14 Bottled And Canned Iced Tea Brands, Ranked

As of June 20th, summer will officially commence. Along with summertime staples like hot dogs (ideal when grilled over a two-zone heat source), watermelon, and caprese salads with the best mozzarella, ice-cold beverages like lemonade and iced tea will see an uptick in sales. But, since I often forget to find the time to brew my own pitcher of black iced tea, I more often than not enjoy the bronze-colored beverage while on the go as a little treat I pick up between errands.

Though I considered myself well-versed in the iced tea market, a quick trip down the refreshment aisle of my local grocery store revealed how many new or unfamiliar tea brands have popped onto the scene in recent years. These drinks, coupled with well-known favorites I grew up sipping on, round out a list of store-bought iced teas that I found to be easily available. For this ranking, I focused only on traditional American, black, pre-made iced tea (which actually became popular in 1904) and stayed away from other tempting bottles of mate, matcha, green, and white teas and kombucha. I sipped my way through over a dozen ready-to-drink iced teas commonly found in stores today and ranked them from worst to best.

Under the Coca-Cola umbrella, Gold Peak teas have haunted thirsty consumers since 2007, and though not exactly a household name, the brand has held a steady slot at supermarkets and gas stations for years. But despite its widespread availability, Gold Peak's quality sinks the 18.5-ounce bottled tea to the very bottom of this list.

Somehow, due to the low-quality tea, poor brewing methods, or bad packaging (or perhaps all of the above), Gold Peak holds a prominent synthetic, plastic-like note from the first moments of sipping. Even while sniffing from the bottle's wide mouth, I picked up on more waxy notes than any black tea leaves whatsoever. It smells more like a newly unpacked action figure than any liquid intended for human consumption. If Gold Peak didn't contain 47 milligrams of caffeine, I'd deem the entire drink worthless. Instead, I'll recommend literally any other store-bought tea on the shelves above this hellish bottle.

From the co-founder of AriZona Iced Tea, Saint James Organic Brewed Tea premiered in 2022 as an updated response to the former brand's notoriously sugary beverages. Offering a less-bombastic approach to bottled teas, Saint James totes itself as an organic, sustainable product for mindful shoppers. Almost like a teenage AriZona fiend who grew up into a respectable adult with a minivan, Saint James' entire catalog revolves around giving iced tea a flavorful, soda-like, glow-up without the caloric or fructose heft.

Old-school flavors like red raspberry and classic lemon accompany modern offerings like mango (a limited edition "White Lotus" tie-in), and passionfruit peach, all of which are only produced in low- or zero-calorie bottles. Selecting the lemon option, I hoped to be whisked back to the Snapple Diet Lemon Tea of my youth, and while Saint James was able to approximate my nostalgic ideal, its flavor ultimately fell flat. Sweetened with stevia, what I initially attributed to the aluminum bottle's influence on the drink's flavor, I later realized can be attributed to the sweetener. This drink is sweetened with stevia. Tinny and bland, Saint James tea simply flops on the palate without much personality and must be served ice-cold or else the metallic aftertaste of stevia shines brighter than the tea itself.

In one of the newest brands to grace this list, at under three years old, the Ryl Tea company is a mere toddler in the tea landscape, but sadly its inexperience shows. Like Saint James, Ryl sweetens its teas with stevia to achieve the coveted zero-calorie count many consumers seek. From Ryl's already storied catalog, which includes obvious flavor options like raspberry, peach, and lemon bottles but also stranger offerings like rocket pop and watermelon, I selected the brand's raspberry tea and were again bewildered by the most alone.

A synthetic, nearly medicinal scent overpowers any of the tea's intended properties, and, overall, Ryl tastes like what I imagine consuming raspberry lotion from Bath & Body Works might be like. Barely tolerable and so distant from being thirst-quenching, Ryl's teas left me questioning stevia beverages as a whole if this unruly substance was the best the New Jersey-based company could dream up.

