I love tea. White tea, green tea, black tea, mate, rooibos, gossip, psychedelic tea, herbal tea… if you can steep it in boiling water and turn it into a beverage, I’ve probably drunk it and loved it. Give it to me hot, give it to me iced, sweetened, unsweetened, I’ll drink it down. So when I set out to blind taste test every bottled and canned tea beverage we could find I knew it would be a good time.
And then I remembered something — tea is best enjoyed right after being brewed. After it has chilled in a bottle for who knows how long, it loses that special essence that makes tea such a delicious drink. Which is why bottled tea is usually packed with sugar. When you brew tea for the proper amount of time (3 minutes for green, 5 for black, 7+ for anything herbal) the leaves and flowers evolve into a complex expression that can taste grassy, floral, vegetal, rich, malty, toasted, chocolaty, savory, bitter, and sweet — no sugar or artificial flavors required.
If you’re a true die-hard tea drinker like me, you’ve probably been offered tea before and immediately asked “what kind?” Only to be told “we have black and green,” to which you asked once again, “but what kind?” It’s an annoying line of questioning but there is a whole lot of difference between something like a pearl jasmine green tea and a gunpowder Genmaicha, or a Darjeeling and an English Breakfast. And don’t even get me started on Chai and Matcha! Once you know all of that, it’s impossible to go back to being fine with “black or green” as a descriptor. That’s like saying “we have clear alcohol and dark.”
Unfortunately, this test revealed that bottled tea doesn’t really have that level of complexity — so if you like tea but have no f*cking clue what I’m talking about, fear not. This article is still for you. Here are the best bottled and canned teas, blind taste tested and ranked.
PART I — Methodology
For this blind taste test, I tasted 16 different varieties of bottled and canned tea from local gas station convenience stores as well as 7-Elevens in my area. I had each tea served chilled (as that is how they are sold) and randomly poured for me. I didn’t differentiate between sweetened, unsweetened, black, green, or herbal varieties. If it contained tea or some sort of steeped herb extract, I considered it fair game.
Here is our class:
- 7-Eleven — Green Tea Flavored With Ginseng And Honey
- 7-Eleven — Sweet Tea
- Arizona — Green Tea With Ginseng and Honey
- Arizona — Iced Tea with Lemon
- Arizona — RX Energy Herbal Tonic
- Gold Peak — Sweet Tea
- Gold Peak — Unsweetened Tea
- Guayaki Organic Yerba Mate — BluePhoria
- Guayaki Organic Yerba Mate — Enlighten Mint
- Pure Leaf — Extra Sweet Tea
- Pure Leaf — Lemon Tea
- Pure Leaf — Raspberry Tea
- Pure Leaf — Sweetened Tea
- Pure Leaf— Unsweetened Tea
- Snapple — Lemon Tea
- Snapple — Peach Iced Tea
PART II — The Tasting
Taste 1:
This tea is unsweetened. Earlier I wrote about how complex and nuanced the flavors of unsweetened tea can be, but this doesn’t really have any of that. It hits your palate with an initial sourness and then has a flat and bitter flavor that sticks to the tongue.
Taste 2:
This tea goes in the opposite direction of the last tasting, it’s intensely sweet to the point of making me wince. The dominant flavor here is some sort of artificial citrus, it tastes just like dirty lemon water.
There is a schoolyard legend that pink lemonade was invented after some circus lemonade vendor ran out of water and had to use the water from a bucket where the trapeze artists soaked their tights, which gave the lemonade a faint pink color. I don’t believe that story, but this is what I imagine that water tasted like.
Taste 3:
After two genuinely awful experiences, I’m liking this one a lot. It’s sweetened, but not overwhelmingly so, it has a nice round sugar-forward flavor with just a touch of bitterness and a lightly toasted flavor. It tastes like a classic southern sweet black tea, I can see this working excellently in an Arnold Palmer.
Taste 4:
Another pleasant experience, this beautiful green tea offers a lot of complexity and sweetness. As it hits the palate I’m getting a nice leafy and light taste with a distinct floral sweetness courtesy of what I’m guessing is honey.
Just really all-around tasty with a nice balance between sweet and natural.
