Smirnoff Raw Tea: The Worst alco-pop yet

Unless you’re 14 years old and sneaking your first drink, there’s no reason to ever bring this within 20 feet of your mouth–even for the sake of reporting on caffeinated tea-flavored malt beverages. It is not just that this stuff is bad - it is like drinking Zima or a Shandy ( a popular drink in the UK mixing pilsner and 7-up) - this has a completely worthless buzz with an equally worthless alcohol content. This is artificial tasting, extra sweet and extra gooey. Of all the drinks to consume in an evening, you would be so much better off drinking a Lipton or just a diet anything with a shot in it. Even at Tea Partays ( their website is at teapartay.com), there is no better way to be forever shunned from future gatherings  than to whip a six pack of these out. I guarantee you will be bringing the full  pack home with you after the party untouched. Please - let this oddity from Smirnoff die.
DiaGeo has been selling this drink since 2006, but with very little marketing outside a cheesy viral video that might have been funny when white guys rapping was comedy back in 1985.

Their slogan is "Smirnoff takes natural raw tea brewed in a premium malt beverage that is then ice-filtered five times to create a powerfully smooth, infinitely refreshing taste that is naturally loaded with flavor!" I think the ice filtering also took out the flavor, caffeine and alcohol with it.

Buzz/Nutrition:2
230 calories per 12oz bottle? And what do you get for your 230 calories... You get an oversweet not very alcoholic (5%) tea - something that will provide none of the buzz or good effects of the energy drink ingredients theysupposedly added. I called the main manufacturer of the drinks here in the US, and no one ther could tell me how much caffeine, ginseng or any other ingredient was in this - the only thing they could tell me is to check on their website for nutritional information (it just listed soduim, carbs, protein and calories). In other words, no one there knows how much caffeine or nutrients is in here - but I promise you it cant be very much.

Taste:2
It comes in three very non-exciting or original flavors, raspberry, lemon, and peach,  all of them sticky and more fake than a pack of powdered Sunny D. If you must have one ( I.E. you are at a high school party and they already ran out of budget beer) I would grab the lemon - it is the least bad of the three I tried.

Packaging:3
no information, no website, just a simple bottle with a neat and clean logo. If only they felt the desire to even point to the place to go for more info - but there was none to be found. The only good thing is the pretty layout and font choices to go along with the logo.  Certainly not a reason to celebrate.

Website:teapartay.com:3
Do you remember when people used to make fun of Urkel? Or Screech? White guys pretending to rap is as old as Wierd Al making fun of the Michael Jackson. The fact that they tried so hard to make this cool is inadvertantly funny. At what point did they think this was a good idea enough to make 2 of these videos, and wrap their whole marketing scheme around them? Th website is these 2 videos, a little tiny bit of info about the drink, and a bunch of unfinished links. For a drink launched in 2006 that is just plain unexcusable. Sorry Smirnoff - but you are beyond yesterday's news.

Jeremy's consumer blog review

Topics: Energy Alcohol Drink