Marquis Platinum Vitality Drink

You are out on the town - impressing clientele and politicians with your knowledge and your boundless energy, hobnobbing with all the uppercrusties during the Democratic National Convention. Suddenly, you feel a slip, a small yawn, and find yourself getting sleepy during the last 1 am party. What could come to your rescue, but not damage your ego by whipping out something vulgar or juvenile?
Marquis Platinum Vitality drink fits that bill, being both full of some very grownup ingredients and will keep you awake while looking stylish. Of course, like many of the finer foods such as quail eggs and Pate', this drink is an acquired taste , those who have a palate more accustomed to licking Pine trees with a feigned smile of enjoyment. After all, it is tres uncouth to take a big gulp of this stuff and spew it out of you mouth sprinkler style on your closest guests. And it might take a little effort remembering to keep a stiff upper lip while trying to get this down without any incident.

This is also billed as a Vitality drink - not an energy drink. The difference is just that they want to be separated from the Monsters and Rockstars and instead want to be compared with the Gurus, Syzmos, and Optas - only with more high endedness to them. Of course, I thought one could get no more high end than being sold in Whole Foods, where buying a pre-made dinner could mean mortgaging your house. However, This drink outdoes even them by being sold in only a few very select and pricey hotels and select stores and bars in the country. You can get " white glove home delivery", but must email them to inquire.
Nutrition/Buzz:9
The biggest difference between them is that while energy drinks have high fructose corn syrup, taurine, anhydrous caffeine and Vitamin B, their drink is full of CoQ10 (like in Rehab and Syzmo), Guarana (which is in everything) , Green Tea Polyphenols ( which can be found in lots of drinks, including zipfizz, syzmo and Crunk, not to mention all the energy teas by AriZona, Xing and Who's Your Daddy). They then put in some really fun unique ingredients, like Pine Bark Extract, using stevia as a sweetener and a zero-calorie commercial sweetener made from erythritol.
As for caffeine, we don't know. It definitely has some through the guarana, but the amount is undisclosed. My guess from consuming it is it has around 70-100mg of caffeine in the can, but there is enough to keep you burning for a couple hours max. What is really nice is that the sweetener keeps the calories out while helping meter out the energy so there is no crash from it later.

Taste:6
This is perhaps one of the more strange flavors I have had. Now I am ALL into trying new things, and have yet to be seen turning my nose from any substance, no matter how potent or vile. Fortunately, this really is an acquired taste, where you need to drink the whole can before you could really begin to enjoy them. The flavor of all the odd ingredients, along with the usual Red Bull sourness makes for an interesting combination I was certainly not expecting. I could taste the Pine tree essence, along with the chalky sweetness of the stevia. If you are an energy drink drinker, you might not mind the taste. However, if you are picking one up as a lark in a very fashionable place, I would be ready to find the nearest trash receptacle to drop it in. The war between the unique flavors ( which is good) and the insistence on still using Red Bull as a flavor is what makes this score lower than it probably should.
Packaging:7
I could see they were going for high class here, using striped silver and black, and leaving off the usual "Extremeness" to go with class instead. and it sorta works. A couple things are not quite there. The big "Vitality drink" in a sans font and the un-designed royal crest in the front do nothing to help enhance the status of the drink, and the cheap regular 12 oz slim can might have been revolutionary a couple years ago but are now just run of the mill. I also wish there was a caffeine content, and think hiding it so it seems more Proprietary and "not the point of the drink" as silly. They even have caffeine listings on Starbucks Chai teas now - the purposeful hiding just does not work. This is a great idea, and it is executed all right, but not taken to the level it really could be.
Website: 10
Gorgeous gorgeous design. Fantastic backend coding and great music. Extra Kudos for using Telepopmusik as a background. It might have been expensive to license the song - but it is completely worth it. And not only is this site stunning in the details, but the backend code that holds the flash movie is very nice and purposeful, allowing for robots and people without javascript or flash to still see something.Nitrocorps did a very impressive job creating something memorable and clean, with tons of information on the drink and the company, and dynamic enough that the producers of this drink can maintain ( and do maintain) their site with ease.


Many many thanks to Taurine Rules, who managed to procure this drink for me to try out.