Reviews of Pure Tea (Camellia sinensis)
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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...
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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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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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...
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...
English Breakfast Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Blend64 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Oct. 14th, 2019
This arrived as a member of a sampler pack that I ordered, to try some Murchie's offerings not yet chugged.
While pleasant and reasonably robust, it still is probably the mildest black tea I've tried (loose or bagged) from Murchie's, which says more about the strength of their other teas than any glaring deficienc...
Orange Pekoe & Pekoe Cut Black Tea from Cain's
Style: Black Tea – Region: ?????55 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 4/5
Oct. 9th, 2019
For background, Cain's has a similar-sounding black tea that I've seen sold in stores here in Oklahoma for many years, but haven't tried yet. It comes in large-sized bags for the purpose of brewing a couple quarts at a time to make iced tea, but I don't know if it's the same blend of pekoes as this single-serving, foo...
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Premium Leaf Tea from Dilmah
Style: Ceylon Black Tea – Region: Sri Lanka / Ceylon65 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Oct. 4th, 2019
I'm reviewing the version of their loose-leaf "Premium" that comes in a 400g resealable plastic sack, which I got new/unopened at an estate sale. The leaves are very finely chopped, small, almost granular, as if they were part of a mechanical, one-size-fits-all process for both bagged and loose-leaf offerings. The wo...
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English Teatime Decaffeinated from Bigelow Tea
Style: Black Tea – Region: ?????41 / 100 Aroma: 3/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Aug. 7th, 2019
Caffeine generally doesn't bother me, even before sleepytime (lower-case, not to be confused with the Celestial Seasonings brand of herbal tea). As such, I am still rather inexperienced with decaf teas, outside of 1) a couple of lame food-service brands and 2) a strongly flavored variety that I have loved dearly for a...
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Naturally Decaffeinated Tea from Cain's
Style: Black Tea – Region: ?????50 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Jul. 29th, 2019
Finely chopped, decaf, food-service black teas in wax-paper wrappers don't inspire a great deal of confidence, so I guess this offering managed to exceed my low expectations.
I got a few of these as a restaurant and took one home to brew in good water, for fairness' sake, since the cafe was in a town with sketchy wa...
Japanese Matcha + Green Tea from Matcha Love
Style: Green Tea – Region: Japan76 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 3/5
Jun. 3rd, 2019
The bold print on the box says "matcha + green tea". The smaller print—green tea blend with matcha—is more correct. Each of the triangular clear sachets (not "tea bags" as we know them in paper form) contains a reasonable amount of finely chopped green tea leaves and just a pinch of matcha powder. Don't forget t...
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Decaffeinated from Royal Cup
Style: Black Tea – Region: ?????57 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 4/5
Jun. 1st, 2019
Since finding their regular bagged tea a couple years ago, I was hoping to run across the decaf version for a taste test too, and also, for a pre-bedtime black-tea chug after another day spent roaming the highways and byways of this land. For some reason, outside of the occasional Bigelow bag, it's hard to find decaf ...
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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...
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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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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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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Organic Pure Green Tea (Premium Green Tea Organic) 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...
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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China Green Tips Filterbag from Tazo Tea
Style: Mao Feng Green Tea – Region: Zhejiang, China79 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Dec. 16th, 2018
Even though this isn't a Stash tea, it was well stashed—just a couple packets jammed discreetly in the middle of a bunch of bags of Bigelow Green at a conference, and only the first morning. Fortunately I noticed and grabbed them: one for there, one to bring home.
I'm not much for detecting subtleties, and pro...
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