Despite enjoying 18 years on the market, Peace Tea hasn't managed to home in on any distinct personality among its tea counterparts in either marketing tactics or flavor profile. Part of the Coca-Cola lineup, Peace Tea has branding that echoes Ben & Jerry's hippie aesthetic, but the product itself has not yet entered the cultural zeitgeist in any way. Both vague and familiar, I traveled to my local Safeway with more a less a clean slate regarding Peace Tea's lineup of canned teas.
With no unsweetened or unflavored offering, I selected Peace's Razzleberry (raspberry) option and cracked open the busily decorated can, and was immediately met with an atrocity I could've gone a lifetime without encountering.

Indecipherable as iced tea, Peace Tea's Razzledazzle carries a sharp medicinal tone evocative of "Flintstone" vitamins from my youth, coupled with Twizzlers candy. Maybe the brand's faux-laid-back energy somehow seeped (or steeped) into the ethos of craftsmanship, or perhaps iced tea sits at the bottom of Coca-Cola's priority pyramid, but in any case, Peace Tea left me ready to wage war on the subpar tea brands.

As Pepsi's answer to Coca-Cola's Gold Peak, Pure Leaf holds down the soda giant's elevated iced tea offering. The brand's black tea collection contains unsweetened, sweet black, extra sweet black, zero sugar sweet black, raspberry, lemon, and blackberry teas. I went for the lemon-flavored bottle and braced myself for the worst as I recalled Gold Peak's pitiful attempt at craft tea.

However, Pure Leaf turns out to be middling. Nothing stands out as truly offensive about its flavor profile. Sweeter than I prefer (38 grams of sugar laces the brown beverage), Pure Leaf still features the alluring tannic bite essential to any iced tea worth my time. It's a drink that Martha Stewart favorably refers to as her "little helper." I can see how someone could mindlessly rely on the gentle tones of Pure Leaf for the duration of a workday in place of water. Even so, the lemon flavoring tasted dim and less prominent than I'd prefer, but I could see myself living out a day like Martha and reaching for a Pure Leaf if I were on a cross-country road trip and had only gas station options to select from.

Brisk's entry into the directory of the iced tea began in 1991 as part of PepsiCo's beverage lineup. Since then, the soda-like tea has exploded into a number of flavors barely recognizable as tea. Blackberry smash, blood orange, blueberry pomegranate, even strawberry melon flavors all exist under the Brisk tea brand despite having colors as bright as a Hawaiian shirt. They appear closer to Fanta rip-offs than any sort of tea beverage.

However, lemon and raspberry bottles still manage to hang on to Brisk's seemingly waning attention span, staying true to its iced tea beginnings. After I cracked a lemon-laced can, Brisk whisked me back to my adolescent vending machine drink of choice, but this time around, my adult sensibilities shielded my ability to sink into Brisk's sugary embrace. Now, I could taste Brisk's iced tea for what it is: an entry that had been dragged into a world of more mature black teas.  So sweet, the tea even stung the back of my throat as I swallowed gulp after gulp of a sentimental but faded classic and melancholically suspected this can of Brisk to be my last.

Somewhat synonymous with the 1990s, AriZona Iced Tea and its enormous 24-ounce cans are nearly as recognizable as Red Bull at gas stations, convenience stores, and conventional supermarkets across the U.S. Though the brand produces a half dozen different flavors, I zeroed in on the brand's iced tea with lemon flavor due to its use of black tea and relative simplicity.

As I opened the substantial can, I realized the appeal that has sustained AriZona for over 30 years. Overtly sweet, AirZona depends on high-fructose corn syrup to achieve its undeniable drinkability that is balanced by lemony citric acid. This drink is even less of a pure iced tea than a sneaky Arnold Palmer (which does have a wholesome origin story). I did tire of AriZona Iced Tea's front-loaded sweetness after several gulps, but ultimately, the market needs outliers, and I'm sure for those more attuned to sugary drinks, AriZona hits like no other. Like the bubblegum pop of the '90s, AriZona pleasantly offsets the stern, grungy, sugar-free options beloved by other audiences.

