smell is good but not very strong, taste is a bit stronger than others which I like, mint flavor is just about perfect! quite good

Add your own review

Comments:

Alex Zorach wrote: on September 27th, 2013

Have you ever tried adding your own mint to tea?

I grew up doing this, because we had a basically infinite supply of mints (different types, including peppermint, spearmint, and others) in our garden...I really like spearmint, like in this blend.

I also have seen others do it. There was a cafe in Newark, DE, which was owned by a middle-eastern man, which served black tea brewed strongly, with spearmint added. It's the same idea of this blend, but a little more nuanced with the loose-leaf tea and mint. I found it really invigorating.

geologyguy wrote: on September 28th, 2013

I have not tried doing that yet, although it sounds nice. So how did you design this website? I'm a big fan of "rate xxxx" websites, but sadly there aren't many around...wondering how hard/easy it is

Alex Zorach wrote: on September 28th, 2013

The site is written in PHP, and I have done all the coding from scratch, although I have two other site admins to help with various things from graphic design to basic maintenance, writing, editing, etc. And I bounce ideas off a lot of other people when I'm coding too...without all the extra support I'd probably be in trouble.

I personally find the coding easy, but I find the "knowing what to code" part tougher...i.e. making the interface look nice and be intuitive and easy to use, and to some degree, bug testing--because I don't always anticipate all the ways that people use the site, so just myself testing it out isn't sufficient to catch all the bugs.

This is the second social networking site I designed though...I was able to reuse a lot of code from Merit Exchange, which is a much bigger project. This site is much simpler by comparison, so the interactive parts of it were a little easier. On the other hand, this site has more of an external face to it, so that did make it a little trickier. I first launched the site, and then I realized that I didn't know much about SEO, so I had some learning to do on that end...nowadays I've felt like I've been more limited by my knowledge of marketing than programming. I mean marketing more than SEO, because I think I've gotten the basics of that down pretty solidly. I met with a PR consultant a few weeks back and it opened up a lot of doors for me--and in a sense I think it showed me how limiting my lack of knowledge in that area was.

Making a site is one thing, but letting people know about it is another...you can create an excellent website but people generally won't just find it on their own.

geologyguy wrote: on September 28th, 2013

Very cool...if this takes off you need to expand into other "rate xxxx", for people like me who want to try new things and keep track of their experiences! So how old is this site?

Alex Zorach wrote: on September 29th, 2013

I originally launched it in 2009, although back then it was a smaller side-project and wasn't nearly as extensive as now.

I've thought of possibly expanding into other areas, but it's unlikely for now...I think RateTea has developed away from the direction of "generic rating site" and has developed a lot of structure and features that are really specific to the tea industry. It might generalize more easily to something similar, like coffee, than to a product in general.

I'd be curious what "vacant niches" there are the landscape of rating sites. I am active on RateBeer and Yelp and use Amazon to review books and music.

geologyguy wrote: on September 30th, 2013

I am very active on rate beer...I looked for a rate cheese the other day (because there is so much variety!!), and found one that had a bit of potential but they made you type in a captcha after each rating, which wouldn't have been so bad if it worked...at all. On a side note, how does one add a tea you don't have listed on here?

Alex Zorach wrote: on October 1st, 2013

That's funny about rate cheese...I wouldn't think about that, but I can see that...I love cheese and there is a ton of variety there, and I definitely can see people getting into that sort of thing (it also has the same regional component).

For adding a tea: there's a link to add a new tea at the bottom of the page for its brand...if the brand is not listed, the link is at the bottom of the master list of brands. Teas are added immediately and you can go right ahead and rate them after adding them.

geologyguy wrote: on October 3rd, 2013

sweet...I'll be adding a couple soon, thanks!!

Login or Sign Up to comment or reply.