Top Hat Provisions Quinine Tonic Syrup

This review is for "Top Hat Keto Sugar Free Elderflower Tonic Syrup & Quinine Concentrate." We had already tried the original Top Hat concentrate (not sugar free) and it was an average to decent, passable tonic syrup. Not quite as good as Q or Fever Tree, but better than most national or generic brands and convenient to keep around. There aren't very many sugar-free tonic options that use natural sweeteners like monk fruit, so we really wanted to like this other, sugar-free product. The bottle claims that along with cinchona for quinine, it contains "grapefruit, elderflower, [and] chamomile." When opening the bottle, I noticed a strong wave of cheap drug store cough syrup scent. My drinking partner said the same thing aloud, unprompted by me. The taste (paired with Beefeater and sparkling water at the recommended ratio) matches the smell, unfortunately. There is zero complexity, just overpowering, sickly sweetness and perhaps muddled floral flavors, but the normally bitter cinchona doesn't hold up to the sweetness, nor is there any tang or bitterness from the grapefruit. There is no balance or flavor progression, just one disgusting note. If someone handed this to me to smell or made me a drink with it, there is absolutely zero chance I would guess that it was a tonic syrup. I would be very unlikely to guess that the main "note" was elderflower. Even though it uses natural extracts for flavoring, the taste has much more in common with extremely low quality products that use artificial flavoring, which seems bizarre in contrast to something like St. Germaine which has a lovely, complex set of elderflower flavors. I appreciate the concept of this syrup, and that it is made with natural ingredients and monk fruit rather than synthetic flavors and sweeteners, but I think the execution misses the mark completely. Please rethink this one, boost the quinine and bitterness, and back way off the unnecessary extras if not removing them entirely. I'm not sure if I got a bad batch, but it is virtually undrinkable, and also unreturnable thanks to Amazon's "grocery" policy I didn't realize applied to this product.