Reviews of Teas & Herbal Teas
Page 1 2 3 4 ... 10 11 12 of 12 pages with 282 results
Organic Sencha Tea from Trader Joe's
Style: Sencha – Region: Japan74 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Feb. 14th, 2020
Despite having a wide spectrum of experiences with TJ's teas (from excellent to revolting...but mostly good), I somehow thought this would be a cheap knockoff and not very high quality. Somewhat surprisingly, while not the best bagged green I've had (that would be an unbranded tea my daughter brought back from Japan)...
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English Breakfast from Lipton Tea
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Blend54 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Feb. 11th, 2020
I bring news! Whether it's good news or not is up to the reader. This tea, as a brand with the same name, is not retired after all, as of Feb. 2020. Instead, it has found its way to the food-service division of Unilever, Lipton's corporate overlord. I'll upload a photo of its newest packaging separately. I was abl...
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Organic Spring Blossom White Tea from Trader Joe's
Style: White Tea – Region: Darjeeling, India41 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 2/5 Value: 2/5
Feb. 10th, 2020
This was my first Darjeeling white tea, and it's about as impressive as sitting through an hour-long staff meeting with a well-advertised, nicely dressed, but ultimately monotonic guest speaker droning on about an uninteresting subject.
At first, I was intrigued. The best part of the experience was the dry-bag ar...
Chamomile from Lipton Tea
Style: Pure Chamomile Tea – Region: ?????65 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 7th, 2020
Let's play tea detective. This product was a bit perplexing—not because of anything having to do with its own properties, but because it took some digging to find exactly this stuff online. Lipton sells a "Relax" branded chamomile in retail—on its site and in some stores—but I don't know if this is the same stu...
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Organic Autumn Harvest Black Tea from Trader Joe's
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend69 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 6th, 2020
This is not to be confused with the apparently much-better-known Trader Joe's "Harvest Blend" herbal tea, which is a completely different product. Instead, this black tea came in a 10-bag sealed wrapper, tucked into one of four squares of a wooden gift box. The outside paper wrapper of the gift box describes all four...
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Bombay Chai from Mighty Leaf Tea
Style: Chai / Spiced Tea – Region: ?????61 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 2/5
Jan. 30th, 2020
I love chai overall, so they tend to skew high in my ratings unless they either simply suck, or as in this case, are "just" decent while being overpriced. [Though I was served a couple bags of this tea at a Corner Bakery outlet, I based "value" on the online pricing.] My version came in a rectangular sachet sewn on t...
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Tropical Green Tea from Revolution Tea
Style: Fruit Green Tea – Region: ?????64 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Jan. 8th, 2020
Here was the last in a series of Revolution teas I've finished from a variety pack, and it was slightly above average, overall. The aromas and flavors are quite similar, across-the-board, from dry bag to cup to wet bag. The aroma is a good bit weaker than the taste, however.
The green teas used seem to be good qua...
Jasmine Tea from Fujian Tea Import & Export Co, Ltd.
Style: Jasmine Tea – Region: Fujian, China65 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Jan. 4th, 2020
One of my kids gave me this for Christmas, having bought it at an Asian food store for an unknown price, so I'm basing the value rating off the mostly reasonable online costs for a 120g tin. The packaging of this tea confused me a bit at first, as it was branded just like one of the same title on RateTea, but in a tin...
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Pear White Tea (Formerly White Pear) from Revolution Tea
Style: Fruit White Tea – Region: ?????58 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Jan. 3rd, 2020
This tea was "something else". It was my first nominally pear-flavored tea, but most of the experience was of something else. This was one of the few teas I've tried where the aromas were consistently the same from dry bag to cup to wet bag, but the taste was something else.
I found the aroma remarkably floral, ...
Peppermint Chocolate from Republic of Tea
Style: Flavored Rooibos – Region: Blend71 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 2/5
Jan. 1st, 2020
Chocolate and peppermint are two of my favorite flavors in all this mighty land. As such, I'm a major sucker for trying such teas, even expensive ones like this or Harney & Sons. So I grabbed a tin* of the R of T version at a local World Market, as a minor Christmas present to myself.
The dry-bag and wet-bag ar...
Mandarin Orange Spice® Herb Tea from Celestial Seasonings
Style: Fruit (Herbal) Tea – Region: ?????76 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Dec. 30th, 2019
Celestial Seasonings has made a mint off selling assorted fruit flavors added to the same basic "Zinger" foundation (hibiscus, rose hips, hawthorn, blackberry leaves, orange peel). This tea has been around a couple of generations, probably preceding the Zingers, and doesn't bear that name, so maybe they're inspired by...
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Storm Watcher from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend81 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Dec. 17th, 2019
Being in Oklahoma, the name of this seasonal tea intrigued me a lot, even though the storms inspiring it are cold, wet wintertime blasts on the British Columbia coast, instead of southern Plains severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. Then again, that makes sense. What would tornado tea be, and would it even matter? The...
