Springleaf® is Unique
New Springleaf iced tea is the first iced tea in Australia to be freshly brewed with real leaf tea, and no added sugar. Not only are we the first to brew with real tea, we are also now the only iced tea using organically grown tea leaves.
Springleaf is a locally made and a natural alternative to the artificial tea-flavored drinks manufactured by multinationals. (Nestea is a Coca-Cola brand, whilst Lipton is in bed with Pepsi). Springleaf is brewed in South Australia by one of the few remaining Australian-owned bottlers.
Real long leaf teas, grown in the finest tea estates of Darjeeling and Sri Lanka, are at the heart of the brew. A bit of sweetness comes from a splash of fruit juice – not sugar or artificial sweeteners.
Since we launched, we have been proud to have led the healthy drinks sector in Australia, being:
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The first iced tea brewed with finest grade real leaf tea |
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The first iced tea made with no added sugar (or artificial sweeteners) |
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The first organic iced tea |
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The first iced tea to remain naturally cloudy |
Shhhh..... Here are some of our secrets:
| We Only Use Quality Organic Leaf Teas |
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 The quality of the organic teas sourced by Springleaf to brew into iced teas is unsurpassed. The flavours of these high quality teas are vastly superior to the cheap, everyday, supermarket teas.
We source single-estate organic teas from the best plantations in the world. We then blend and brew these in water which is just the right temperature (95-100 degrees Celsius) to extract the ultimate tea flavour to make our iced teas.
We use this superior flavour tea liquor so we have better tasting, more refreshing drinks. The use of high quality teas also mean that there is a natural 'sweetness' in the fresh brewed tea which is what allows us to avoid using any sugar to sweeten the brew.
| We Brew Fresh - and Never Use Tea Extracts |
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It is worth noting that the commercial iced teas available in Australia all use tea powder or tea extracts and still call their sugary drinks "iced tea."
Tea extracts start their life as poor quality tea "fannings" or tea "dust." This cheap, low-grade, tea then goes through a chemical extraction process (using solvents such as ethanol or supercritical carbon dioxide) before it is then bulk packed as a powder or liquid and shipped to bottlers as a bulk soft-drink agent. Tea extract usually has no natural antioxidant potency remaining after this process.
Some companies have now started to add antioxidant powder to their sweet soft drinks. At Springleaf, we think this is a bit like adding vitamin C powder to water and calling it "orange juice".
Springleaf, on the other hand, is made with freshly brewed long leaf teas. We do not use any of nasty ingredients like tea extract or flavours. The Springleaf iced tea production process is - literally - like brewing and bottling a very big pot of tea, just with some juice added at the end.
| We Don't Filter Out the Goodness of Nature |
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Sometimes customers ask us about why we chose to leave our drinks unfiltered.
There are three key reasons:
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Firstly, filtration removes flavour from the drink. |
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Secondly, filtration can remove much of the natural antioxidant capacity of fresh brewed tea. |
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Thirdly, we wanted a truly natural drink - as nature intended. |
| We Don't Add Sugar, and Don't Believe in Artificial Ingredients |
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Recently, a new wave of drinks using artificial sweeteners has been pushed into the market, driven by the multinationals Coca-Cola and Pepsi. This has been a response to a global consumer trend away from heavily sugar-sweetened soft drinks, which have represented the bulk of the industry.
Scientists are divided over the issue of aspartame sweetened drinks. Marketed under the brand names Equal® and NutraSweet®, aspartame is produced by combining two amino acids and methanol. The resulting powder is 180 times as sweet as sugar. Many unnatural and excessively sweetened drinks have been banned by schools in the last few months.
Springleaf, on the other hand, is lightly sweetened simply by adding a splash of fruit juice. We know which we'd rather choose! |
