I really hate you, Lipton. Or better despise you, Unilever for your take on making marketing-oriented artificially flavoured beverages which you call tea and ruining the name of an old brand.
I guess me being willing to taste this proves I am NOT a tea snob. It´s supermarket fare, but so are others I enjoy : Gorreana, a locally produced brand which is very good; and so is Twinings and often I can find Ahmads which I like, and always cheap humble Tetley which is pretty honest tea and nice. But this, Lipton, was this tea “designed” in a lab by computers operated by robots? Or by chemical engineers which never tasted tea or real peaches in their life but got a table somewhere this chemical is supposed to take like peaches, this like mango, let´s add lots of those two?
This is tea for people who drink and love Lipton´s “iced tea”. Which for some reason is really popular in my country, where hardly anybody except maybe a few more specialized cafés make iced tea and few people drink tea hot. The Lipton stuff filled a gap somehow, something to drink which has no carbonation (which lots of people do not like) but is relatively intense, and very sugary. You will find it in every café and supermarket. Made with tea extract, flavouring and no tea leaves or real fruit ever.
This smells like a mix of their peach iced tea and their mango iced tea, a very familiar smell. The body is almost unexistant, you can hardly notice the tea, except there is this hint of mustiness. It´s like somebody managed to remove the sugar from the iced tea and then heated it. Like drinking hot tang or some other instant drink.
I really truly hated this. And am mad at me for expecting better, and for this, this!, being a bestselling brand. Yep just 2 euros a 25 teabags box, but lots of other companies manage to produce decent or better than decent tea for this sort of price. And people might not know any better. But to produce artificial reeking stuff like that, oh hope you are happy with the profit Unilever because proud you should not be.
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!…you managed to drink my 2 worst nightmares : Lipton + mango tea ! all in 1…
but you know people are not obliged to drink these kind of teas.Why do they ? I often hear I pay a lot for my teas Mariage & Frères but many of them (loose leaf) are under 8 or even 7 € for 100g and Lipton is more expensive with thier teabags…so ? why do they pick up these awful teabags ? by taste or lazyness ?I think the habit of lazyness…
I like mango, so that was not. But seriously, how come Lipton makes so bad bad artificial shit (pardon for the language, but this is the accurate term) like this?
Lipton is the cheap brand which spends most on marketing and packaging, by far. Big stands, colorful boxes, gimmicks like pyramidal teabags and “white tea” (with tons of artificial rose and violet scent, because oh yay, that is what you do with “white” tea), promotions, big spaces in supermarket. Plus the association with the very popular “iced tea”. So for most people, it looks like the best tea you can buy in the supermarket, it looks so much more modern and more high-end than poor Tetley (Tetley, I do not give you enough love and respect. At least they are selling tea, and tasted by human beings before being marketed).
Almost nobody here will have heard of Mariage Freres or anything like that. It tastes artificial, but it tastes intense, and people like it.
Would you believe Lipton makes lemon balm (melissa, uh, dunno the french name) tea, supposedly pure, to which they add CHICORY?!?!
Ah, and just a point, much as I hate Lipton (because they give me reason to!) it´s not totally fair to compare teabag prices to loose leaf tea. Teabags are a category of its own, and always pricier. I love individually wrapped teabags for example, I am eyeing The-o-dor´s individually wrapped teabags, which is like 14 euros for 25 teabags and I could get 400 grams of their loose leaf tea for that, but OTOH good teabags can make travelling so much more comfortable and that sometimes is priceless.
yes but for me, even if tea bags are handy, only the result counts : I want to drink a good tea so I really disagree to pay more to get tea bagged and wrapped especially bad tea, what I buy is the tea itself. So it is possible to get a better tea for the same price and even cheaper than lipton with a little effort.
And it’s true as well with a lot of food,with our urban and speedy lifes : we finally surrender to bad food because it’s easier to go to the supermarket and buy packaged meat packaged salads and packaged everything…I do it as well and even each week but I cannot say I am not aware I can find better. So I don’t believe the vast majority of people really think Lipton can be the top of what we can find for teas.It’s just handy and easy and they probably don’t care as much for tea. I say MF because in France this is the reference but perhaps in Portugal you have ditributors known for selling good tea and people have this reference in head ?
but Lipton can make a better tea without any problem but why? finally they can continue selling shitty products as people are still buying them…
Starbucks forced Maxwell House and Folgers to up their game in America. The same sort of thing is very slowly happening with Lipton. They have such a large market share they haven’t needed to adjust drastically yet. My mom and dad will buy it without question for the rest of their lives even though I have tried to introduce them to better. Mom, “I guess I can see how people could learn to like that.” upon tasting Teavivre premium jasmine dragon pearls.
On my blog – the number one most viewed review is for Lipton green tea superfruit with dragonfruit. I liked it, better than expected, though admittedly I have never had the real thing. It has almost 10 times the views of number 3 and 4 which are Celestial Seasonings offerings. The number 2 surprises me though, it is for Justea Kenyan Black. Even here Lipton still out viewed them 8 to 1.
K S, I do not know that one, never seen it for sale. I think Lipton has different blends for different markets, of course. (and a warning, I think steepster is very american, easily available american teas are represented really well). I admit I do not dislike one of Lipton´s herbal blends, though I rather hit the wall with the chicory in lemon-balm tea.
