Honest Tea Sublime Mate

Aroma:You get a sense of the leafy Yerba Mate as soon as you open the cap. It smells slightly sweet, slightly sour, most likely due to the blending of organic lime and lemon juice with the ginger syrup and cane sugar. The Yerba Mate's scent is strongest, though, and reminds me of green tea.
Taste: This drink has a nicely blended and complex flavor. It is, as the label states, "a tad sweet". I think the sugar level is just right. The flavor of the Yerba Mate tea (again, similar to green tea) is enhanced, as any other tea would be, with a nice squeeze of lemon or lime juice and sugar. They go together just fine. You can detect a little trace of the ginger if you really try. The flavor of the Yerba Mate sticks around the longest, but it's not really bitter, it's quite pleasant. I'm a fan.
Price: $1.25 (on sale) at local health food store, available online.
Ingredients: purified water, organic cane sugar, organic lime juice, organic Yerba Mate, organic ginger syrup, natural lime flavor and organic lemon juice concentrate.
Other Comments: About 20g of sugar per bottle - not bad compared to about 40 in a can of soda. Honest Tea seems to be committed to good business ethics, as well as producing fair trade certified and certified organic products. Most all their products are low on sugar and nutrition-focused, making them good alternatives to soda. This particular drink, Yerba Mate, is described as a traditional South American energy drink that only has approximately 1/10 the caffeine of coffee. Evidently people get together and drink this out of gourds for a good time. I'm down with that, let's go get some gourds.
Overall: This is a solid drink, with well balanced flavor, low sugar, fruit juice, and a solid company to back it. Flavor wise it's nothing revolutionary, but there's something to be said for the traditional taste of slightly sweetened tea with lemon (and lime, in this case). It's a good flavor, and they do it well.

Rating: 4.0/5 stars.

-Danithius

***Review Rebuttal!***
Danithius stole this one right out from under me, I bought it the day he posted it. Curses. Anyhow, I have become a fan of Yerba Mate, and this drink didn't disappoint. It reminded me of a lightly sweet lime-ade flavored with Mate. It finishes smooth, and there is that hint of ginger. I found this very refreshing, I'll be drinking this again.
4.5 stars.

-WiseGuise