Lipton Peach Tea Zero

Occasionally, people will write me an e-mail or leave a comment asking how, as a reviewer, one might score freebies for review purposes. My answer is, "when you find out, let me know." Since I don't get paid for this blog, and make pennies on each post from advertising most days, I'm very cheap about acquiring the food I review. Take this Lipton Zero Peach Tea for example. I had seen it at several convenience stores and pondered sampling it, but thought I didn't want the experience enough to fork over a whole 100 yen ($1.10). Yes, I'm really that cheap.

I was cruising the dairy and juice aisle at the local market when I noticed that they had a carton marked down to 80 yen (88 cents) with an expiration date of tomorrow. I decided that was the price at which they'd pry the yen out of my grubby, cheap fingers. The thing I can't figure out is what can go bad in this tea. It's essentially water, peach juice, and chemicals.

Note that I'm overstating my cheapness a bit here. I will pay more for things which I'm really keen to sample, but beverages that are not carbonated are close to lowest on my list of things to try as I can make pretty much anything which isn't fizzy. It's hard for me to pay for tea when I can make it with a teabag for about 7 yen (8 cents) and add my own artificial sweetener.



Like the Lipton Zero orange tea, I can't figure out how peach juice can be used in this and it can still be zero calorie. Still, the carton says that this has 3% peach juice and I believe them based on the flavor. It smells lightly of peaches and has a nice, refreshing peach taste coupled with slightly bitter straight tea flavor. Perhaps I'm getting used to the way artificial sweeteners are mixed into zero calorie Japanese drinks, but I wasn't really troubled by any aftertaste. In fact, I thought this was a really good fruit tea blend and would definitely consider buying it again if I'm too lazy to brew my own tea and feeling like a bit of a spendthrift.