The Ultimate Taste of Summer! Iced Teas… Bottled.
Another of my favorite things about summer? Iced tea, natch. I don’t know what it is, but the second the temperature passes 80 degrees, downing iced tea by the gallon starts seeming like the best idea ever. Of course, the ideal way to enjoy iced tea is to either make a batch of sun tea on your porch and have it while sitting out on said porch admiring the weather, or have a freshly brewed glass brought to you with a slice of lemon at some sidewalk cafe where you can snack and watch the world going by. Sometimes, though, that’s just not an option, and what you have available is your corner bodega on the way to the Barnes & Noble or a last minute pedicure.
These are the times when I wish I was in Asia, where you can step into the Circle K or 7-Eleven (no, really) and find iced tea in virtually every form imaginable: black plain, black with lemon, black with honey, black with milk, green, green with honey, green with lemon, chysanthemum, jasmine… and the incidence of overwhelming syrupiness was much lower than it is here. I, quite frankly, can’t stand 90% of all Snapple. Yes, I gather it’s “the best stuff on Earth,” but it is waaay too sugary for me to find it refreshing on a hot day. If it has copious quantities of ice, I can handle it, but straight out of the bottle, their peach iced tea, for example, is 90 calories of sugar per 8 ounces (see also, not anything like the whole bottle). If I’m hot and thirsty and need to grab a bottle at the local deli, that’s just not going to do it. (It is, I might add, nearly as much sugar as Coke.)
Thankfully, in recent years the stores have branched out enormously in the area of iced tea, and we’re no longer stuck with the traditional syrupy iced tea with lemon of years past. So, here are a few of my favorite genuinely refreshing iced teas.
Honest Tea. I was first introduced to Honest Tea at Whole Foods years ago, but their products are available in delis and grocery stores all over the city. Honest Tea makes a whole slew of black, green, and herbal teas with just enough sweetness to balance the tea’s tannins without becoming cloying. Their bottled Assam Black Tea, for example, the classic no-frills black iced tea, is only 17 calories of honest sugar per cup, only 34 calories for the whole bottle. Their offerings include flavors like Moroccan Mint Green Tea, Green Dragon Tea (with passionfruit), and Pomegranate Red Tea With Goji Berry. They also carry a line of teas in plastic bottles with slightly more sugar, a line of “Honest Ades” for those not big on tea, and even a line of Honest Mates.
Ito En. Ito En is one of the many reasons I love the ready availability of Asian food products in New York these days. This Japanese company (which incidentally runs a haiku contest — how charming is that?) produces two of my favorites: Teas’ Tea, and their Natural Fruit Teas.
Teas’ Tea (pictured at top) is probably my favorite all-around iced tea for all occasions. The regular Teas’ Tea varieties are totally unsweetened, making them perfect for tea connoisseurs who just want to taste the tea when they cool off. The thing that I especially love about Teas’ Tea is that their teas aren’t just straight-up black or green or even white tea — they brew iced teas from other varieties like hojicha and oolong so that you’re not stuck with the same thing day after day. They have nine different varieties, including Pure Black, Pure Green, and Lemongrass Green. My personal favorite is the Golden Oolong (although I have to admit that the flowery notes of the oolong are less prominent when cold than once the tea warms up a little). They’ve also recently introduced three lightly sweetened teas with fruit flavors (Citrus Black, Blueberry Green, and Mango Oolong) for those who like a little more sugar (80 calories for the bottle).
Ito En’s Natural Fruit Teas are also great if you’re in the mood for something, well, fruitier. For this line, Ito En combines black, white, or green tea with fruit juice concentrate and other natural flavors to produce tea with flavors like apple, peach, or mango. They come out tasting more like a blend of tea and fruit juice than most fruit-flavored teas, which always make me think of tea that’s had fruit extract added. Because of the fruit, they’re sweeter than Teas’ Tea but still less sugar than Snapple at 50 to 70 calories per 8 ounce serving.
Frankly, this is by no means the whole of Ito En’s tea offerings, which include “traditional Japanese teas” like jasmine green and even loose leaf tea. You may also see their straight-up green iced tea, Oi Ocha, in Asian delis around the city. According to Ito En’s website, it’s the most popular bottled green tea in Japan, so green tea lovers may want to give it a try!
