Arizona Black Tea

So I know what many of you are thinking. Why would an energy drink review site review AriZona's black tea? sure, it is one of the most delicious drinks on the planet, filled to the brim with something akin to crack, causing instant addiction to it's tea filled goodness. Sure, it is a great drink, but energy drink? Surely not.
Well, Arizona's marketing team has decided that not only is Arizona's signature blue bottled manna 100% natural, but is also "The Original Energy Drink". Well, everyone knows that the Original Energy Drink is really Red Bull. Or Baccus-D. Or Lipitovan. Wikipedia lists it as the Scottish drink Irn-Bru. I think what they mean is Tea as the original energy drink.
Well whatever they meant, it is known that this is the Number One selling tea drink in the US. This drink Made Ferolito, Vultaggio & Sons phenomenally rich and powerful in the CSD market.

There is no secret as to why this drink is so popular. Sure, it has high fructose corn syrup in it and has a bunch of empty calories. It still tastes so delicious that it is all too easy to suck down a big 20oz bottle in about five seconds. The flavor is not too sweet, not too strong, and is about the easiest thing to consume on a hot day. Before functional waters and Snapple imitators, this drink came on the scene as the easiest to drink tea out there. Even today with the hundreds of choices out there for tea and flavored water drinks, this one scores.

The packaging was also instrumental. Unfortunately, it has changed over the years, and no longer comes in the blue tinted bottles that separated them from the pack. People used to collect these things and use them as decorations. Even my sister-in-law used them with flowers as table decorations for her wedding; they were just that pretty.

Even though the blue bottle is retired, the basic concept and overall design have remained the same. They now come in blue plastic bottles, and the labels now have another Kokopelli based design on them. While they are not collectible anymore, they have become cheaper, which makes it way easier to guzzle more of them through the summer. I have just seen a big 32 ounce bottle sold for a dollar, making it all to easy to hook the masses on this delicious concoction.


The interesting thing is when you look at this as an energy drink. Other than containing 65% of your daily RDA for Vitamin C, this does not have any energy drink stuff, from vitamin B to any energy enhancers.
Black tea does have caffeine in it, just not very much. An 8 ounce bottle of AriZona tea has around 15-20mg of caffeine. that means in the standard 20oz bottle, this has somewhere around 37-50mg of the good stuff. Figuring an eight ounce energy drink has around 80mg, that is really not that overwhelming. So where does the energy part kick in?
According to the package, the energy they speak of is not from the caffeine at all, but from the ginseng they add. The bottle states that the mixture of ginseng and black tea has been used for ages as an elixir in China. While it is true that ginseng has been used an an energy boost for a long time, the effects of ginseng on overall energy and stamina take a long time to produce. It takes continued doses of ginseng over a period of weeks to feel anything different. Yes,it does work, but the effect is not immediate. Unlike caffeine which works instantly (more or less), a person would have to be consistently drinking this stuff for weeks before any energy boost could be felt at all.
Of course, with the deliciousness of the black tea, that would not be a difficult challenge at all.

Taste:10 packaging: Was10-Now 8 buzz:4