Organic Black Currant

We are helping our oldest daughter get everything together for her first apartment, and today we drove out of town to Pinehurst, a world renowned golfing community, to buy a used bookcase she saw on Craigslist. They have a Fresh Market there, and Fresh Market has TEA!

I was surprised to see this in the cold case, though I already knew they carried a few tins of Harney’s sachets. I have never had a ready made, bottled tea before so I thought it would give it a try. They had several flavors. I chose the Black Currant.

There was a lot to like before I even opened the bottle. First, it is organic. Second, it is in a glass bottle which gets soooo much colder than a plastic one and is therefore more refreshing to drink from. Third, it has only forty calories in a sixteen ounce bottle – far less than a bottle of soda. Last, when you are hot and need to throw back a cold drink, tea goes down a lot more smoothly than soda with all those bloating bubbles, and it is GOOD FOR YOU! And that is the first thing the inside of the lid tells you when you open it. Cute!

The taste is very refreshing. The sugar is quite light, as you can guess by the fact that there are only forty calories. The berry flavor is nicely balanced with the tea, which is made from Harney’s whole leaf teas, not from instant tea or a concentrate. Definitely refreshing!

I grew up on highly sweetened ice tea but I have grown accustomed to unsweetened tea in the last few years, so this is plenty sweet for me – no sticky sugary feeling after drinking this. I feel better about what I am doing for my health drinking something like this instead of a soda.

I went to Fresh Market looking for soup and couldn’t pass this up. They used to have a lot of bottled Argo Tea drinks but this time around there were only 3, 2 I’ve had and 1 hibiscus one. Now there’s 2 Harney & Sons ones too.

It’s sweetened with cane sugar and honey, and just black currant flavored. It’s not too sweetened, given there’s 5g of sugar per cup and not like 20. I think the honey is stronger than the black currant. It tastes really good anyway, because that’s a pretty nice pairing of flavors as is. The black tea tastes like it was just made unlike a lot of already bottled iced teas.

Yum! My sister gave me a bottle of this! Naturally sweet.

I am off for three weeks in Europe! I didn’t pack any tea, so I guess that just means I will have to buy tea there (as if I wasn’t going to!). Brussels, Berlin, and Prague here I come.

But I am currently stuck for 4 hrs in an airport. I did find this in one of the shops, so I grabbed one. I have never tried Harney’s bottle teas, but I love their black currant loose leaf, so I figured I would give it a shot. It’s a reasonably good option if you are stuck without your own tea. It’s slightly sweetened but not overly so, with nice flavor. It also has that tartness that all bottled teas seem to have from the ascorbic/citric acid they put in them. I actually think I expected it to be sweeter since so many bottle teas are, but once my expectations were adjusted I definitely enjoyed it.