This is a special kind of ice tea I just discovered the other week… and I have to say, it is one of the most awesome ice teas I ever got to know!
Unfortunately it is only available in one place: At the mountain-restaurant Alte Schwendi, on the slopes of the ski-area Parsenn-Klosters, reachable from Klosters or Davos, Switzerland. In winter you can only get there by skiing or snowboarding, which makes this ice tea especially exclusive.
- very refreshing
- not very sweet
- rose hip based ice tea
Color
Opaque, dark reddish, almost blood- or wine like, with a shiny glimmer.
Taste
Extremely refreshing. I love its mostly rose-hip based flavor, which I seem to notice is a main ingredient of a lot of my favourite ice teas.
Most amazingly, it tastes really good and somehow sweet enough, despite having very little noticeable sugar. Neither do they use a lot, if any, artificial flavorings, as it doesn’t leave have that strange bitter-sweet tingling on my tongue.
I don’t know how they make its so good and sweet-tasting, but maybe this mystery even adds to the flavor. (Personally I suspect it has something to do with the perfect mixture of black-tea and rose hip, that can improve the sweetness of its taste.)
Availability
That’s probably the biggest downside: As mentioned, this ice tea is a house-mixture of this particular restaurant in the Parsenn/Klosters skiing area. It is quite well known for being one of the best restaurants on the slopes in that region. In winter you can reach the Weissfluhjoch-peak via a Gondola đ from Klosters or a rack railroadđ from Davos, then you have to ski â·(or as in my case snowboardđ) to the restaurant Alte Schwendi (via pistes 17 and 24 đ).
Website of restaurant “Alte Schwendi”
I guess all of this somehow adds to its charm, but also makes it a really hard-to-get ice tea with one of the worst availabilities around…
It comes it the 0.5L glass bottle (pictured) for 6.60 Swiss francs (ca. 6.60 $ US). This makes it certainly not the cheapest ice tea, but neither overly overpriced for a ski-area where everything has to be transported up with a high mark-up. (A Nestea 0.33L bottle will easily cost you 5.80 in an average mountain restaurant in that region.)
+ awesome taste
+ very little sugar, but still sweet enough
+ very refreshing
+ no artificial flavors
– price
– availability
Overall Rating: 8/10