Tchuggin' Okie
Tea Reviewer
Member since Feb. 11th, 2016. Reviewed 236 teas.
Reviews of Teas & Herbal Teas
Page 1 2 3 4 ... 8 9 10 of 10 pages with 236 results
Darjeeling Black Tea from Bigelow Tea
Style: Darjeeling Black Tea – Region: Darjeeling, India71 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
May. 18th, 2019
We first found this in an estate-sale pantry. Then my wife bought another box, because she enjoyed it as a morning and midday tea, when she didn't want something quite as potent as her favorite Assam or Irish breakfast blends. Loath to pilfer her teas and disharmonize domestic tranquility, I've just had a couple bags...
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Ultra Select Green Tea from Cain's
Style: Green Tea – Region: ?????73 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
May. 15th, 2019
First off, thanks for the props on the backstory of this tea, Alex. It's a fascinating look into how brands bounce hither and yon. Somehow, someone under the Farmer Brothers umbrella still is making Cain's teas, and the ones I've had aren't duplicates of the corresponding Farmer Brothers products so far.
One suc...
Earl Grey Crème Black Tea from Teavana
Style: Earl Grey Cream – Region: Blend87 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
May. 11th, 2019
This is my favorite Earl Grey Cream tea yet, and that's not a knock on Murchie's excellent rendition, which is a better value but just a notch below Teavana in richness.
Teavana has undergone a remaking of its marketing and strategy under the Starbucks banner: no more stand-alone tea shops, just 15-sachet plastic t...
Pure Peppermint from Twinings
Style: Peppermint Tea – Region: ?????48 / 100 Aroma: 4/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Apr. 21st, 2019
Once again, I drank a Twinings product, wondering how this brand gained enough of a reputation or loyalty to have lasted so long. The peppermint in these bags wasn't bad, but wasn't great either. Lots of stems too! It reminded me a lot of cheap/knock-off store brands or some of the lower-quality food-service pepperm...
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Bangkok from Harney and Sons
Style: Flavored Green Tea – Region: Blend86 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Apr. 19th, 2019
Mmmmmmm...delicious from the first dry-bag sniff through the cup and even in the aftertaste! Finally again, for only the second time in my experience: a coconut-flavored green tea that really is coconut-dominant, and since I enjoy coconut a lot, that's a good thing.
The best part is that the coconut flavor asser...
Sleepytime Extra® from Celestial Seasonings
Style: Wellness Tea / Medicinal Tea – Region: ?????70 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Apr. 17th, 2019
The only difference I've detected between this product and regular Sleepytime is the addition of valerian root to the ingredients list, and a caution on the side of the box about not driving or operating machinery after using, as if this is some herbal-tea version of Ambien or Sominex. Of course, it's not. I'm writin...
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African Red Bush from Tazo Tea
Style: Flavored Rooibos – Region: Blend63 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Apr. 14th, 2019
Too bad this tea has been discontinued, because it's an acceptable (not great to the point of blowing one's mind, but pretty decent) take on rooibos/herbal blending. As with other rooibos teas I've tried, the first impression wasn't anything to brag about, but it grew on me after a few bags, and I came to appreciate i...
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Decaf White Tea from Celestial Seasonings
Style: White Tea – Region: ?????46 / 100 Aroma: 3/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Apr. 14th, 2019
Estate sales can be an unconventional way to try new teas upon which one normally wouldn't gamble the full cost of purchase. In this case, the tea apparently has been retired, and can't be bought anymore, but was shrink-wrapped in the box (never opened) and still in fresh condition. [I got it as part of a larger grab...
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Chai Vanilla Caramel from Tazo Tea
Style: Chai / Spiced Tea – Region: Blend73 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Mar. 28th, 2019
Being a sucker for all kinds of strong and/or spicy food and drink, I've grown quite fond of good chais, in all their wonderful variety of formulations. As such, my default will be to rate them fairly well unless they prove unfit for human consumption. This rates well. It's not up to par with most loose chais I've h...
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Organic Green Tea from Uncle Lee's Tea
Style: Green Tea – Region: Fujian, China62 / 100 Aroma: 4/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Mar. 13th, 2019
This is a very slightly above-average, but not outstanding, bagged green tea available at a price that's hard to top for a non-store brand (about $8 for a 100-count box online, or at stores such as Wal-Mart). Fortunately, I procured a fairly new, sealed 100-ct box at an estate sale for a buck, so *my* value was unrepr...
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Assam Shankar: Finest Second Flush from Fortnum & Mason
Style: Assam – Region: Assam, India58 / 100 Aroma: 4/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Feb. 24th, 2019
My wife's acquaintance's mom, who had passed away recently, bought this tea in London but never opened it. Since we like tea, we ended up with it from her estate sale. It's odd how, since I've started reviewing here, teas seem to fall out of the sky and into my hands through a variety of fortuitous circumstances, in ...
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Calm Chamomile Filterbags from Tazo Tea
Style: Chamomile Blend – Region: Blend69 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 23rd, 2019
This tea gave me some peculiar impressions before ever pouring a drop down my throat. The dry-bag smell brought back vague yet unwelcome childhood memories of illness, and it took me a minute to figure out why. The dry aroma reminded me much of the 1970s formulation of Kaopectate diarrhea medicine—then a dense, sli...