Taste 5:
A way better balance of toasted black tea and lemon flavors, not nearly as artificial or sweet as Taste 2. It actually tastes like someone squeezed a fresh lemon in a glass of black tea.
Taste 6:
What the f*ck is this, punch? This stuff tastes kind of interesting, it’s slightly malty with a tart fizzy kick and a pleasantly bitter aftertaste. I like it but I can’t imagine drinking more than a few sips… it’s a bit overwhelming.
Taste 7:
This tastes… bad. It has a weird sour sweetness to it with a plastic overtone that hovers against each sip. It tastes cheap.
Taste 8:
Another weird one, this tastes like some sort of slightly sweet citrus soda, I’m not getting any tea flavors aside from a bitter aftertaste. I want to say that maybe there is a hint of pineapple in there. There is a lot going on here.
And it’s not good.
Taste 9:
The last few tastings have been gone heavy on the fruit flavors, but this one is in another class. With a focus on earthy and nutty flavors, this tea uses just a touch of fruit flavor for a wonderfully complex expression that ends with a subtle berry tart finish.
I love it.
Taste 10:
Nothing subtle or complex about this one, it just hits you with an intense bitterness that comes across like dirty water. There is a sort of soft and round mouthfeel to it, but its ruined by that bitter bite. I truly do love unsweetened teas, but when they’re bottled straight up taste nasty.
Taste 11:
Interesting, complex, and refreshing. This tea goes a little bit heavy on the peppermint, but it has a nice and inviting malty quality to it that I wouldn’t expect from something this light in color.
Taste 12:
This is another citrus tea but the lemon notes are drowned out by the intense sweetness, only expressing itself as a weird sour aftertaste. I also can barely taste the black tea in here, the dominant flavor is pure sugar, and it’s not a good thing.
Taste 13:
If Taste 12 tasted like pure sugar, I don’t even know what to call this. It’s overwhelmingly sweet to the point of being undrinkable. I had to take several sips of sparkling water just to get the taste off my tongue from this one. Awful.
Taste 14:
A very interesting balance between herbal flavors, honey, and vegetal green tea. There is a touch too much sweetness that lingers on the backend, but the initial taste is very pleasant. It seems like a new flavor reveals itself with every sip, sometimes it’s sweet and grassy, other times floral. Definitely the most interesting tea I’ve tasted in the lineup.
Taste 15:
Fruity and round with a pleasant toasted finish. There is a sour component here, but not in an off-putting spoiled way like some of the other tastings, in here it’s pleasant. It really activated my tastebuds in a mouthwatering way. I like this one a lot.
Taste 16:
And what a way to end. This is another tea that has been sweetened to death. Sugary, with an awful blunt finish.
Part 2: The Ranking
16. Snapple — Lemon Tea (Taste 2)
The Tea:
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. There was a time when Snapple was the good tea, its biggest and most present competitor was Lipton Brisk and now that Lipton Brisk is only available in bulk, this is the new “big brand” on the scene. And it turns out, it’s not very good.
Snapple recently transitioned from glass bottles to plastic and it sounds ridiculous to say that the quality dropped along with the packaging, but it really has. This just taste like bottom-of-the-barrel basic shit.
The Bottom Line:
There are a good amount of lemon-flavored teas on the market, this one is the worst.
15. 7-Eleven — Sweet Tea (Taste 16)
The Tea:
It wasn’t until this tasting that I discovered that 7-Eleven has its own branded products, from teas to snacks, to fruit juices. One of their teas, you’ll find, I thought was absolutely delicious, but this particular flavor is just bad.
The label shows some sugar cubes and tea leaves, and that’s exactly what this stuff tastes like. Sugar cubes, melted down into a brown liquid of death. Avoid at all costs.
The Bottom Line:
7-Eleven makes two varieties of bottled tea, this is the bad one.
14. Pure Leaf — Extra Sweet Tea (Taste 13)
The Tea:
Who is this for? Seriously, “extra sweet tea” is something that nobody needs considering your typical sweetened variety of black tea has as much sugar in it as a can of coke.
I’m not even sure this can legally be considered tea, it tastes more like sugar than anything else. There are plenty of other sweetened black teas on the market, including one by this same brand, that taste a lot better than this. Even if you have a giant sweet tooth, trust me, you aren’t expecting this.
The Bottom Line:
Pure Leaf? More like Pure Sugar.
