With the rising popularity of tea in the western world, beside our classic black iced tea new tea types started finding their way to the bottle. Among many brands the known and recognized Lipton has brought Red and White Ice Teas to supermarket shelves. I have tasted them both and here is what I think.
Lipton White Tea has the smell resembling sour cabbage – not very pleasant at all. The flavor is much better then the smell, delicate, just like white tea should be, but much more like jasmine scented green tea. It’s not a surprise, since the content lists 0,12% green tea extract and 0,02% white tea extract. At this point I can’t help felling a bit cheated. It’s not very sweet, but rather sour , like lemonade with that slight hint of the mellow white tea taste.
Lipton Red Tea on the other hand is more like a tropical fruit lemonade and resembles tea a lot less then the White variant. The tea content here is 0,1% black tea, 0,05% rooibos and 0,05% red tea. The aroma here is much more friendly – fruity and exotic and the flavor is similar to the previous tea – sour and not too sweet. I don’t feel like this one is related to tea at all.
To sum up the White Tea is more authentic to the tea actual tea, but the Red Tea is much more pleasant to drink. Generally, if you’re on the go, they are ok (a better choice then Coca-Cola), but I’m not at all satisfied with the quality and that the content of actual tea in those is ridiculously low.
