Saint James

My expectations for this were low after having such a disappointing experience with the last two flavours I tried from Saint James. However, this was the first one that was drinkable to me. The raspberry flavour was distinct and fresh, but not strong enough to overtake the black tea. Most importantly, it did not have that metallic, unpleasant bitterness to the aftertaste. The trade off, I suppose, is that this was the first drink where I could taste the lingering sweetness of the stevia after the sip. However, I don’t personally hate stevia (even though it’s not my preference) and I would MUCH rather that sweetness than the awful chemical taste I was getting from the other two…

Still wouldn’t be a repurchase, though.

Well, I think the verdict is in and… I am just not a fan of these Saint James RTDs…

This one had the exact same chemical-y and bitter tasting aftertaste I tasted in the Mango flavour but, like, even worse. It was barely drinkable to me. So sad, because I love the idea of a tea-forward fresh lemon black tea like this. That’s, like, exactly my perfect RTD flavour, but nooooot this one.

My neighborhood grocery store started stocking Saint James so I picked up some of the black tea flavours to try out – next time around I’ll do the green teas.

This one is a White Lotus collaboration, which is kind of fun. The packaging actually looks very cool for it and definitely popped on the grocery shelves. The flavour, unfortunately, is leaving a little to be desired for me. To start with the things I do like, it’s not really all that sweet which is a refreshing change of pace compared to most grocery store iced teas which are often so sugary and cloying. Technically there is a sweetener present since there’s stevia in the formulation, but I don’t find it has the artificial sweet aftertaste often present with stevia blends. I can taste the black tea clearly as well, albeit I find it a bit flat tasting and weirdly a touch floral. The mango is nice though, fresh and realistic tasting. Not too juicy, but just nice and lightly tropical.

Now the big con. Even though I didn’t find the aftertaste to be very stevia forward/heavy in that fake-y sweet kind of way, there is a sort of unpleasant finish to this drink. It’s bitterness, really. And it’s so weird to be tasting a grocery store iced tea that has that bitter note because usually the teas selected to make RTDs are specifically chosen because they lack bitterness/astringency and get less cloudy than other types of teas. I tried to ignore it at first, but it builds on the palate in a sort of nasty way…

I am fascinated to see if this is something that I’ll observe in the other flavours I bought or if it’s just in this one, but so far I don’t feel like I’m off to a great start with this brand.