As I've noted with other peppermint-tea reviews, this is one of my very favorite herbs, one that's generally consistent and hard to mess up (though it can happen!). As such, I'll generally give peppermint teas high marks unless they are stale, overly stem-laden, exorbitantly costly, somehow wrongly advertised, or the package contains evidence of urine or droppings from vermin. Peppermint is such a common and simple herb that there's no excuse for any of those problems! Except for one minor aspect, this doesn't have any of them.

I got this at a motel. Still, I might buy some directly in the future. WalMart surprised me with a fairly high-quality batch of peppermint leaves, very finely chopped, which for peppermint releases the essential oils and flavor fast. Granted, given the very low price, and my experience with one other Great Value (black tea), their provider probably mechanically chops *all* their tea types very minutely. In the case of peppermint, however, it works because it's a single-ingredient herb highly dependent on that essential oil, which one can see atop the beverage with careful inspection. The dry-bag and in-cup aromas were a little weaker than other peppermint teas I've chugged, but the wet bag still smelled potent after a few minutes of steeping (despite the fine leaf chopping).

I did see more stem pieces than normal, but not enough to take away from the flavor at all, or to give the impression that stems were being inserted deliberately as filler. Instead it looked to be just a mildly lazy or careless artifact of the mechanical processing. Still, this peppermint (as with Carrington's, also sold at WalMart) is so inexpensive that I readily recommend it for drinking on its own or adding a bag to flavor other teas.

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