jC's Sweet Tea

There are three types of beverages I’m guaranteed to like:  whole milk, limeade, and sweet tea.  I can thank my lucky stars that I have one of those three beverages in front of me tonight, courtesy of ThirstMonger.  jC’s Sweet Tea (and yes the “j” is lowercase) is today’s beverage and I think I’m in for a good time.  Immediately I looked at this bottle of sweet tea and the first thing I noticed is that it is “southern style”.  Now, I’m perfectly ok with that because I probably have a bias in believing that the South makes the best sweet tea.  The second thing I noticed is that it was made in Ohio.  Somehow I my eyes skipped past the part that said “all natural” and straight to the contradiction on the bottle.  How am I supposed to take a “southern style” sweet tea seriously if it was made in Ohio?  For that answer I checked out the jC’s Sweet Tea website and read their history. 

The long of the short of it is that a woman with the initials J.C., who hails from Alabama and South Carolina, eventually made it to the state of Ohio.  She of course brought her family recipes with her and the sweet tea really struck a chord in her friends.  Long story overly shortened… now we have jC’s Sweet Tea – made in Ohio, yet by a southerner.  That’s a legitimate enough reason for me… on to the ingredients.

Unless you were taken aback by the earlier contradiction as I was, you probably noticed that this is an all-natural sweet tea.  The ingredients are as follows: Water, Sugar, Pineapple Juice (a first for me in a tea), Fresh Squeezed Lemon Juice, Pekoe Cut Black Tea, Orange Pekoe Tea, Rinds of Oranges & Sweet Spice.  Without even opening the bottle, that sounds absolutely fantastic.  So, please allow me to open the bottle and prove to you that it is.

There is some serious spice in jC’s Sweet Tea.  The aroma that comes off the top of the beverage is downright heavenly.  It has a smell that I would like my entire house to share.  A mixture of everything I just read off the ingredient list greets my nostrils as if they were best friends.  Hopefully my taste-buds get the same treatment.

First off, I just let out an audible “Ahh”.  I felt I needed to type that for honesty sake.  I was afraid that this would be overly sweet, but jC’s Sweet Tea has a brilliant level of sweetness.  It’s enough to make the drink a treat, but not so much that it would overpower a meal or become a liquid dessert.  Each sip contains a harmonious mixture of sweet tea, lemon, spices, and even the orange finds its way into this description.  It’s hard for me to tell you exactly which spices are used, but my best guess would be all-spice and maybe some nutmeg.  Another area that I thought might be a weak point is the potential over use of the lemon, but let me paraphrase this again.  The lemon gets an “E” in conduct for how well he plays with others.  I cannot over emphasize enough how well blended this beverage is, so I’ll stop saying it from this point on.

The mouth feel is just at the entrance of syrupy, but this vanishes once the drink no longer resides in your mouth.  After my gullet was emptied I was left with the slight taste of sweet tea, nowhere nearly complex as the actual drink itself, but a fond reminder of what I just experienced.  Honestly I finished this about halfway through the review, it’s really good sweet tea.  I can’t say that I’ve ever had anything like it in the South, but I really wish I had.

~A

A “Twist’s Choice” Recipient

Twist is called "Sweet T" in many iguana circles