Reviews of Teas & Herbal Teas
Page 1 2 3 ... 13 14 of 14 pages with 350 results
Cinnamon Stick® Black Tea from Bigelow Tea
Style: Chai / Spiced Tea – Region: Blend77 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
May. 27th, 2023
Somehow, this Bigelow offering escaped me for many years, but it finally emerged from hiding and surrendered to my tea-greedy clutches at a Denver-area hotel—and only then, because striking a huge deer at full speed east of town totaled my vehicle. After that ordeal, and stuck at the hotel amid 30 hours of cold rain...
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Hatley Castle Blend Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Green and Black Tea Blend – Region: Blend80 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
May. 2nd, 2023
Here's still another quality green-black blend from Murchie's, who has a large menu of them and seems to have mastered the apparently delicate art. The blend also is over a century old too, with an interesting history: a custom job originally prepared by company founder James Murchie for Laura Dunsmuir, wife of James...
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DeTox from Yogi Tea
Style: Wellness Tea / Medicinal Tea – Region: Blend44 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 2/5 Value: 2/5
Apr. 25th, 2023
To think, I was on a run of decent to good scores for teas from this brand...no more. DeTox has no real personality because it seems to be an "everything but the kitchen sink" concoction. The dry-bag aroma is interesting: peppery, grassy, a little minty or fruity, depending on the way the vapors waft across the pass...
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Passion Filterbag from Tazo Tea
Style: Herbal Tea – Region: Blend53 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 2/5 Value: 3/5
Apr. 12th, 2023
Here's the most-rated Tazo product on RateTea, but haven't yet rated here for unknown reasons. So...this is that, since I snagged some at a hotel.
The blend brews up a dense magenta hue quite quickly, presumably from the added elderberry extract ("for color" on the ingredients label). Dry-bag aroma is generically ...
Bombay Masala Chai from Chai Diaries
Style: Chai / Spiced Tea – Region: ?????56 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 1/5
Apr. 8th, 2023
Here's a tea that seems to work the gourmet/artisan angle hard, presumably in order to justify the exorbitant cost, and just doesn't live up to the billing. The first thing I noticed about the dry bags (fairly standard-sized pyramid sachets with string and tag) is that the dry product only filled about 1/4–1/5 of it...
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Government Street Blend Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Green and Black Tea Blend – Region: Blend89 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Mar. 25th, 2023
Here's yet another in a parade of marginally different green/black blends offered by Murchie's, all of which have pleased my nasal passages and taste buds nicely on the way inside. GSB, for short, is the third Murchie's green/black product I've found with both jasmine and bergamot, this one the most bergamot-weighted,...
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Maui Mango from Tiesta Tea
Style: Fruit (Herbal) Tea – Region: Blend63 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 2/5
Mar. 12th, 2023
With this, I will have reviewed a tea named Mango Maui (Hawaiian Islands Tea Company) and Maui Mango (Tiesta). They're radically different, however. The former is a very good, flavored black tea, while this one is mostly dried fruit by volume (pineapple, orange slices, mango, and strawberry) with flowers sprinkled in...
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Oriental Green Tea from Rituals
Style: Flavored Green Tea – Region: ?????66 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Mar. 11th, 2023
As with the remainder of this brand of US Foods teas, it's a food-service product not sold directly to the public, but still available in some hotels and motels. I got this at a Wingate by Wyndham motel in Frisco, TX, drinking some there and saving a couple others to try later.
The bag came in a sealed foil-paper...
Genmaicha Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Genmaicha – Region: Japan59 / 100 Aroma: 3/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Mar. 2nd, 2023
My experience with genmaicha is very limited, and it's not my favorite tea type, so take this for what it's worth in that context. If the dry smell alone were the basis for evaluating a tea, I would have launched this stuff into the compost heap, untasted, with prejudice. Maybe I'm just not well-adapted to genmaicha ...
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Organic Lemon Ginger Green Tea from Stash Tea
Style: Flavored Green Tea – Region: Blend72 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 22nd, 2023
Now, ginger isn't my favorite tea flavor, but having never tried explicitly ginger-flavored green tea yet, I figured this would be worthwhile, especially on sale. I liked it more than I thought I would.
Dry-bag aroma was sharp, crisp, a distinctly peppery ginger that reminded me of a really good "ginger beer" soda....
Toasted Coconut Almond Bark Black Tea from Bigelow Tea
Style: Miscellaneous Blend – Region: Blend63 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Jan. 18th, 2023
For a few years, Tazo and Bigelow, in particular, have gone on a bender of producing explicitly dessert-flavored blends, which doesn't bother me, even as it might annoy some tea purists. Hey, who doesn't like some yummy sweet treats after a good dinner? However, Bigelow may have overplayed its hand here and missed th...
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Royal English Breakfast from Harney and Sons
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Blend67 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 2/5
Jan. 1st, 2023
As with their "Green Tea with Coconut & Ginger", I got this at a last-day estate sale for a quarter (proportionate fraction of a bulk pantry buy). Not per bag, but for the entire tin! That's the best value I've had for a good tea. However, you probably can't match that. So how costly is it, for real? A peek at the...
