New Tea in Australian Supermarkets: Recent Launches

What’s New in the Supermarket Tea Aisle

We spend most of our time talking about loose leaf, but we also walk past the tea aisle at Woolies and Coles like everyone else. Lately it’s been worth stopping. There’s more new stock there than we’ve seen in a while, and most of it points the same way: cold, convenient and green.

Here’s what has landed this year, what we make of it, and where it sits next to the loose leaf in your cupboard.

Twinings Cold Infusions and Sparkling Tea

The biggest launch of the year came from Twinings in late June. It brought two cold ranges into Coles, Woolworths and some independents at the same time.

Cold Infusions are tea bags made to steep in cold water rather than hot. There are three flavours: Mango & Passionfruit, Lemon & Ginger, and Raspberry & Lime. They’re fruit and herbal blends with no refined sugar, and Twinings says they’re ready in about five minutes. Australia got them before anywhere else in the world. A 14-pack has an RRP of $8.50, and there’s a $3 trial four-pack if you want to test one first.

Sparkling Tea is a ready-to-drink can: tea and botanicals with fruit juice and sparkling water, plus added vitamins and minerals, at under 50 calories. It comes in 250 ml cans for $4 each or $13.50 for a four-pack.

Our take: Cold Infusions are an easy way in if you’ve never made cold tea. They’re quicker than proper cold brew, but you’ll get a lighter, fruitier drink than an overnight steep. If you like them, the next step is loose leaf hibiscus or lemon myrtle in a jar overnight. We wrote up exactly how in our cold brew guide.

Higher Living Organic Matcha Lattes

Higher Living has brought out a trio of instant organic matcha lattes as a Woolworths exclusive: Classic, Matcha & Vanilla, and Matcha & Lemon. They use ceremonial-grade matcha with coconut milk and coconut sugar, so they’re dairy-free and pre-sweetened. A 50 g pack is around $8.

The lemon one is the interesting flavour. Higher Living pitches it as the one to have iced, and lemon with matcha is a combination we don’t see often.

Vanilla Matcha Latte: Morning made vs Higher Living

Our take: these are latte mixes, so sugar and coconut milk come with every scoop. That’s fine for a treat. If you want to taste the matcha itself, or control the sweetness, plain matcha with your own milk is the better buy. We compared two supermarket matcha lattes head to head here, and there’s more in our Matcha & Hojicha range.

Inside Out Iced Matcha Latte with Oat Milk

In the fridge section, Inside Out now does a ready-made iced matcha latte in a 1 L bottle. It’s oat milk with matcha and raw sugar, so you only need to pour it over ice. Matcha makes up a bit under 1% of the drink, which tells you it’s an oat milk drink with matcha flavour more than a strong matcha.

Our take: handy for the fridge door, but don’t judge matcha by it.

What about tea concentrates?

Liquid tea concentrates (the bottled bases that are everywhere in US supermarkets) are still rare here, but there is one on the shelf at Coles: Dilmah Elixir of Ceylon Tea.

It’s a 375 ml bottle of black tea extract made from single-estate Ceylon tea. Dilmah says the leaf is processed into concentrate at its Rilhena estate in Sri Lanka within hours of picking. Coles lists Rose & Vanilla and Peach (the Peach was showing as unavailable when we checked). You mix 10 ml with about 120 ml of water, so one bottle makes a lot of iced tea. It works in sparkling water, cocktails and mocktails too.

One thing to know: it’s sweetened. On the Peach label, cane sugar and honey together make up about 40% of the bottle, with tea extract around 6%, plus a little stevia. Once diluted, the sugar per glass is modest, but it’s not plain tea. Elixir isn’t brand new either. Dilmah launched the range internationally a few years ago, so it’s an established product rather than a 2026 launch. Most other “just add milk” options on the shelf are still powders, like the chai and matcha latte mixes from Arkadia and Higher Living. The closest thing besides Elixir is Lipton Ice Tea syrup, sold for SodaStream machines.

