Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Pure Leaf Tea House Collection Organic Black Tea with a hint of Valencia Orange Peel

Pure Leaf Tea House Collection Organic Black Tea with a hint of Valencia Orange Peel is a new product they got in at my local Publix, it's quite a fancy new product but what a mouthful of a name! These are 14 Fl Oz glass bottles with twist tops, similar to the Tazo bottled teas but with a different body shape (the Tazo teas are 13.8 fl oz in comparison).  The glass bottles for these are really beautiful.  It's hard to see in the photo but it's a rounded rectangular shape, and I like that it's in glass because it's better for the environment and I can re-use them for my own tea!

I mean, how elegant is this bottle?? Looks very high-end.
The branding looks quite different on this new line, but Pure Leaf also has a regular line-up of iced teas in plastic bottles as well as tea bags that are packaged in little plastic containers (huge waste of plastic, they would be better off using the standard paper boxes for tea bags or going loose-leaf so at least more product would fit in it). This tea is manufactured by independent producers for the Pepsi/Lipton tea partnership, and is certified organi by OTCO as well as Rainforest Alliance Certified.


Pure Leaf describes this tea as:
"Organic black tea with hints of Valencia Orange Peel flavors, crafted by our tea masters for an exquisite iced tea experience."
Ingredients:  BREWED ORGANIC BLACK TEA, ORGANIC CANE SUGAR, NATURAL FLAVOR, CITRIC ACID, BREWED ORGANIC ORANGE PEEL.

The low-down on the nutrition facts...

Pure Leaf Tea House Collection Organic Black Tea with a hint of Valencia Orange Peel is a nice natural brown/amber color (no food dye here unlike Gold Peak and several other brands, thankfully). Orange is one of my favorite additions to black tea. I'm reminded of the amazing Orange Spice iced tea at Wright's Deli in Tampa or Bigelow's famous Constant Comment tea bags (which apparently you can buy as a loose leaf now OMG). This is the only bottled iced
tea that I know of that includes orange notes though, so it's quite unique and I was obviously excited to try it out!

Cute branded bottle cap!
The scent hits you with a fresh orange peel smell mixed with a bit of something floral and of course the comforting scent of black tea, quite refreshing! On the ingredients, it includes brewed organic orange peel, so it's no surprise that the orange peel scent is quite authentic.

Taste-wise, it's refreshing and bright and the orange peel accent is definitely present, it's thankfully not like drinking straight-up orange juice mixed with black tea, it has that more sophisticated, herbal dried orange flavor. It's not overly sweet like the majority of sweetened bottled teas, which I personally think adds to the more premium taste; you can actually taste the tea, the sugar serves to enhance the present flavors. In my opinion, it has that fresh-brewed taste that a lot of commercial bottled teas lack.
Ok, but this packaging and that amazing looking loose leaf graphic! They definitely know who they're catering to (they're obviously catering to me, in case that wasn't clear).
These guys come at the fairly premium price of $2 (in comparison Tazo bottled teas are $1.59 at the same store), so it's more of a treat than a regular purchase for me.  I personally can't wait to try the other flavors: Green Tea with Fuji Apple & Ginger, Black Tea with Sicilian Lemon & Honeysuckle, and Black Tea with Wild Blackberry & Sage. I'd love to see some more green tea flavors or maybe even a hibiscus tea added to the line-up, but these are really unique and interesting flavors that are a welcome introduction to the bottled tea section. I mean, honeysuckle?? Blackberry?? Sage?? FANCY. The only way they could win more with me is adding mint, honey, bergamot, or chamomile notes (ok, I'll stop day-dreaming now).

Current available flavors, product shots borrowed from Pure Leaf's website.


Another plus to this line-up is the lower calories and sugar. Pure Leaf's normal line-up comes in 18.5 fl oz bottles (slightly larger size), but one bottle of their sweet tea has 160 calories and 42g of sugar (other flavors like raspberry or their "extra sweet" have even more). This Tea House variety has 20g of sugar and 90 calories (which is consistent throughout the line-up), so this a really nice way to indulge yourself without going overboard.  

If you see these out in the wild, I'd definitely pick one up!  I've seen these at a couple of Publix stores and I've heard they're available at Whole Foods as well.

Have you tried any of these yet? 


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