The Snapple Flavor We Think Has The Best Taste By Far

When Snapple sent a Daily Meal staff writer a ten-pack of their fruity drinks to try, nobody knew what flavors would make the grade and which would offend the taste buds. When the popular Snapple flavors were ranked, one variety rose clearly to the top: Raspberry Tea.

The Raspberry Tea was said to have the refreshing notes of "homemade" black tea, along with a raspberry flavoring that didn't come across as fake or processed. That's in line with what internet commenters had to say about the fruity tea flavor: Influenster denizens agreed that it was "not too sweet," while Amazon customers gave the flavor 4.5 out of 5 stars and the top review gushed that it was "a delightful summer iced drink."

Snapple's origin story started out with a carbonated apple drink, and it wasn't a success: The bottles actually exploded. Suffice it to say, the brand's bottles — which are plastic instead of glass as of 2018 — are shelf-safe, now. That means you can stock up on Raspberry Tea to your heart's content. What makes Raspberry Tea from Snapple so addicting? To answer, it might help to take a look at its competition.

A peek at Snapple's website tells us that the ingredient list for their raspberry tea is simple: Filtered water, sugar, citric acid, tea, and natural flavors. Lipton, one of Snapple's competitors, offers a bottled White Tea Raspberry flavor that's packed with chemical ingredients, including sodium polyphosphates and potassium sorbate. Arizona, famous for its cheap tea, has a Half & Half Raspberry tea flavor that is, as the name suggests, half raspberry- and half lemon-flavored. Despite boasting no artificial colors or flavors, it inexplicably contains pear juice concentrate. And a pear is no raspberry. Publix and Wawa, a grocer and convenience store chain respectively, offer their own raspberry teas, but Publix's contains artificial coloring, and Wawa's contains preservatives. And this is to say nothing about the fact that these chains aren't available everywhere like Snapple is.

A likely conclusion is that Snapple's Raspberry Tea is distinguished by its simple ingredients and a focus on the raspberry. It's widely available and earns high marks across multiple platforms.