LEMONTEA

I’ve been drinking a lot of grape flavoured teas lately. In particular, a lot of more Asian-style grape flavoured teas. This one, sadly, didn’t work for me. Maybe it’s because I’ve had so many other really impressive ones lately or maybe it’s because the floral undertones of this particular type of grape (a mix between fresh green grapes and deep purple grape candy) didn’t work with the generally syrupy and cloying level of sweetness that I’ve come to expect from this brand. Whatever the case may be… I actually didn’t finish this one.

I felt bad tossing out the last third of the drink, but it was feeling a bit too much like a chore finishing it off.

Like all the bottled iced teas from this brand, this is very sweet. I did expect the sweetness, but what I didn’t expect was how authentically this would taste of pineapple on top of that sugary, syrupy baseline. It through me off a little bit because it’s a sort of mind fuck that it’s so natural yet so cloying. A bit like drinking the juice straight out of canned pineapple tidbits with extra sweetness. It’s my least favourite of the flavours I’ve tried so far because of this, but that said it still wasn’t too bad. Just gotta be in the mood for a sugary drink.

After work on Thursday a bunch of us from the office all piled into a car together and went grocery shopping at the T&T and, honestly, it was really fun. I kind of LOVE having the sort of office where our shared after work activity to kind of cut loose is, well, stocking up on Asian snacks and imported produce. It’s a great vibe.

Anyway, last time I’d gone to T&T I got a random sampling of drinks. My favourite was probably the Berry flavour of this LEMONTEA brand so this time around I grabbed one of every other flavour they had in stock. They’re definitely SO ridiculously sweet that they taste like liquefied candy, but if you go into drinking one with that expectation then I think the flavours themselves are really nice. This one tasted like like Skittles in a super nostalgic way.

So I picked this up last time I was at T&T – which is a specialty Asian import grocery store.

I tried to find more information about the brand online but literally the only English on the bottle was “LEMONTEA” (which I’m assuming is the brand name, since it was consistent on each of the different bottles on the shelf) and “Berry flavor” along with a cute illustration of a strawberry. Thankfully the grocery store slaps a little sticker on the back of all the bottle with ingredients in English, so I could see it was a black tea base.

Ultimately, a very sweet RTD. Like, almost more of a syrup than an iced tea. However, very very tasty. The best way I can think to describe it would be a Strawberry Lemonade popsicle but melted down. I had a hard time finishing the bottle even though I enjoyed it so much, but I could see it being a phenomenal mixer with some tonic water or even just to add a splash of flavour to a straight black tea steeped and iced.