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Apricot Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Flavored Black Tea – Region: Blend81 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Dec. 23rd, 2022
Murchie's has a large repertoire of teas; most last, some don't. This one has been around since at least the mid 2000s, when we started ordering from them, so it must have built a following. I finally decided to order it at the behest of my wife, who likes all things apricot. It doesn't disappoint.
The aroma and...
Earl Grey Filterbags from Tazo Tea
Style: Earl Grey Tea – Region: Blend61 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Dec. 11th, 2022
Another "conference tea" here...I had a couple bags there, and brought another home to steep in boiling well water. Water quality at the meeting was good, so my impressions were consistent in both places.
The best part of this tea was its dry-bag smell: potent, high-quality bergamot, but still not too much to ove...
Holiday Spice from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Flavored Rooibos – Region: Blend90 / 100 Aroma: 10/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Dec. 1st, 2022
This blend of rooibos, orange peels, hibiscus, and cloves (the visually obvious ingredients...I think there's some cinnamon and ginger in this too) wasted no time rocketing to the top of my flavored-rooibos list, and very nearly the top of all herbals for me. The website says the tea is modeled after pomander oranges,...
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Warrior's Brew from Native American Tea Company
Style: Flavored Black Tea – Region: Blend67 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 2/5
Nov. 24th, 2022
This is quite a tasty and well-conceived blend, novel yet nice in both aroma and flavor, holding its own in those departments with any herbal/black bagged combination out there. However, I wish it were stronger, more befitting its name.
The rectangular, stringless tea bags are small, about half the volume of Celest...
Earl's Gold from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Earl Grey Tea – Region: Blend92 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Nov. 18th, 2022
This is the second loose-leaf Earl Grey I've had from Murchie's, and an outstanding example of the type, especially for someone like me who likes a bold, assertive tea. It is made from Assam, Keemun and Yunnan, and you bet the Assam asserts itself boldly in all phases of taste and aroma. Upon opening the bag, the dry...
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Earl Grey Crème from Celestial Seasonings
Style: Earl Grey Cream – Region: Blend72 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Nov. 16th, 2022
Here's another in Celestial's fairly recent run of new black-tea blends. For a mass-marketed brand commonly available in retail stores, this rendition holds its own, but better quality can be had.
The dry aroma (especially when opening the sack or pouch in which the bags are packaged) may be the best part. This is...
Platinum Jubilee Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend71 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 5/5
Nov. 13th, 2022
While still good, this was the least desirable of the Murchie's "Jubilee" line I've tried so far. Blended this year (2022) in honor of the late Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee, it contains a mix of Darjeeling, Assam, Yunnan and Keemun. Given the strong history this company has with teas of those origins individual...
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Refresh Mint Filterbag from Tazo Tea
Style: Mint Tea – Region: ?????65 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Nov. 2nd, 2022
My first in-person conference this decade yielded a few new teas to try and to rate. This was one. As always with such "freebies", value is based on the online and/or local store price.
This is a tea I would call "socially awkward" if it were a human. It hides quietly in the corner when you expect a meaningful i...
English Breakfast Black Tea from Rituals
Style: English Breakfast – Region: ?????63 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Oct. 17th, 2022
Not great, but decent and tolerable: that's how I'll characterize this blend. In my relatively limited experience, many food-service black teas (including English Breakfasts) taste rather flat, hollow, sometimes excessively bitter, or often weak, as if they've either been allowed to sit out in the open for 20 years, ...
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Chai Masala from Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co
Style: Chai / Spiced Tea – Region: Blend37 / 100 Aroma: 3/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 2/5
Oct. 9th, 2022
I first tried this tea on vacation, at a breakfast cafe in Stowe, VT, that was way overpriced for what's offered. That's a description fitting pretty much everything in the area except for the fabulous Piecasso Pizza and any of the Trapp Family's Austrian desserts. That I naively paid about three bucks for a small cu...
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Green Tea Tropical from Mighty Leaf Tea
Style: Flavored Green Tea – Region: Blend68 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Sep. 21st, 2022
As customary for Mighty Leaf packaging, this blend comes in a sachet sewn on three sides with cotton threads, which then extend out to the string and the paper tag. Within the sachet, one easily can see the chopped green tea—mostly leaf pieces, but a few stems—and several assorted dried flower pieces that presumab...
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Energy Tea from Celestial Seasonings
Style: Flavored Black Tea – Region: ?????74 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Sep. 10th, 2022
Celestial Seasonings—for decades a specialist in herbal teas—seems to be marketing more black teas of late. I got this from a sampler pack alongside English Breakfast (already reviewed), Peppermint Peak (already reviewed...very tasty) and Earl Grey Creme (soon!). This one confuses me a bit for two reasons:
1. N...
Organic Orange Vanilla Creme Rooibos Tea from 365 Everyday Value
Style: Flavored Rooibos – Region: South Africa79 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Aug. 28th, 2022
Orange-vanilla isn't a rooibos flavoring I had tried yet, but it's a favorite in general, both for black tea and going back to the childhood Creamsicle days. It's also labeled as naturally flavored. Therefore, even though I ordinarily wouldn't buy a 40-pack of a new tea taste-untested, I figured a gamble on this offe...
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