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French Vanilla Decaffeinated Black Tea from Bigelow Tea
Style: Vanilla Black Tea – Region: ?????61 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Feb. 19th, 2019
I don't see a point in proactively obtaining this tea, especially for money. Here's another offering I got at no cost (the best way), thanks to its being available in a tea box at a meeting, at a Holiday Inn Express. I'll rate "value" based on the prices I usually see for Bigelow teas in-store.
The best part of ...
Citrus Sunrise from Celestial Seasonings
Style: Fruit (Herbal) Tea – Region: ?????85 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 18th, 2019
Citrus Sunrise easily can be called Orange Tangerine Zinger, if it weren't for a similarly named blend they already have. That's because it starts out with the same common-denominator ingredients as the CS Zinger line (rose hips, orange peel, hibiscus, hawthorn, blackberry leaves), and just boosts the orange part with...
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Chamomile Herbal Tea from Chado High Tea
Style: Pure Chamomile Tea – Region: ?????69 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 11th, 2019
Here's another food-service tea obtained somewhere (can't recall which) in a string of hotels and diners up and down the High Plains.
Mostly I expect chamomile to be the same basic flavor; differences in my evaluations of it on this site mostly relate to intensity of that. Yet for any chamomile tea, but especiall...
Awake English Breakfast Filterbag from Tazo Tea
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Blend68 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 10th, 2019
After bringing this breakfast tea home from a conference, I tried it at dinnertime while eating a tub of cottage cheese. The tea brewed up very dark, quickly, such that a spoon disappeared from view below about the top two inches of liquid. This wasn't too surprising, considering how finely chopped the dry-bag leaves...
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True Blueberry® Herbal Tea from Celestial Seasonings
Style: Fruit (Herbal) Tea – Region: ?????69 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 6th, 2019
After running out of my favorite blueberry-flavored tea faster than expected, I got this in a moment of desperation, made easier to rationalize by a temporarily low sale price at Sprouts.
True Blueberry is one of the few herbal teas I've tried whose primary advertised flavor smells substantially stronger in the dry ...
Premium Green Tea from Bigelow Tea
Style: Green Tea – Region: ?????61 / 100 Aroma: 4/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 1st, 2019
This tea somewhat flummoxed me from before I poured the first drop down my esophagus, to the last aftertaste. For starters, what is it? There's no "Premium Green Tea" available on Bigelow's main website, just something called "Green Tea (Certified Organic)". Then on RateTea, there already was an "Organic Pure Green ...
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Japanese Sencha (Sachets) from Harney and Sons
Style: Sencha – Region: Shizuoka, Japan80 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Jan. 28th, 2019
A colleague left this on the "freebie" table at work, so naturally I indulged some. One of the best green teas I've had so far, this offering competes well with a couple of bagged generic (unbranded) green-tea specimens containing a little matcha powder that my daughter brought back from her honeymoon in Japan.
D...
Mint Medley® Herbal Tea from Bigelow Tea
Style: Mint Tea – Region: ?????59 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Jan. 24th, 2019
I've been more impressed with most other mint teas I've chugged so far, including a couple of store brands. Still, Mint Medley is mediocre, not bad. Like most live-performance musical medleys, the sum is worse in quality than the individual parts.
The dry-bag and in-cup aromas were hardly there, while the wet bag...
Devonshire English Breakfast Black Tea from Celestial Seasonings
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Blend76 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Jan. 20th, 2019
"Devonshire" has one of the most full-bodied dry-bag aromas I've gotten from a breakfast tea, and unusually, it nearly matches the flavor for intensity. I detected virtually no difference between dry-bag scent, in-cup scent, and taste, the latter likewise being straightforwardly well-constructed within a nice, dark br...
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English Breakfast from Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Nilgiri, India64 / 100 Aroma: 4/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Jan. 15th, 2019
For a simple tea, this has to have the most convoluted backstory for any I've tried. First, the tea itself: it had remarkably weak dry-bag and wet-bag aromas for what seemed to be a high-quality, single-estate tea, though in-cup, the smell was richer and fairly basic. The flavor wasn't particularly strong or bold, bu...
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Peaceful Slumber from Allegro
Style: Chamomile Blend – Region: Blend73 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Jan. 9th, 2019
Uncommonly in my admittedly limited tea-drinking experience, this was the second different bagged chamomile blend (as opposed to pure chamomile) from the same company—the first being "Relaxing Chamomile". This tea is decidedly chamomile-dominant in dry-bag, in-cup and wet-bag aromas, and despite not having the word...
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Blood Pressure from Triple Leaf Tea
Style: Wellness Tea / Medicinal Tea – Region: China37 / 100 Aroma: 2/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 2/5
Jan. 1st, 2019
Seeing the questionable claims made by some wellness-tea makers, including this one on its site, raises my blood pressure. That rather opposes the stated intent of this tea! Fortunately that effect is temporary. It's wise to heed the last part of RateTea's description of Triple Leaf: "Some of this company's product...
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Winter Wake Up Tea from Trader Joe's
Style: Flavored Black Tea – Region: Blend88 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Dec. 28th, 2018
For a store-brand bagged tea, this seasonal offering was excellent! My immediate impression sniffing the dry bag was a striking resemblance to the flavor (not smell) of Good Earth's "Sweet and Spicy": very intense on cinnamon, with orange quite noticeable. However, unlike the Good Earth tea, this one has black tea (...
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