13. Pure Leaf — Sweet Tea (Taste 7)
The Tea:
I guess I just don’t like this brand! Pure Leaf has some sort of weird relationship with sugar because despite this being a whole 100 calories and 20 grams of sugar less than the Extra Sweet variety, it still ends up tasting like sweetened trash.
This one has a slightly sour taste to it which I guess makes it more complex so that’s…something.
The Bottom Line:
Pure Leaf? More like Pure Garbage.
12. Pure Leaf Unsweetened (Taste 10)
The Tea:
I’ve been hard on this brand in this ranking but… they kind of suck. Turns out that when the brand lives up to its name “Pure Leaf” it tastes better. Slightly. This taste like a basic black tea, it’s not complex, or interesting, and doesn’t have the depth of flavor that I’ve come to expect from black tea, but it’s not totally gross either.
And that’s something right?
The Bottom Line:
“Not gross” is the best I can say about this.
11. Gold Peak Unsweetened (Taste 1)
The Tea:
I love freshly brewed unsweetened tea, it’s my preference, so having to rank an unsweetened tea this low again just feels wrong, but I have to call it as I see it, or in this case, taste it, and this just isn’t doing anything for me.
In fact, I think it gives unsweetened tea a bad name. If you think you dislike unsweetened tea because all you’ve had is the bottled stuff, I beg you, please try the freshly brewed stuff! Unlike the Pure Leaf, this taste better brewed. It’s not as bitter and dull tasting, it has a lighter touch to it with a slight natural sourness.
I’d still rather drink puddle water though.
The Bottom Line:
Giving unsweetened tea everywhere a bad reputation. Skip this stuff or at the very least, cut it with lemonade.
10. Guayaki Organic Yerba Mate — BluePhoria (Taste 6)
The Tea:
It’s hard to believe this weird fruit punch is a tea, but it has Yerba Mate in it so it definitely counts. As a tea drinker, I think it’s pretty awful and will leave tea drinkers disappointed, but as a drink in itself, it’s interesting. Malty, fruity, tart, it has all of these weird flavor sensations that you don’t expect out of a tea drink that come together nicely.
The Bottom Line:
Drink it if you’re looking for something interesting, it’s fruity and malty, two flavors that shouldn’t be in the same drink, but here they are! It doesn’t really taste like tea though.
10. Arizona — Iced Tea With Lemon Flavor (Taste 12)
The Tea:
Don’t let the famous can fool you, this stuff isn’t that great. Arizona is a brand that understands marketing. 99¢ for a giant beautifully designed can, what more can a person want?
A good flavor perhaps? Again, there are other lemon teas on the market, and they taste better than this one. I desperately wanted this brand to come out on top because it looks so damn cool, but that is what makes blind taste tests so fun, we betray our biases and get down to the truth. And the truth is, this shit is mid.
The Bottom Line:
Sour and too lemon-forward to register as tea.
This brand has a lot of flavor variations, but the most famous one (you know what I’m talking about) is still the best. Go with that one instead.
8. Arizona RX Energy Herbal Tonic (Taste 8)
The Tea:
I wasn’t entirely convinced that Arizona’s RX Energy Herbal Tonic was tea considering tea isn’t in the name, but it’s right there in the ingredients list. This is a mix of citrus flavors and green tea and while I can’t taste any tea whatsoever, it still tastes pretty damn good.
It’s fruity, with a subtle hint of pineapple and apparently, it gives you a boost of energy. I couldn’t tell you if that was true or not because I drank 16 teas in a single hour so I was pretty wired on caffeine anyway.
The Bottom Line:
It’s great... if you want something that doesn’t taste anything like tea!
7. Pure Leaf — Lemon (Taste 5)
The Tea:
This. Brand. Has. Too. Many. Fucking. Flavors.
Seriously Pure Leaf, figure out how to make something good and stick with that! Having said that, this is the best lemon tea on the market.
I could hardly believe it considering how much I hated the other Pure Leaf flavors, but this lemon tea strikes the perfect balance between zesty citrus and toasty black tea notes.
The Bottom Line:
The best-tasting lemon black tea your money can buy. Bottled.