Labeled as freshly brewed black tea on the front-facing label and Dynamic Black Iced Tea on its backside, Whole Foods' laid-back, grab-and-go bottle from its cafe plays much like the highlight of the high-end grocery store's hot bar. Not quite comparable to a home-brewed tea or bottles and cans nearer the peak of this ranking, Whole Foods' Dynamic Black Iced Tea, simply put, does the trick.

Taking cues from tea competitors, Whole Foods also offers classic (unsweetened), orchard peach, citrus, and sweetened varieties. Possibly due to the consistency issue caused by each bottle of tea being prepared on-site (as noted on the label), the tea tasted slightly under-steeped and underdeveloped. Better than getting the inverse (an overly bitter, unforgivingly over-steeped drink), I appreciated the shop's dedication to freshness enough to look past the weak drink. However, I'll probably always reach for a more established tea brand while shopping at Whole Foods moving forward.

If I were judging on packaging, Aloha Juice Co.'s vintage can would firmly sit at the top of the list. The teal blue backdrop, simple illustration, and bold font harkens back to the late '80s when the company first splashed into stores. Today, it resembles kitschy shirt patterns I stalk online on Depop. While Aloha largely produces tropical juices like guava, pineapple, coconut, and lilikoi passion (plus many more), the humble company, which only has the bare bones of a website, also churns out cans of sweetened black tea with natural lemon flavors.

The most affordable iced tea on this list, my can of Aloha Maid iced tea costs only $1.39 (plus a $0.10 can deposit) and can be most easily found at Asian supermarkets. Not unpleasant, but overtly sweet, Aloha's iced tea tastes a little like watered-down concentrate or even an agua fresca interpretation of the summertime drink. The lemon component saved Aloha Maid's only tea option from driving off a sugar-fueled cliff and managed to snatch its profile back from the edge of syrupy, though I doubt I'll ever test drive its can again.

Though my preferred Snapple has remained the brand's Diet Raspberry for the last 30 years, it has fallen out of rotation from most Snapple-stocked shelves and refrigerated racks in the last decade or so. On the other hand, Snapple's Peach Tea bottle has succeeded in outperforming even Snapple's lemon offering in terms of prominence on shelves. While I was not able to locate any lemon iced teas in person, every store (five) I visited carried Snapple's peach tea variety, so eventually, I bit.

Despite peach performing low in my preferences for artificial flavoring, I was able to recognize what attracts devotees of Snapple's stone fruit bottle. Unlike Snapple's extremely subpar apple juice that you should avoid buying, its iced teas carry a soft grip on the palate, which at once quenches thirst, plays well with food, and asks its drinker to return for more. Somewhere between a nostalgic ephemera (I'll never not miss Snapple's iconic caps) and a high-quality tea beverage, I probably owe Snapple's pioneering take on tea to at least half the bottles on the market today.

Yet another iced tea brand that premiered in the '90s, Tejava has an entire look that points to a crunchy, quasi-hippie, unaffected quality, and the tea inside its scaled-back bottles stands by the branding. According to Tejava's official website, after a trip to Japan, its founder felt a jolt of inspiration and set out to bottle quality tea for the American market.

Now part of Crystal Geyer's umbrella of beverages, Tejava enjoys shelf space in a spectrum of supermarkets; Trader Joe's, Target, Natural Grocers, and Whole Foods Market all carry the sophisticated bottles of Tejava despite the disparities among the storefronts themselves. That's not surprising after sipping my way through Tejava's original, unsweetened black tea and basking in the nuanced notes of thyme, smoke, and cherry blossoms. A cut above any other teas sold under the banner of a larger beverage brand, TeJava has no doubt secured a spot as my easy-to-find go-to whenever I'm in the mood for iced tea and away from the brands that make up my top three choices.

