So no time for tea-time = bottled tea-time! I picked this up during lunch at work, thinking, “Hrm! Sencha-ish pickup for the middle of the day!”
I guess I should preface this review with my stance on iced tea. I’m not really a fan. Sure, I’ve drunk gallons of the pre-sweetened Nestea variety. That syrupy concoction that tastes more of manufactured sugary gloop than actual tea. And yes, on occasion, I can enjoy sweetened fountain-soda-tea. Like Lipton’s Raspberry Iced Tea from a fountain. Delicious if you can find it! But in general, iced tea makes me screw up my face in a pretty ugly grimace.
I can’t really talk much about a smell here, because I didn’t want to be seen sniffing my bottle like a nutjob at work (open-air cubicle). Besides, iced tea isn’t usually as fragrant as its hot cousin. First sip… grimace. It tastes like really cold green tea. Okay, that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. It tasted like tea I had left out, half-drunk in a mug somewhere. Not my style.
It’s really interesting, though, in that this is an iced tea that tastes like tea. There’s no getting around it. It’s got the vegetal notes of a Japanese green throughout. A little bit more bitter than I like my greens, and the sweetness is muted through the cold. But it’s clearly green. It just tastes really plain. After a few sips in a row, I was losing the tea taste and just getting this sort of pure-water taste. Not that that’s bad, but it wasn’t a riot of nommy goodness in my mouth.
Sort of a meh.
Let me know how your tea journeys are going lately, guys! Happy holidays, Steepsterites!
