San Benedetto

San Benedetto is a defining name of the Italian drinks fridge, and its tea story is really about how Italy drinks tea: cold, sweet and out of a bottle in the sun. It is a major Italian beverage business founded in 1956, best known at home for mineral water and for the bottled iced tea, peach and lemon above all, that is a fixture of cafe coolers and beach bars the length of the country. For anyone who has spent a summer in Italy, the peach iced tea is an instantly recognisable taste.

The range is the recognisable Italian iced-tea spread, led by peach and lemon, made to the sweeter, properly tea-flavoured Italian convention rather than the thinner British style or the synthetic supermarket alternative. It is a finished drink rather than an ingredient, served cold as a treat. For our shelf San Benedetto is a deliberate summer indulgence rather than an everyday staple, and it is honest about that. It is sweeter than British iced-tea conventions on purpose, because it is faithfully reproducing the original holidaymakers actually remember, and it tastes genuinely of tea rather than generic fruit syrup. As the authentic version of a drink most British shelves only imitate, it does exactly what it sets out to do: it tastes like an Italian afternoon, and for the right customer on the right day that is precisely the thing they want.

Key facts