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Sweet Ginger Peach from Revolution Tea
Style: Flavored Black Tea – Region: Blend58 / 100 Aroma: 4/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Dec. 14th, 2019
This blend has some potential, but is far from my favorite flavored black tea. The first and biggest turnoff was the dry-bag aroma, which reminded me of cheap incense—specifically, the sort employed to smoke-bomb a room fast, in order to mask pot usage. This is the second tea that has given off that cheap-incense v...
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Tea Book Volume II (Gold) from Basilur
Style: Flavored Black Tea – Region: Sri Lanka / Ceylon64 / 100 Aroma: 10/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 2/5
Dec. 5th, 2019
Basilur is creative in the packaging and marketing of their teas. This is part of an impressively elaborate gimmick: the second in a multi-volume series of well-decorated "books"—each a metal tin about the size and shape of a small hardback book—containing a plastic bag full of loose tea that gets folded and some...
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English Breakfast from Revolution Tea
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Blend63 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Dec. 2nd, 2019
The next entry from a Revolution variety pack delivered one of the strangest experiences I've had with a tea. Sniffing the dry bag (pyramid sachet) rendered an unmistakably familiar aroma that took me many tries to recall its specific origin. "Sniff, sniff, sniff...I know this...sniff, sniff, sniff...where have I sme...
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Yorkshire Tea Traditional from Yorkshire Tea
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend64 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Dec. 1st, 2019
Yorkshire is a basic, moderately strong, reasonably tasty, unassuming black-tea blend—nothing special, but still just bold enough to sneak into the upper 40th percentile of bagged black teas I've had.
The dry-bag aroma and in-cup smell and taste can be described the same way: plain, short on standout notes or c...
Earl Grey Lavender from Revolution Tea
Style: Miscellaneous Blend – Region: Blend80 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Nov. 27th, 2019
Here's the first tea I've tried from a Revolution variety pack, and it was a pleasant surprise! The ingredients list looked promising, with a blend of Ceylon, Darjeeling and "Foromosa" (presumably Formosa, misspelled) oolong, French lavender flowers, and bergamot oil.
It was impossible not to compare this to anothe...
Earl Grey Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Earl Grey Tea – Region: Blend88 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Nov. 12th, 2019
Now this was an unexpected treat! Rarely (if ever) have I had the loose and bagged version of a tea from the same company, at the same time, from the same order. Not only that, they're rather different (how?), but both delicious. I specifically had ordered the EG loose mainly for my wife, and the EG bags came in a v...
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Constant Comment Decaffeinated from Bigelow Tea
Style: Flavored Black Tea – Region: Blend76 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Nov. 11th, 2019
Caveat: Constant Comment is one of my very favorite teas, so even a noticeable dropoff from that still garners a favorable rating from me.
The Good: As bagged decaf teas go, this is one of the most tolerable, and dare I say pleasant. Most of the wonderfully clove/orange/cinnamon aroma and flavor of original Const...
Jasmine Pure Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Jasmine Tea – Region: China77 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Oct. 31st, 2019
This was a peculiar yet pleasant jasmine-tea experience, stem to stern. The jasmine scent in both the dry bag and steeped cup were stronger than the tea, and than it asserted in the flavor. Instead, the flavor overall is very well-balanced between jasmine and tea. That's good, because the green tea tastes like a ver...
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Chamomile Tea from McCormick
Style: Pure Chamomile Tea – Region: ?????83 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Oct. 23rd, 2019
Though tagged here as retired, it seems McCormick has unretired it, for as of late October 2019, it is available in 10- or 25-count boxes on Amazon, and the web presences of big brick-and-mortar store chains like Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kroger and H-E-B. I got some in person at a regional Oklahoma chain today, for a little...
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Traditional Chai Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Chai / Spiced Tea – Region: Blend71 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Oct. 22nd, 2019
Although good, and a decent value for the currency-adjusted price, this tea fell slightly off expectations for a company that usually yields outstanding quality. Maybe the loose-leaf version is better, and the latter certainly smelled amazing in their Victoria store.
The dry-bag smell was curiously weak in cinnamon...
Yogi Soothing Caramel Bedtime from Yogi Tea
Style: Wellness Tea / Medicinal Tea – Region: Blend57 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Oct. 20th, 2019
Here Yogi offers a caramel-flavored blend that has a few ingredients not listed in the more-established "Bedtime" offering, and vice versa. Perhaps they are different enough that this version deserves its own independent title. For reasons elucidated below, I propose "Sweet Desert Dust Storm". Would the marketing ...
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No. 10 Blend Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Green and Black Tea Blend – Region: Blend86 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Oct. 17th, 2019
RateTea's description of green/black blending says that it's hard to pull off successfully, due to temperature differences needed for optimal steeping of each. Partly for that reason, I haven't tried many (if any) green/black mixtures. And yet...
* Murchie's has yielded mostly very good to excellent teas in my exp...
Tangerine Orange Zinger® Herbal Tea from Celestial Seasonings
Style: Herbal Tea – Region: ?????61 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Oct. 16th, 2019
This member of CS' "Zinger" line has resided in the tea section of our pantry for a long time, occasionally brewed and chugged, and I just realized this morning that I haven't reviewed it yet. Therefore, this is that.
When I think of orange-flavored herbal teas, the first that comes to mind for me is Tazo's "Wild S...
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