6 Teas to Sip on and Cool Down This Summer

This drink will make you want to thank the genius that first decided to blend tea with fruit juice. It’s sweet, refreshing, and light, without tasting at all watered down. The oolong tea gives a great, lingering aftertaste. The drink comes in a convenient cup with lid and straw, but you can also pour it into other drinking vessels and enjoy the tea’s beautiful color and lovely scent. Go ahead and experiment, by adding things like sliced fruit or mint leaves for garnish! It’s a large serving (at 400 ml), so you can also share the drink with others. It comes in other flavors too, like Pomegranate, Cherry & Berry, and Thai Lime, so go ahead and try the whole variety!

What says summer like walking around town on a hot day with a cool bottle of Gogo no Kocha in your hand? This drink will put you in a nostalgic, balmy vibe in no time. While the Gogo No Kocha brand has multiple flavors (milk tea, lemon tea, orange tea...), the Straight Tea is the one you want if you want a refreshing beverage to drink on its own that’ll still let you enjoy a prominent tea taste. And by “Straight” here they mean “slightly sweet”—perfect if you want a bit of a pick-me-up on a day above 85ºF. The drink comes in a convenient PET bottle, so you can either enjoy the drink all in one go, or reseal to save some for later.

If you want all the benefits of matcha (the name for powdered green tea in Japanese) but can’t quite give up on the sweetness, reach for this can of ITO EN MATCHA LOVE Sweetened Green Tea. The drink is a deep and rich color, and it has a nice, toasty smell, almost like that of hōjicha, which is made from tea leaves that have been roasted. Most importantly, this drink tastes healthy—like you’re just getting all the good parts of green tea with none of the extras you don’t want. It comes in a compact can that’s perfect for slipping into your bag for an afternoon treat. (And of course, there’s an unsweetened version to try too!)

Get ready, because this unassuming bottle of tea will shock you—quite literally, the first word out of your mouth when you drink it might just be “WOW”. This bottle of unsweetened oolong tea has a beautiful color, somewhere between citrine and amber. And when you drink it, it’s just... Toasty like roasted barley tea, but much lighter and more delicate. It’s got almost a citrusy flavor that feels sweet but isn’t at all. And no wonder, because apparently this oolong tea includes leaves that are called “golden cinnamon”. Well that explains! The tea is wonderful cold, but the taste also deepens if you let it get closer to room temperature. Who knew one can gush so much about bottled oolong tea...

A great drink to reach for when you want something fun, the VITASOY VITA Lemon Tea is a sweet tea that’ll give you a kick in the pants (just in tea form)! It’s seriously refreshing, and when enjoyed cold, it feels almost like a chemical version of a brain freeze: a perfect energizer to get you out of a midday slump. It’s also the perfect size but has kind of an addicting quality that you can’t get from other drinks... so be careful! You might just need to buy this in a 6-pack. It also comes in flavors of Lime Lemon Tea and Ceylon Lemon Tea.