Dear Lipton Tea/Pepsi Partnership/Unilever1,
Recently, my wife asked me to swing by the pet store and pick up some cat food. I did so after work and then stopped at a nearby convienence store to both fill up my gas tank and get something to drink. Desiring something that was not loaded down with sugar or the American favorite “high fructose corn syrup”, I checked out the cold cases and found I had 2 options: plain water or Lipton Unsweetened Iced Tea. Seeing how it was late in the day and I have feeling tired, I picked the caffinated option. Dear god, I wish now I had choosen to stick with water.
The marketing blurb on the side of the bottle claims you brew tea straight from hand-selected tea leaves
. If that blurb is accurate then the people you have hand selecting the leaves must be sadistic, tea-hating bastards who desire to inflict maximum pain and suffering on their fellow man. But then if one continues reading the information printed on the bottle’s label; one will find you feel the need to add citric acid (for tartness) and caramel color. That kind of blows away the theory that they’re really hand selecting the tea leaves for their customer’s pleasure. I mean if you were hand selecting good leaves to make tea for the consumer then why do you feel the need to put additives in the tea? After all Ito En is capable of making an entire line of bottled teas containing nothing but water and tea2 without coloring?
I’ll grant that Ito En is brewing green teas, not black. However since you do not appear to produce an unsweated green iced tea; I cannot make a direct comparison. Still this bottle of your tea was easily the worst tea I have ever had3. Hell, even Nestea was better than this! Until you learn how to brew some proper tea, perhaps you should take this crap off the market.
Sincerely,
Mark
1 If you carefully read all the text on one of their bottles, you’ll see Lipton Tea produces their Iced Teas in cooperation with Pepsi and that they are a Unilever brand.
2 I had to change my argument slightly as after checking a bottle I’d not thrown out yet, I found Ito En adds Vitamin C to their tea.
3 Yeah, I drank it all. I was hot, thirsty and had to drive home yet.
Come on . . . tell us what you really think!
Ito En must only add Vitamin C to some of their teas. I’m drinking a bottle right now and there is no Vitamin C
That’s a good point. The bottle of Ito En tea I was looking at was Green Hoji. Which one were you looking at?
Hello, I like lipton ice tea and I am sorry that you don’t. 🙂
Goodbye, Goodnight, I like swans
Hello there, “Lipton Customer Services” aka notreal@lipton.com. Don’t get me wrong, I like some of Lipton’s teas (e.g. their basic black in the tea bags) but this bottled stuff is crap.
Lipton = shit.
It doesn’t even taste like tea and takes 5 teabags sitting for 5 mins before it’s as strong as a single Dilmah.
-Ben
@Mr-Yellow: I have no experience with this Dilmah of which you speak. And while I wouldn’t say all of Lipton’s teas are terrible, I do find putting 5 bags in a one gallon glass jar and setting it out in the sunlight makes an excellent tea for drinking cold.
Pepsi’s commercial’s are offensive, and Lipton can’t seem to staple a bag for steeping correctly…the organic stuff at the dollar store is where my $ will go next…