Lipton Ice Tea Just Announced A New Drink Only For Adults

The hard beverage market has been around for a while now, with products like Mike's Hard Lemonade, Simply Spiked Lemonade, and Smirnoff Ice stocking grocery shelves and alcohol stores with a dizzying variety of flavors. Mashed released its own ranking of popular Mike's Hard Lemonade flavors in case you want to see how Blackberry Pear stacks up against Pineapple Mandarin and so forth.

Soda brands have thrown their hat into the malt beverage game in recent years as well with the launch of Hard Mtn Dew and collaboration between Coca-Cola and Jack Daniel's for a packaged Jack & Coke. Fresca has launched a line of canned cocktails (per CNBC).

So what about alcoholic tea beverages? South Carolina-based Firefly released the first-ever sweet tea vodka in 2008, according to Charleston Magazine. Twisted Tea emerged on the hard tea scene in 2001 (per Moosehead Brewers). Other brands such as Truly Hard Seltzer and White Claw have since started selling their own versions of alcoholic teas. Now PepsiCo-owned brand Lipton has announced that they will be introducing a new line of drinks only for adults (via The Drinks Business).

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are constantly battling it out for market share, and with hard beverages and canned cocktails appealing to more and more consumers, it was only natural that the fight extended into the boozy territory of the RTD or ready-to-drink market. The RTD segment is not only growing fast but was "the fastest growing spirits category in 2021," according to Food Dive. So it appears that soft drink companies are striking while the iron's hot.

Lipton Hard Iced Tea is anticipated to arrive in early to mid-2023 and will initially offer four flavors: Lemon, Peach, Half and Half, and Strawberry. The ABV will measure in at a modest 5% alcohol (per The Drinks Business).

Much like Coca-Cola and Jack Daniel's endeavor, Lipton's Hard Iced Tea resulted from teamwork. The company bending Seagram's Escapes malt beverages, FIFCO USA, worked with PepsiCo's Blue Cloud Distribution. Lipton certainly brings brand name recognition, but only time will tell whether it will be able to compete in an already crowded field of alcoholic teas.