Reviews of Black Tea
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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...
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...
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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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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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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English Breakfast from Chado High Tea
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Blend52 / 100 Aroma: 3/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Nov. 9th, 2018
For a food-service tea, this seemed slightly above average...I've had worse, but wouldn't seek it out for home consumption. This is one that, if you spot it in a motel or (as I did) receive it as "hot tea" in a breakfast cafe off I-70 in Kansas, can be consumed safely and without obvious problems. I realize that's no...
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Premium Hot Tea from House Recipe
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend69 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Sep. 23rd, 2018
This tea came from a chain motel in the Nebraska Panhandle. I rather enjoyed it on their breakfast area the morning I first chugged a cup, and the water is decent in the town; still, I took another bag home to review after brewing it up on my own well water. Before the pour, I did the usual dry-bag sniff. The aroma ...
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English Tradition from Farmer Brothers
Style: Black Tea – Region: ?????77 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
May. 20th, 2018
I couldn't tell if English Tradition was an English Breakfast an English Afternoon, so against such traditions, I drank it in the evening in America.
Of the three black teas from Farmer Brothers (FB) that I have reviewed, all of which were surprisingly tolerable, this product has been the best across the board. A...
English Breakfast from Harney and Sons
Style: English Breakfast – Region: China61 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
May. 6th, 2018
Sniffing the dry bag resurrected memories of high-school wood shop. At first I didn't understand why, then I realized the modest aroma has a component much like freshly sanded walnut, or basswood. That's not an unpleasant odor, just not what I expect in a tea. Perhaps a carpenter can appreciate this product better t...
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English Teatime from Bigelow Tea
Style: Black Tea – Region: ?????61 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Mar. 24th, 2018
Trying this tea 24 hours after "English Breakfast" and under nearly identical circumstances, I had a hard time telling the difference between the two. This one left less of an aftertaste (strength, and for sure duration) but was a little more bitter. Since the aftertaste of the other tea wasn't bad, the "more bitter"...
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English Breakfast Black Tea from Bigelow Tea
Style: English Breakfast – Region: ?????66 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Mar. 23rd, 2018
Pulled from a hotel breakfast stash (lower-case, not the tea brand), I brought a bag home to chug in my usual well water. Dry-bag and in-cup aroma were feeble, as has been my experience with most Bigelow teas (except Constant Comment, a major favorite). The brew got dark fairly quickly, tasting pleasant enough, rather...
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Breakfast Blend (Morning Rise) from Numi Organic Tea
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend62 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Oct. 29th, 2017
Count me in the upper-middle on this one—not quite as impressed as Alex (probably due to my lesser ability to detect subtleties) but certainly not as disappointed as some of the other reviewers further down the list either. It was good, and I'd drink more, for sure...just not for the price, when comparable bagged te...
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English Breakfast from Twinings
Style: English Breakfast – Region: ?????47 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 2/5 Value: 3/5
Oct. 9th, 2017
The golden tag accompanying the bag says, "Over 300 years of experience." To adapt something an old professor of mine used to say: "Experience is only an advantage if you learn and improve. If you stay the same, you might as well have one year of experience repeated 300 times." Given the unimpressive character of t...
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English Breakfast from Trader Joe's
Style: Black Tea – Region: ?????67 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Sep. 17th, 2017
With few exceptions (see my review of Ginger Turmeric herbal...blecch), TJs consistently offers a surprisingly high-quality selection of store-brand teas—better so far in my experience than any other grocery chain, and than a nontrivial number of name-brand bagged teas. This one fits the bill. Of course it's not to...
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English Breakfast (Loose) from Twinings
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Blend42 / 100 Aroma: 2/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Sep. 8th, 2017
Twinings teas in general consistently fail to impress me, though before this, I mostly had tried a few of their bagged offerings. A box of this was available at an estate sale, really cheap, so I figured to give it a run. While it's better than their bagged teas, and not a bad tea at all, I'm still no fan.
For a...
All Natural Tea (Orange Pekoe & Pekoe Tea) from Red Diamond
Style: Black Tea – Region: ?????55 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Aug. 29th, 2017
Maybe my tea-sniffing nose is busted. Perhaps the neural algorithm that processes tea odor has a few lines of code missing, or the broadband line from nose to brain is a tad noisy and leaky. See, most true teas (camellia) don't smell much like they taste to me, or even much like tea a lot of the time, or they have no...
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Orange Pekoe & Pekoe Cut Black Tea from Rituals
Style: Black Tea – Region: ?????56 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Aug. 25th, 2017
One of the minor mysterious adventures of getting last-minute, dirt-cheap, cut-rate, online deals on resort hotels (as I did one stormy evening in Sedona, AZ) is to sample new teas otherwise not often consumed. Sedona has decent water, but I also brought a bag home to try (apples-to-apples comparison).
For a food...
Black Tea from Farmer Brothers
Style: Black Tea – Region: ?????62 / 100 Aroma: 3/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Aug. 24th, 2017
I found a bag of this food-service/wholesale product at a motel in southern Utah, and decided to take it home for this review given the poor water quality in that town. I'm glad, because my preconceived notion about the weakness and unoriginality of food-service teas—especially considering the plainness and dated st...
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