In what might most encapsulate the new class of iced tea offerings, Halfday iced tea suddenly appeared in all my favorite markets earlier last year, despite being founded back in 2017. First labeled Topos Tea, Halfday rebranded from an indistinct bottle into colorful cans donning adorable anthropomorphized animals. Soon after, the new-fangled tea manufacturer took off.

Though Halfday has since ditched the cheerful mascots for slightly more austere iconography, the brand's lineup of softly sweetened drinks still stands apart from the iced teas of yesteryear. Still riffing on the algorithm Snapple's impression left on the public, Halfday melds the plausibility of Snapple with a dash of modern-day health concerns and manages to produce a perfectly sweetened tea with only 3 grams of sugar. Though stevia leaves and agave work to bolster Halfday's sugar content, the brand somehow stumbled into the ideal recipe for a low-sugar iced tea.

Though I selected lemon tea for this ranking, I've since enjoyed the entirety of Halfday's flavors and applaud the up-and-coming tea maker on its consistency. In a market saturated in pre-made iced teas, Halfday managed to carve out space for an item that both pays homage to and innovates the iced brands of the recent past.

If you were casually passing by the beverage case and spied a Weird Tea, you wouldn't be off-base in mistaking the 16-ounce can for an energy drink. The eye-catching, cutely distorted characters adorning each flavor seem to court a Gen-Z audience accustomed to opting for a Monster Energy drink for their midday pick-me-up. But upon closer examination, the cans' wrappers also signal healthy undertones to taurine-based beverages.

Coincidentally, the brand, which appeared on shelves in 2021, was founded by a former Monster Energy marketer whose tone changed from the high-octane rumble of energy drink culture to a more goofy, mushroom-adjacent vibe. Each can boasts about its contents being "plant-based with organic caffeine." Weird Tea currently carries two black tea options in its roster -– Organic Passionfruit Black Iced Tea and Organic Agua de Jamaica Hibiscus Black Tea. I opted for the latter, and once I cracked it open, the nose of the liquid smelled pleasantly floral and slightly sweet. With a reasonable amount of calories (88 per can), instead of exchanging an intensely sugared drink with sugar substitutes, Weird Tea smartly reined in the amount of sugar but still dosed its drink with real, organic sugar.

After Coca-Cola discontinued its Honest Tea line in May 2022, the tea's founders decided to brew up a brand-new drink for lovers of the abandoned brand. The first bottles of Just Ice Tea were released to the public within months.

Though the brand produces several products, I decided to reach for the most basic bottle and selected its original black tea (unsweetened) due to Just Ice Tea's marketing strategy of portraying itself as an organic, simple, and unadulterated version of bottled (and canned) teas. It tastes just like the brand boasts. I was thoroughly blown away by Just Ice Tea's ability to deliver a simple product that somehow still feels like a luxury. It's as close to high-quality home-brewed tea as I've tasted. The quality of Just Ice Tea's leaves shines through so vividly, no infusion or flavoring was missed, and instead, I was doubly refreshed by both Just Ice Tea's uncomplicated recipe and its thirst-quenching properties.

This is exactly what an ideally timed, smooth, homemade glass of iced tea should taste like. Just Ice Tea (like its brand name suggests) needs no cute branding, sweetener, or secondary infusion to achieve the pinnacle of refreshing iced tea. 

As mentioned at the top of this ranking, I narrowed my gaze to sample strictly black iced teas. Also, I eliminated any teas labeled as sweet tea as they seemed outside the purview of proper iced tea and perhaps the subject of another, future list. I judged each tea solely on overall flavor and didn't consider the caffeine effects.

I attempted to highlight only teas I see frequently while shopping at various types of stores. When selecting a flavor, if offered, I stuck to unsweetened, lemon, or raspberry whenever possible, and when not, I gravitated to the bottle or can with a flavor I considered somewhat similar. Also, I drank each iced tea directly from the refrigerator to mimic the experience of purchasing the teas and immediately drinking.