Tea: Jade Citrus Mint
A Flavored Green Tea from Teavana
This tea has been retired/discontinued.
| Brand: | Teavana |
| Style: | Flavored Green Tea |
| Region: | Blend |
| Caffeine: | Caffeine Free |
| Loose? | Loose |
| # Ratings: | 4 View All |
Reviewer: Tchuggin' Okie
✓ 398 teas reviewed
✓ 31 of Flavored Green Tea
✓ 139 of Flavored Tea
✓ 5 of Teavana
✓ 200 of blends
Review of Jade Citrus Mint
July 2nd, 2018
| Aroma | Flavor | Value | Total |
| 7 of 10 | 4 of 5 | 2 of 5 | 64 of 100 |
| Very Good | Good | Overpriced |
Wow, am I ever ignorant. After rating a hundred-some-odd teas, I only just discovered by accidental click that I can rate teas on RateTea that have retired! Except...it ain't really retired anymore. This one and at least few others from Teavana have come back like that mythical phoenix. A set of 15-sachet plastic jars of assorted Teavana tea blends have appeared on the tea shelf at WalMart as of July 2018, and having heard great things about the brand, I decided to give their mint/green/lemongrass blend a fair shot (despite the rather high price of almost $6 for 15 doses).
Each sachet contains large loose-leaf pieces of the readily identifiable components. The dry-bag aroma (in-jar) came across as grassy and slightly minty, no lemon. The wet-bag and in-cup aromas wafted decidedly more spearmint into the nostrils, and the flavor was very smooth and spearmint-dominant too. I had to steep this a long time (10 minutes plus) and swirl it through the cup to get it even moderately strong to my liking, but once I did, it came across better than the great majority of spearmint teas I've tried. Yes, by taste alone, this is a spearmint tea, and an enjoyable one, but not quite what the ingredients list would indicate.
The green tea and lemon? Barely detectable except to the eyeballs. Maybe the spearmint told the Chun Mee and lemongrass on the way in, "Step aside and shut up. I'm in charge here!" I can't explain the craven submissiveness of the green tea otherwise.
However, I have figured out the reason for the weakness of lemon. As in Trader Joe's loose-leaf Coconut Green Tea, the lemongrass is in big stem pieces. When one lets a used piece dry, then rubs it hard between fingers, a good deal of lemon aroma still comes out that obviously never got released in steeping. As with the TJ Coconut Green, it seems like a waste of perfectly good lemongrass to keep it so coarse, instead of chopping it finer to let more of the essential oils steep out. Teavana: chop, chop, chop...that lemongrass! Just don't slice up the spearmint any finer, please...it already makes the other ingredients cower and quiver with fear in the corner.
