Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Sampling bottled teas (and deciding to stick with my own)

Warmer temperatures mean I'm drinking more iced tea these days, so for fun, I picked up a couple of new-to-me varieties at Ingle's the other day. I actually got the Nestea tea in both peach and raspberry flavors, but I drank the peach flavor on the way home.

Or perhaps I should say that I *tried* to drink the peach tea on the way home. There's no nice way to say this, but their peach tea has to be one of the worst bottled teas I've ever tried, and I've sipped some stinkers. I found myself wondering, "Have the testers ever had tea before? Did they try this out on any actual humans?" I don't like to be negative, but this chemical-tasting murky liquid just seemed to bear no resemblance to actual tea. I was so shocked by how bad it was that I took one more equally dreadful sip just to be sure, and the rest of it went in the trash. I was (and remain) puzzled by how a company could make such an awful-tasting tea. I bravely (or foolishly?) tried the raspberry tea the next day, and it was flat tasting but tolerable, nowhere near as bad as the peach flavor. Lesson learned. No more Nestea for me!

Next I tried the Upload Rainforest Infusions Raspberry, White Grape & Pear White Tea, which was immensely drinkable, although to be fair, it takes like grape juice. Which is good if you like grape juice. In which case, why not just buy grape juice, right? 

Now that that little exercise in tea-tasting is over, I'm sipping a nice black tea I steeped along with fresh mint leaves and then cooled in a pitcher in the fridge before serving over ice. It's so good, I wish somebody would make this tea and bottle it!

5 comments:

  1. I've started steeping my tea by the cup and pouring it into a bottle to 'ice'. I just like what I brew SO much better than anything that's on the grocery store shelves!! :)

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  2. You're brave to try all these different ones! They sound good but I've yet to find one that tastes really right to me. I'm like Denise, I steep a cup, add my stevia, and then pour it over ice. Mint tea is really good that way, so is blueberry! I even like spicy (cinnamon) tea over ice in the summer. Stay cool the best you can!

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  3. I’m sorry the teas were not good but thank you for sharing your experience. There is a Japanese brand of bottled green tea that I buy occasionally at Harris Teeter. Mostly when I’m going on a school field trip.

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  4. I have not tasted many bottled teas, so glad you are doing it for me. Ha! They just don't entice me to want to try them. I will go with you on wishing a good black tea with a mint leaf were in a bottle. I consider my tea caddy my bottled tea to take along with me.

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