6. Guayaki Yerba Mate — Enlighten Mint (Taste 11)
The Tea:
If you’re unfamiliar with Yerba Mate, it’s a malty-tasting herbal tea from South America that has more caffeine in it than your average tea, but less than coffee. It strikes a nice middle ground between the two, it offers a lot of energy but doesn’t make you feel wiry and drained the way a cup of Joe can.
Guayaki’s take on yerba mate takes out the distinct bitter vegetal flavor that is characteristic of the drink, which in my opinion takes out a lot of the fun of drinking it, but what they’ve created tastes pretty damn good. This peppermint-infused flavor is very refreshing, I can see a whole can becoming overwhelming but the small cup I had was a pleasant experience from the first sip to the last.
The Bottom Line:
A great introduction to the world of Yerba mate.
5. Snapple Peach Tea (Taste 15)
The Tea:
I grew up drinking this stuff and it still tastes pretty good to me. Maybe that’s nostalgia, so take its high ranking with a grain of salt. Unlike a lot of other fruity teas, this one doesn’t rely on citrus for its sweetness, instead using the round and complex flavors of peach, which gives it a different form of sourness.
I still think it tasted better out of a glass bottle though.
The Bottom Line:
A fruit tea that offers something a little different than everything else on the market.
4. Pure Leaf — Raspberry (Taste 9)
The Tea:
I can’t believe my eyes! The fact that I’m ranking a Pure Leaf product this highly after hating on the brand as much as I have made me go back and taste all the other flavors just to see if I had somehow missed something. I didn’t, those flavors suck, but this raspberry tea is pretty damn delicious and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
What a lot of bottled teas lack that the freshly brewed stuff has is complexity, and while I’d hardly call this complex it has a good variety of flavor components that at the very least make it interesting.
The Bottom Line:
This is the only Raspberry Black Tea on the market I could find and it’s representing the flavor well. Way better than that Lipton stuff you find in the soda fountain.
3. 7-Eleven — Green Tea Flavored with Honey and Ginseng (Taste 4)
The Tea:
I’m as surprised as you are! 7-Eleven apparently knows its shit when it comes to green tea because this has a subtle and shifting flavor that never gets boring on the palate.
My only major gripe is that it’s a bit too heavy on the sweet side. The use of honey here drowns out some of the grassy elements of the tea and makes the herbal notes of ginseng completely disappear. If they’d dial it back just a bit it would taste as good as the tea brand it’s obviously modeled itself after.
The Bottom Line:
Don’t let the 7-Eleven branding dissuade you, this stuff is delicious!
2. Gold Peak — Sweet Tea (Taste 3)
The Tea:
I’m actually taken aback by how much I enjoyed this one. I liked it so much that after I finished the tasting I said to my girlfriend — who was pouring and serving the tea for me — “Save me taste 3! I want to finish the bottle!”
This is a perfect iteration of sweet black tea, it’s not so overwhelmingly sweet that it masks the flavors of black tea, but it’s indulgent enough to feel like a treat and satisfy in a way that the unsweetened stuff can’t match.
I can actually taste some complexity here, the tea is toasty, bitter, and a bit nutty with a nice finish that is elevated with some pure can sugar.
The Bottom Line:
The ideal bottled black tea for an Arnold Palmer. Mix this with some Simply Lemonade and you’ve got yourself a truly great drink. On its own, it’s still damn good.
1. Arizona — Green Tea with Ginseng and Honey (Taste 14)
The Tea:
Many of you probably saw this coming and it feels like an entirely basic choice, but I can’t deny that Arizona’s famous green tea easily offered the best experience. This tea is a bit sweeter than I want it to be (I think sweet tea works better with the deeper flavors of black tea than the light tones of green) but it actually has a lot of complexity to it, and that’s just what I look for and expect in tea.
It’s herbal, floral, grassy, and vegetal, and has a silky smooth mouthfeel that feels great flowing across the palate and down your throat. There is a reason this can of tea is so damn famous and it’s not just the great design — it’s the way it manages to taste the way it looks.
When you pick up this can from the refrigerated section you have an expectation on what it’s going to taste like based on the way it looks, and it manages to live up to that expectation. That’s no easy feat and while I’d love a less sweetened version, until they make one this is the best tea your money can buy. Hands down.
The Bottom Line:
It truly is as good as it looks.