Our take: Elixir is the most interesting of the lot because it starts with single-estate tea. If you’d rather control the sugar, you can make an unsweetened concentrate at home. A strong cold brew made with double the usual leaf (2 teaspoons per 250 ml) and left in the fridge overnight does the job. Cut it 50/50 with water, soda or milk, and sweeten to taste. It keeps for two days.

A Dilmah makeover and new Ceylon blends

Dilmah changed its logo crest in May for the first time in 40 years and launched a new Premium Ceylon Tea line. Its packaging features a teacup designed by Australian artist Cristina Re. New Dilmah boxes also appeared at Coles mid-year, including a 40-pack of Tea Paradise Breakfast, Wild Island Vitality and Pure Peppermint Leaves. Higher Living’s Digest Delight herbal blend arrived around the same time.

Our take: it’s good to see single-origin Ceylon getting the attention. Dilmah has been vocal about supermarket pricing pressure in Australia, so a premium line is a sign it wants shoppers to trade up rather than down.

Coming soon? Pukka Gut Health and Unwind

Pukka launched two new functional blends in the UK in late August: Gut Health (ginger and peppermint with fermented kombucha) and Unwind. They haven’t reached Australian shelves yet as far as we can tell. We covered what’s in them when they were announced and will update this post if they land here.

Tea for dessert: matcha moves into the freezer and the chocolate aisle

Not tea you drink, but we couldn’t leave these out. This year matcha jumped from the café counter into ice cream and chocolate.

Connoisseur Strawberry Matcha sticks (Coles only). Released exclusively at Coles from late July, these are matcha ice cream swirled with strawberry syrup, dipped in a pink strawberry-flavoured shell. They’re $12 for a four-pack.

Lindt Tokyo Style Chocolate. Lindt followed its viral Dubai-style bar with a limited-edition matcha block in July. It’s Lindt white chocolate filled with ceremonial-grade matcha, strawberry pieces and crunchy genmai (Japanese roasted rice, the same toasted rice you find in genmaicha). It’s sold through Lindt chocolate shops and lindt.com.au rather than supermarkets, at an RRP of $20, while stocks last.

Lindt Lindor Matcha. For the supermarket version, keep an eye out for Lindor Matcha in 110 g pouches, which price trackers are listing at around $9.80. Overseas, Lindt describes Lindor Matcha as a white chocolate shell around a matcha-infused centre.

Our take: the genmai in the Lindt block is the clever bit. Roasted rice with green tea is exactly what makes genmaicha so moreish, so if the chocolate wins you over, a pot of the real thing is a good next step. And if you’d rather drink your matcha than eat it, head to our Matcha & Hojicha range.

What it all adds up to

Put these launches side by side and three trends stand out.

Tea is going cold. Twinings didn’t build two cold ranges for fun. Iced and cold-brewed tea is the fastest-moving part of the aisle, and it’s moving into summer.

Matcha is the new chai. A few years ago the supermarket “café at home” shelf was all chai powder. Now it’s matcha latte mixes, matcha milk drinks and matcha ice cream.

Convenience wins on shelf, flavour wins at home. Nearly every launch is a bag, sachet, can or bottle built for speed. That’s useful, but the trade-off is usually added sugar, flavourings and less actual tea.

That last point is where loose leaf comes in. Everything above can be made from scratch with a few teaspoons of good leaf and a bit of patience, and it usually tastes better and costs less per cup. If one of these launches gets you curious, try the real thing next: hojicha or sencha for cold brew, a pure hibiscus or lemon myrtle for a caffeine-free iced tea, or a plain matcha you can sweeten yourself.

Browse our herbal teas and matcha and hojicha, or start with the cold brew guide.

Have you tried any of these? Tell us what you thought on Instagram at @pekoe_teaco.

New Tea in Australian Supermarkets: Recent Launches