I was curious to try this one; I tend to like to drink relaxing herbal teas, and I like the various active ingredients, which include passionflower, chamomile, lavender, catnip, and rosemary, as well as some of the inactive (flavoring) ingredients.

I thought this was pleasant but I didn't notice any relaxing effects other than the usual relaxation I achieve by drinking a cup of any type of tea or herbal tea.

The cup smells minty, and the flavor is slightly sweet, presumably from some combination of licorice and stevia. The minty quality smells more like peppermint than spearmint, but both are evident.

The flavor and aroma is pleasant but somewhat generic or non-descript. I think of this as a tasty, pleasant, if unremarkable herbal blend. Flavor-wise, if I were blending this on my own, I'd omit the licorice and stevia, go with straight spearmint (no peppermint), and probably add lemon balm. I also might add thyme. The quantities of passionflower and chamomile included are too little to contribute noticeably to the flavor, which is a shame I think because I love the herbaceous pungency of passionflower, and the fruitiness of chamomile. These were lost behind the foreground of mints and sweet licorice and stevia.

I liked how I felt after drinking this, but I didn't notice much of a relaxing effect. I think the quantities of the herbs included are too low to have much of an effect. I've drunk pure passionflower tea, and it can be quite potent, but the 180mg included in this tea bag seems a negligible amount...I'd spoon out 2 grams worth to brew a cup if I wanted to notice a relaxing effect.

The same goes for the other herbs...180mg of chamomile seems like nothing to me, a typical teabag of pure chamomile would contain 1.4 grams, or more for the more generous tea bags.

I'm skeptical that this blend is strong enough to have any noticeable medicinal effects.

If I want a relaxing herbal tea, I usually will brew up tulsi (holy basil) tea, and I'll use a quantity closer to 2-3 grams of leaf, about 1-2 typical tea bags.

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Comments:

SarsyPie wrote: on May 9th, 2014

Hey! 1000 reviews! Awesome :)

Alex Zorach wrote: on May 13th, 2014

Thank you! It's funny, this particular tea wasn't very dramatic, just a tea bag I tried at a friend's house. But I'm excited to get to 1000.

I'm really curious how long it is going to be before someone overtakes me on this site. I look at the RateBeer leaderboard and I see over 100 users who have rated over 5000 beers, and 35 who have rated over 10,000 beers, which is pretty intense. I would love to see RateTea looking like that...

Even if the site is not quite there yet, it's been exciting to see the shift towards other reviewers. When I started RateTea, I was writing 80% or so of the reviews...and now my reviews are less than a third, and I suspect that will continue to drop.

SarsyPie wrote: on May 14th, 2014

I don't use RateBeer, but I do use Untappd, and I just reached 1000 beer ratings on that site/app. I think it will be awhile until I catch up with you on tea ratings, but you never know. They get mad when I drink beer at work, so I guess I am more likely to quickly rack up the tea ratings since I can drink that pretty much all day, as long as I go with lower caffeine varieties.

I'll be happy when I get to 100 reviews. I guess I should get moving on that. :)

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