Lipton gets a bad rap. I get it too. It’s light, bland, and shallow.
I over-steeped my tea because I start with water that is less than a rolling boil, but really it was because I needed all that time to bring out any semblance of taste.
Lipton is a tea, but that’s about it.
You don’t even need two sentences to profile the flavor. I do pick up a little bit of toothpick taste on the tongue, which offers the same consolation I would get from compulsively chewing on one after a good meal.
Lets take a look at the descriptors directly from the Lipton site:
“capturing as much natural tea taste as possible. Lipton Black Tea has real tea leaves specially blended to enjoy hot or iced.”
Key phrases such as “natural tea taste,” “real tea leaves,” “specially blended.”
The same false pretext that gets us to try new things every day from retailers that simply want to appeal to the widest audience possible.
Even from a more expensive retailer, this tea still chalks up to less than 1 American cent per bag. And that my friends, is where it shines.
Lipton tea for me is not an experience, but the genius is in the marketing and placement. Budweiser, Folgers, even McDonalds.
We don’t choose these things because they are good. We choose them because they are too big to ignore, because our parents/friends/relatives do and have, for generations.
I got a sleeve of 50 bags from a coworker of mine because goodness forbid it, I ran out of tea… Not a bag in my desk to get by on! He immediately dropped off a sleeve without any reservation. I felt like the prisoner trying to bum a pack of cigarettes off of another inmate.
So Lipton still has its place on the shelf at every department store, gas station, hotel, airport, hostel, grandmother’s house, you name it. That iced tea that has come to the family cookout for years? It may be a doctored brew from the yellow giant itself. And you know what, that’s not a bad thing. It appeals to people, a lot of people. Then they find something with more depth and realize their palates have been muted by a commodity of blandness.
Without the bar standard that is Lipton, we simply would not take all of the other fabulous, enchanting, phantasmagorical options into the same realm outside the norm.
Yes, if anything else is on the shelf, tea cart, or menu I will probably choose it and enjoy the experience more fully. But I rest that feeling of thankfulness for good tea on Lipton. I’m sure it can bear that task.
Plus, I’d actually like to try their extra strength teabags. You know, for science.
Flavors: Wood
