Lipton Sparkling Iced Tea

Got a few of these new Lipton Sparking Iced Teas from Buffalo when I went down there for the weekend a few weeks ago. I kept seeing these in gas stations and grocery stores around the city so I will go ahead and assume that they are available everywhere. Each one will set you back $1 and yes, there is a bit of caffeine in each can...but nowhere near enough to classify these as energy drinks. There are only 2 flavors out so far.

Raspberry

The aroma is a blend of subtle, earthy black tea and light, sweet raspberry notes. The taste is damn good. It starts off with a very well executed raspberry flavor, followed by sweetened black tea with some very subtle earthy notes. The sweetness adds a candy-like character to the tea flavor and does tend to build up ever so slightly. The aftertaste is sticky with a hint of iron from the black tea and just a very light hint of raspberries.

At the start of the can, I thought I could finish the entire can and have another one, but about 2/3's of the way through, the sweet aftertaste got to me. Though there are only 18 grams of sugar in the can, it just felt a bit too much. Maybe most people are OK with 18 grams, but I think 10 or 12 would have been perfect for me. Other than the sweetness build up, I cannot find any other flaws.

Taste - 9.1/10...if it was just a bit less sweet

Peach

The aroma of this one is quite the opposite of the raspberry one - the peach is the dominant note while the sweet black tea takes a backseat. The taste is very similar with the peach flavor, which is pretty darn well done, the dominant one of the two. The sweet, earthy black tea flavor is present but subdued by the peach for most of the time. In the aftertaste it comes out a bit more and lingers for a long time.

Like with the raspberry, the peach flavor suffers from a sticky sweet finish that will make the consumption of multiple cans a difficult task. The same 18 grams of sugar are present, but they need to be reduced just a tiny bit.

Taste - 8/10...again, if it was just a touch less sweet

Energy?

Since black tea is used as the base for these teas, there is a bit of caffeine in each can - 14 mg. To achieve the same effects as a small can of Red Bull, you would have to consume almost 6 cans of the Lipton Sparkling Iced Tea. The effects can be assumed to be negligible if you are used to a cup of coffee in the morning.