Ysaurella, I do think not so much. After Lipton you know which brand random people might have heard of and think good and gift you thinking it is the epithome of good tea? Kusmi!
ahaha well you know sometimes just after drinking several other brands I can really consider Kusmi teas as an excellent brand !and well there is one I even keep in my own cupboard (Anastasia)
I do not dislike the spicy chocolate. The tchai was nice, though I had 50 grams of it and ended up tired of the laurel. And ok, if I am in a café and that is the tea there is I do not mind too much, and am glad it is not Lipton.
But it is sooooooo overpriced. In Paris it seemed to me they were everywhere and selling for 8-9 euros for 100 grams, which was just crazy for the tea you can get for 9 euros in Paris.
near 10 € for 125g…agree :)
!…you managed to drink my 2 worst nightmares : Lipton + mango tea ! all in 1…
but you know people are not obliged to drink these kind of teas.Why do they ? I often hear I pay a lot for my teas Mariage & Frères but many of them (loose leaf) are under 8 or even 7 € for 100g and Lipton is more expensive with thier teabags…so ? why do they pick up these awful teabags ? by taste or lazyness ?I think the habit of lazyness…
I like mango, so that was not. But seriously, how come Lipton makes so bad bad artificial shit (pardon for the language, but this is the accurate term) like this?
Lipton is the cheap brand which spends most on marketing and packaging, by far. Big stands, colorful boxes, gimmicks like pyramidal teabags and “white tea” (with tons of artificial rose and violet scent, because oh yay, that is what you do with “white” tea), promotions, big spaces in supermarket. Plus the association with the very popular “iced tea”. So for most people, it looks like the best tea you can buy in the supermarket, it looks so much more modern and more high-end than poor Tetley (Tetley, I do not give you enough love and respect. At least they are selling tea, and tasted by human beings before being marketed).
Almost nobody here will have heard of Mariage Freres or anything like that. It tastes artificial, but it tastes intense, and people like it.
Would you believe Lipton makes lemon balm (melissa, uh, dunno the french name) tea, supposedly pure, to which they add CHICORY?!?!
Ah, and just a point, much as I hate Lipton (because they give me reason to!) it´s not totally fair to compare teabag prices to loose leaf tea. Teabags are a category of its own, and always pricier. I love individually wrapped teabags for example, I am eyeing The-o-dor´s individually wrapped teabags, which is like 14 euros for 25 teabags and I could get 400 grams of their loose leaf tea for that, but OTOH good teabags can make travelling so much more comfortable and that sometimes is priceless.
yes but for me, even if tea bags are handy, only the result counts : I want to drink a good tea so I really disagree to pay more to get tea bagged and wrapped especially bad tea, what I buy is the tea itself. So it is possible to get a better tea for the same price and even cheaper than lipton with a little effort.
And it’s true as well with a lot of food,with our urban and speedy lifes : we finally surrender to bad food because it’s easier to go to the supermarket and buy packaged meat packaged salads and packaged everything…I do it as well and even each week but I cannot say I am not aware I can find better. So I don’t believe the vast majority of people really think Lipton can be the top of what we can find for teas.It’s just handy and easy and they probably don’t care as much for tea. I say MF because in France this is the reference but perhaps in Portugal you have ditributors known for selling good tea and people have this reference in head ?
but Lipton can make a better tea without any problem but why? finally they can continue selling shitty products as people are still buying them…
Starbucks forced Maxwell House and Folgers to up their game in America. The same sort of thing is very slowly happening with Lipton. They have such a large market share they haven’t needed to adjust drastically yet. My mom and dad will buy it without question for the rest of their lives even though I have tried to introduce them to better. Mom, “I guess I can see how people could learn to like that.” upon tasting Teavivre premium jasmine dragon pearls.
On my blog – the number one most viewed review is for Lipton green tea superfruit with dragonfruit. I liked it, better than expected, though admittedly I have never had the real thing. It has almost 10 times the views of number 3 and 4 which are Celestial Seasonings offerings. The number 2 surprises me though, it is for Justea Kenyan Black. Even here Lipton still out viewed them 8 to 1.
K S, I do not know that one, never seen it for sale. I think Lipton has different blends for different markets, of course. (and a warning, I think steepster is very american, easily available american teas are represented really well). I admit I do not dislike one of Lipton´s herbal blends, though I rather hit the wall with the chicory in lemon-balm tea.
Ysaurella, I do think not so much. After Lipton you know which brand random people might have heard of and think good and gift you thinking it is the epithome of good tea? Kusmi!
ahaha well you know sometimes just after drinking several other brands I can really consider Kusmi teas as an excellent brand !and well there is one I even keep in my own cupboard (Anastasia)
I do not dislike the spicy chocolate. The tchai was nice, though I had 50 grams of it and ended up tired of the laurel. And ok, if I am in a café and that is the tea there is I do not mind too much, and am glad it is not Lipton.
But it is sooooooo overpriced. In Paris it seemed to me they were everywhere and selling for 8-9 euros for 100 grams, which was just crazy for the tea you can get for 9 euros in Paris.
near 10 € for 125g…agree :)