did they think we would overlook the bad taste? I'm so scarred by this week's tea-tasting experiment that it's time to go sip a cup of (unsweetened!) Candy Cane Lane tea to cleanse my palate!