Reviews of Teas & Herbal Teas
Page 1 2 3 ... 14 15 16 of 16 pages with 387 results
Organic Assam Black Tea from Trader Joe's
Style: Assam – Region: Assam, India81 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Jul. 24th, 2024
Trader Joe's teas seem to fall into two bins:
1. Very good, which at their typically low prices for bagged tea, makes it quite a strong value, even if not nearly the best of its type, and
2. Mediocre to poor, as one expects from most store brands.
Fortunately their organic Assam offering lies squarely in the fir...
Chai Spice Black Tea from Stash Tea
Style: Chai / Spiced Tea – Region: ?????68 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Jul. 5th, 2024
Here's another tea that has been around a long time, but somehow, I haven't tried nor reviewed it until now! A restaurant in Minnesota served this tea on good water, and I got a second bag to take home and chug as well.
Both times, the impression I got was: this is a pleasantly good, herb-dusted cinnamon infusio...
Chamomile Herbal Tea from Rituals
Style: Pure Chamomile Tea – Region: ?????73 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Jul. 5th, 2024
Another in an assortment of Rituals teas I got from a couple of motels this spring, their chamomile offering made a very nice impression too. With only a very few exceptions, most chamomile teas in my experience differ very little, and when they do, tend to drop off markedly because of lack of freshness. Food-service...
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Original (Black Tea) from Red Rose Tea
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend59 / 100 Aroma: 4/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Jun. 27th, 2024
Seldom have I sampled a tea with such a gap between aroma (or lack thereof) and taste. It's a vast chasm, really. The Grand Canyon might be a good analog with another several million years of erosion, widening and deepening.
This was a motel pickup somewhere out on the Great Plains. I don't recall where. I had a...
Darjeeling Black Tea from Rituals
Style: Darjeeling Black Tea – Region: Darjeeling, India79 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Jun. 23rd, 2024
Here's another new Rituals tea for me (and this website), also first sampled at the Days Inn in Hays, KS. As usual, and even though Hays water isn't bad, I also hauled a bag home to try on my well water for fair comparison with other ratings.
Upon ripping open the foil-lined package, the smell that greeted my nos...
Pomegranate from Farmer Brothers
Style: Fruit (Herbal) Tea – Region: Blend68 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Jun. 18th, 2024
As with most Farmer Brothers teas, I got this at a motel. Some motels have nice management who offers tea, and a most-welcomed minority of them offer more than only straight Lipton, or than the cheapest possible store brand like Great Value. When they do, and it's reasonably good, I try to commend the staff directly ...
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Orange Flavored Jasmine Green Tea from Rituals
Style: Flavored Green Tea – Region: Blend73 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Jun. 6th, 2024
This peculiar combination came from a Days Inn in Hays, KS, and tasted really nice on their water, so I brought a bag home to try as well. Rituals Teas in general seem to perform above most food-service offerings, and this was no exception.
The type made me curious, because I've never seen orange and jasmine paired...
Organic Irish Breakfast Tea from Equal Exchange
Style: Irish Breakfast – Region: India61 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
May. 28th, 2024
My review here is decidedly mixed. Since this isn't a bad tea, folks who are interested in the fair-trade/organic aspects may find this a good alternative to the relative dearth of such certifications among Irish Breakfast bagged teas. Being less refined, more of a troglodyte, I just want tea to taste good regardless...
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Parlour Room Blend from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Flavored Black Tea – Region: Blend59 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 4/5
Mar. 13th, 2024
This is one of those uncommon tea blends that smells and tastes exactly as advertised—no hidden "flavours" (as it's spelled where sold), no surprises, no Trojan horses. That's a good thing, if you like a smoky rose tea with some fruity elements. Murchie's describes this as, "Evoking the atmosphere of a Victorian si...
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Darling Grey (Teabags) from Whittard of Chelsea
Style: Earl Grey Tea – Region: Blend85 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 24th, 2024
Given how much of a waste of time and steeping water Whittard's standard Earl Grey was, expectations for this version ran low. What a pleasant surprise instead!
Not only did this tea actually have a detectable and pleasant aroma upon opening the wrapper and sniffing the dry bag, that carried over quite strongly i...
Teepee Dreams from Native American Tea Company
Style: Wellness Tea / Medicinal Tea – Region: Blend61 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 2/5
Feb. 21st, 2024
Here's another box of this brand that I got overpriced at a Black Hills souvenir store. Like the others, the bags are both small and underfilled, docking the "value" category, despite this being a decent-tasting blend.
The dry-bag aroma came across as a disjointed melange of a lot of stuff, much akin to the "unde...
Mao Feng Green Tea from Teapigs
Style: Mao Feng Green Tea – Region: Anhui, China79 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 3/5
Feb. 6th, 2024
I've only chugged one other green tea of the Mao Feng type (a Tazo bagged offering), and enjoyed that, so I figured I'd try a bigger-leaf, sacheted version. This is one of the best green teas I've had, lots of personality, and mostly worth the slight premium one pays when shoveling a stack of bills across the counter ...
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Festive Breakfast (Teabags) from Whittard of Chelsea
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Blend74 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 4th, 2024
Whittard has a single-sourced English Breakfast by name (from West Java), and an entirely different tea more of the traditional EB style—this one—composed of Ceylon and Kenya teas. Unlike the named EB, I couldn't find Festive Breakfast on Whittard's website, but instead, got it as part of a gift assortment.
