Review: AriZona Hard Iced Tea with Peach Flavour

I still remember when AriZona Iced Tea was only a dollar for a glass bottle.. in Canada! Those were the days! Of course you can't expect a boozified version of the product to be the same price.. it's now made into a "value added product" after all. AriZona Hard line of Iced Teas have been available in my neck of the woods for a good couple years now.

To be blunt: I tried them when they first came here and found they were too watered down and didn't really give off much flavour. I drank a lot of their iced tea during my university days.. and I still remember first trying their staple iced tea when it first came out over 30 years ago and remembering how majestic of an iced tea it was, to me that's what I felt everyone in Arizona drank, and only that.

With the constantly changing boozeful beverage scene changing so quickly - this is for sure to compete against brands such as Snapple Spiked, and Mike's Hard and the boozy iced tea OG Twisted Tea. I'm not a seltzer fan at all so this is definitely something aiming towards an iced tea loving guy like myself though I'm trying to cut down on that as much as I can.

Thc iced tea I'm sampling is AriZona Hard's Iced Tea with Peach Flavour. It's a flavoured vodka beverage that's 5% ABV. It contains water, vodka, sugars (sucrose, peach juice concentrate), Black tea extract, ascorbic acid, natural flavour, xanthan gum and phosphoric acid.

Appearance: A murky brown body with a bit of a caramel reddish hue to it. Since this isn't a beer I can't talk much else about it - it has a bit of bubbles on top and a slight carbonation in the body but not much. Looks like a very heavy tea to me so far, so that's a good thing.

Aroma: Mildly sweet with a good helping of sugar/sweeteners, peach and a mild tea aroma. Not bad so far, better than my first experience with AriZona Hard.

Taste: The first thing I get from this iced tea is a strange bitterness.. it's got a woody (slightly papery) and earthy presence to it but then I Googled what Black tea is supposed to taste like and that's pretty much the tea itself - You can tell I'm not a tea snob/drinker in any sense. There's a mild sweetness and a moderate amount of peachy notes in there. 

Overall Thoughts: I feel here is where I talk about whether or not you should drink this or Snapple Hard. If you want a very sweet presence that reminds you of your childhood but with the addition of alcohol - get Snapple Hard's Peach Iced Tea.. it's a more welcoming beverage than this. If you want something that's still sweet but not overly - this is much more bitter, earthy and showing off the tea first and then sweetness and peach second. I'm a sucker for sweet but this might make its way into my fridge on occasion.

Lastly, I don't know how Americans can drink unsweetened iced tea. I still get nightmares from over thirty years ago of ordering Nestea iced tea at a diner in North Dakota and get a glass of uncarbonated cold tea that's well iced... I'll just never get over that. Sweet Tea? Way too sweet for me but the child in me likes it.