Harney and Sons Organic Peach bottled iced tea

Another one from Harney and Sons!  It's unusual for me to drink a premade bottled iced tea, let alone review it, but this wasn't actually all that bad.

As I noted last time, Harney and Sons is a pretty good quality, semi-local company.  I've liked everything I've had of theirs, and this is no exception.  The ingredient list is simple and clean, filtered water, organic tea, organic cane sugar, organic honey, and natural flavors (presumably peach?).  The label states no preservatives, but they do throw in ascorbic acid, citric acid, and sodium citrate...not what I'd usually put in my cup of tea, but as non-preservative preservatives, I suppose they could do worse...those things at least occur in food.

The teas that went into making this are not specified.  The label says they are a blend of the "world's finest teas," and while I suspect that's a load of marketing, I don't really mind.  I don't look for fancy flavors in my iced tea, particularly if there's fruit on board.  Iced tea to me is all about a very cold, refreshing drink for the summer time, and not about the nuances of fancy, first flush teas.

Luckily, this fits the bill.  The tea is non-descript, but pleasant and clean, without any chalkiness or astringency, and the sweetener is judiciously applied, which gives Harney and Sons points in my book.  My two major issues with bottled iced tea are:  not using real brewed tea, and way oversweetening, but here, the cane sugar and honey provide just enough lift to make a nice bottle of tea perfectly refreshing.  The peach flavor is nice...perhaps a bit understated, but at least it tastes like real peach.  Attention Nestea and Snapple, this is how you bottle iced tea.

Score:  85 (B) Worth noting, although this tea is sweetened with both cane sugar and honey, a full bottle (2 servings, which is silly, who doesn't drink the whole bottle?) contains only 10 grams of sugar, which is not half bad.  I prefer to make my own iced tea, but this is a pretty quality product that I don't mind at all.  Someday soon I'll have to try a bottled iced tea from HonesTea, another clean, mildly sweetened bottled iced tea that I've heard good things about.

(Hmm, as another afterthought, peach iced tea mixes amazingly well with bourbon.)