Fo...
Peppermint Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Peppermint Tea – Region: United States of America85 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Jan. 25th, 2024
As much Murchie's tea as I've ordered, chugged and rated, and as strongly as I love peppermint, this was only a matter of time. Usually, I get a quick box of somebody's peppermint tea (usually Celestial Seasonings, which I've rated highly) at a retail store and go with that. However, lately amid price inflation of al...
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English Rose (Teabags) from Whittard of Chelsea
Style: Rose Black Tea – Region: Blend71 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Jan. 10th, 2024
Two background caveats here:
1. I'm not a big fan of overt rose scent in beverages; something about drinking common garden flowers that I've cultivated, like rose, marigold or lavender, still seems weird to me (even though I do like jasmine tea...go figure!).
2. I haven't had rose congou tea from China yet, for com...
Vanilla Spice from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Vanilla Chai – Region: Blend88 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Dec. 28th, 2023
Looking over the large ingredients list for a loose tea (Keemun and Ceylon tea, cinnamon, ginger, fennel, cocoa nibs, cardamom seeds, roasted carob, Indian sarsparilla root, natural and artificial flavors), it seemed a little disjointed. I wasn't sure this was going to work. I'll assure that it does, very nicely.
...
English Breakfast (Teabags) from Whittard of Chelsea
Style: English Breakfast – Region: West Java, Indonesia77 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Dec. 24th, 2023
Given how unimpressed I've been with most of Whittard's offerings so far, this was a pleasant surprise. English Breakfast is their advertised "No. 01" mainstay tea since the Victorian era, at least in loose-leaf form, so presumably the bagged version shouldn't be terribly different.
Though not very strong, the dry...
Special Blend Tea Bags with Earl Grey from Sadaf
Style: Earl Grey Tea – Region: Blend45 / 100 Aroma: 4/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 2/5
Dec. 17th, 2023
This tea came from a Middle Eastern eatery, and I took home an extra bag to try on home well water (instead of our heavily chlorinated city stuff that gets fishy this time of year when the lake turns over). Turns out not all the "fishy" element was from the water!
Here's the second Earl Grey tea in a row I've rev...
Snowflake from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Flavored Black Tea – Region: Blend79 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Dec. 12th, 2023
For those who enjoy both coconut and almond, this seasonal tea should be heavenly. Sweetened enough, it's like marzipan candy in a teacup. I'm not a big fan of nuts in general, with almond probably being the one I can tolerate best, so the tea likely rates lower for me than it could otherwise. Still, the good news f...
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Earl Grey (Teabags) from Whittard of Chelsea
Style: Earl Grey Tea – Region: ?????42 / 100 Aroma: 3/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 2/5
Dec. 9th, 2023
Here's a rare flavored black tea where the flavor itself is fairly feeble, and the tea dominates it (not necessarily in a good way, either). Save your money and get an off-brand, food-service tea at a cheap motel, for an experience that is comparable, if not better.
I got this from a gift pack of sampler boxes, wi...
Harvest Blend Herbal Tea from Trader Joe's
Style: Herbal Tea – Region: Blend90 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Dec. 4th, 2023
"Harvest Blend" firmly ranks among the few best herbal teas I've had, and it's a store-brand product. A few options are out there for excellent, comparably delicious, fall-winter, "cinnamoney" seasonal herbal teas, but with the value of a low price point innate to Trader Joe's, I can't think of any better for the buck...
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Darjeeling (Teabags) from Whittard of Chelsea
Style: Darjeeling Black Tea – Region: Darjeeling, India69 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Dec. 3rd, 2023
The photo is from Whittard's website where (as of this writing) 50 round, stringless bags sell for USD $9.50, not too bad for what I presume to be a decent-quality Darjeeling. [They also sell loose-leaf Darjeeling.] Mine came from a 5-bag sampler pack, each bag being of the fold-over type stapled to a string and tag....
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Warm & Cozy from Teekanne
Style: Herbal Tea – Region: Blend77 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Dec. 1st, 2023
Teekanne does a lot of variations of some of the same herbs in assorted ratios—much as Celestial Seasonings with its many "Zinger" teas and similar—but with Teekanne using material like fennel, licorice, and a couple others not often found in American herbals. Here, they toss in thyme with the fennel and licorice,...
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White Chocolate from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Flavored White Tea – Region: ?????74 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Nov. 25th, 2023
Weird tea, but to me at least, pleasantly so! Connoisseurs of complex-flavored tea should like this, unless those flavors are not favorites. First off, the dry-leaf aroma (in the plastic sack), in-cup smell and taste are remarkably consistent with each other.
The hard part is describing what they are. I can see...
Spiced Apple Cider Herbal Tea from Bigelow Tea
Style: Herbal Tea – Region: Blend87 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Nov. 16th, 2023
While I had some of this tea at work, steeping in an open steel Thermos, my co-worker smelled it across a fairly large room, and asked me if I were drinking spiced apple cider. My response: "Yeah: a herbal tea by that exact name." I guess that tells you how closely this mimics real cider; if not, I'll vouch for it ...
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