2 days ago
We Ranked 24 Flavors of AriZona Iced Tea From Best to Worst
It's smooth. It's sweet. It's refreshing. It's cheap. It's everywhere. While Arnold Palmer is not the singular most iconic beverage in the AriZona portfolio, it sure is close, and there's not a single doubt that it deserves admission to the Mount Rushmore of soft drinks. It wasn't until a few years after I lived off cans of these from the Shell station next to my college apartment that I realized mixing lemonade and iced tea was a very cool and normal thing society found acceptable: I just figured everyone would rather be drinking a can of AriZona's Arnold Palmer. On its own, this drink has everything you need, and we can stop right there with the descriptors and superlatives. But let me tell you, you have not lived until you sipped a third of the liquid off the top, filled the empty space with vodka, and ran around town on a hot summer night with a big-ass can of liquid bliss in your hands. If it weren't for the incredibly subtle 'diet' flavor on the aftertaste (the can says 'LITE' and is not emblazoned with the 'No artificial flavors' stamp), this would be a perfect 10, no questions asked. Score: 9.1
As a Northerner, there's a whole slew of things from the South that will always feel overrated to me. Sweet tea lands on this list right between Nascar and Bojangles, though I wouldn't shy away from either if I had a rack of Busch Light in me. It's absolutely everywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, and the disparity between brews at fast-food joints, diners, and gas stations is truly staggering. It's arguable that Chick-fil-A offers the platonic ideal of sweet tea, but the drive-thru line at your average CFA in Georgia is prohibitive when all you want is a frosty cool glass of the sweet brown stuff.
AriZona's spin on the drink is a close second, and I was shocked to realize how much I liked it in spite of it basically being Arnold Palmer with one flavor instead of two. The absence of lemon lets the earthy notes of the tea punch through the mix, and the sugary finish is just a click below being the syrupy, saccharine mess you'll find at lesser Southern fast food chains like Zaxby's or Cookout. I pray the robot mower I'm testing out for this publication makes my real lawnmower obsolete, but if it doesn't, you can find me shirtless all summer long with a pair of UGA Croakies on my head and a can of this in my non-mowing hand.
Score: 8.7
