Reviews of Pure Tea (Camellia sinensis)
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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...
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...
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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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...
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...
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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Organic Nilgiri Black Tea from Trader Joe's
Style: Black Tea – Region: Nilgiri, India65 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Oct. 26th, 2023
This was a strange black tea, in that the in-cup and dry-bag aroma differed more from the flavor than the great majority of black teas I've had. As it turns out, that's a good thing, because the aroma wasn't bad—just weak and weird. The smells were reminiscent of something I don't often associate with tea: mild ch...
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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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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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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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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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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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CBC Radio Blend Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Green and Black Tea Blend – Region: Blend80 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
May. 8th, 2022
This tea was blended originally in 1996 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, though I don't think CBC markets it directly. Murchie's website touts, "choice Ceylon and China black teas, Jasmine and other green teas with a touch of citrus".
Another in a remarkably large select...
Irish Breakfast (Loose) from Twinings
Style: Irish Breakfast – Region: Blend59 / 100 Aroma: 4/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Apr. 27th, 2022
The version I'm rating is from the "American" tin (packed in Greensboro, NC, but presumably shipped over in bulk to parse out for that purpose). It doesn't look appreciably different from the photo I uploaded off Twinings' website.
Dry aroma was surprisingly weak for an Irish Breakfast blend, but pleasant to the e...
Balmoral Blend Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend84 / 100 Aroma: 10/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Apr. 7th, 2022
This Ceylon/Assam blend is yet another in a long line of Murchie's teas paying tribute to British royalty in some way. According to the website: "Murchie's Balmoral Blend Tea was originally blended for York House School—a private school for girls which has been an institution in Vancouver for over 75 years. This b...
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No. 22 Blend Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Green and Black Tea Blend – Region: Blend90 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Mar. 23rd, 2022
Murchie's promotes this as a more robustly flavored version of their No. 10 Blend, which I reviewed very favorably in 2019, and I agree. So I'll give it a few more points. The component teas are:
GREEN: Jasmine and gunpowder
BLACK: Keemun and Ceylon, with some bergamot.
No. 22 Blend is yet another in a growing...
Decaf from Barry's Tea
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend65 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 17th, 2022
My samples of Barry's Decaf came from a motel where the "regular" tea was Lipton. As such, I haven't tried the normal, caffeinated breed of this tea yet for comparison's sake. Both there and at home, I tried it before bedtime, as the website advocated (but without knowing of said suggestion yet).
Dry-bag aroma wa...
Pure Green Tea (100% Green tea) from Salada
Style: Green Tea – Region: ?????64 / 100 Aroma: 4/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 12th, 2022
As with many inexpensive, bagged green teas, this didn't offer much dry-bag or in-cup aroma, but what there was had a pleasantly grassy to vegetal characteristic that carried over somewhat to the taste, which was quite mild with hints of celery. In that sense, if Salada removed the last "a" from their name, it wouldn'...
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Decaffeinated Black Tea from Great Value
Style: Black Tea – Region: ?????18 / 100 Aroma: 2/10 Flavor: 2/5 Value: 1/5
Jan. 1st, 2022
Brought home from a low-grade motel somewhere in southwestern New Mexico, this tea wasn't high on my priority list to try. Cheap motels are that way for a reason—well, several reasons—one being those that do bother to offer tea often buy cheap tea in bulk from Wal-Mart. The nearest Wal-Mart to this place was at l...
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Editors' Blend Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend91 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Nov. 3rd, 2021
Murchie's carries so many different tea blends that it takes a long time—years, at a normal tea-drinking pace—to get around to trying most of them. I wish this one had landed on my porch sooner! This may be the richest, smoothest, fullest-bodied all-black tea blend of theirs, or anybody's for that matter, that I'...
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Anniversary Blend Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Green and Black Tea Blend – Region: Blend79 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Sep. 12th, 2021
Murchie's developed this blend to commemorate their 125th anniversary (1894–2019), and I hope it sticks around.
A blind taste test might elicit a reaction like this: "Really nice black tea blend, but I can't quite place this interesting flavor it has under that." The black tea solidly dominates the green in dry-b...
Organic Green Tea from Trader Joe's
Style: Green Tea – Region: Nilgiri, India61 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 4/5
Sep. 2nd, 2021
Landing at a Trader Joe's store in Tucson while on a photography road trip out thataway, I bought a box of this, as a presumably acceptable substitute for some of the truly terrible, off-brand and store-brand (here's looking at you, Great Value) bagged green teas offered at motels and campgrounds. It was, but still fa...
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Diamond Jubilee Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend87 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Aug. 27th, 2021
Another Murchie's mix marches out of the box and firmly into fond appreciation, this one in a traditional but growing group that honors assorted British royalty. The dry-bag aroma is mild but pleasant, offering an honest hint at the smooth and bold flavor to come. This blend tastes, has in-cup aroma and smells in the...
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