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 🚠 from Klosters or a rack railroad🚞 from Davos, then you have to ski ⛷(or as in my case snowboard🏂) to the restaurant Alte Schwendi (via pistes 17 and 24 😄).
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