One of my favourite things about working with a bunch of tea nerds is that whenever one of us finds a new tea RTD we tend to buy it to bring into the office and share. In this case, it was a series of “bubble tea inspired” tea/fruit juice RTD with a bunch of popping boba in the bottom of the glass bottle…
First, let me just start by saying that I fucking love popping boba. I prefer them to tapioca when I’m ordering bubble tea, and I am hard pressed to find a usage of them that I dislike. However, These RTDs were a lot. Simple enough in concept; each has a popping boba that matches the flavour of the tea/fruit juice base. In this case, strawberry. They’re just an UNGODLY level of sweet though! In addition to other sweetening agents, the drinks all use splenda and stevia and it’s… wow.
This one was the thickest of the three, with a liquor that was almost like someone had just thinned out Smucker’s strawberry jam. That was maybe the most surprising thing other than the sweetness; how much this was a cooked strawberry note and not a fresh or even necessarily candy style strawberry. Just, so much like jam…