This tea somewhat flummoxed me from before I poured the first drop down my esophagus, to the last aftertaste. For starters, what is it? There's no "Premium Green Tea" available on Bigelow's main website, just something called "Green Tea (Certified Organic)". Then on RateTea, there already was an "Organic Pure Green Tea", but in much-different packaging; that one isn't on Bigelow's website either. I first got "Premium Green Tea" on an airplane, and later saw it at a hotel, both in mid/late 2018. Is "Premium" a repackaging of one or both of the other organic greens for food-service purposes? Beats me! Yet you can buy "Premium" directly on Amazon under two slightly different packaging designs. Marketing and branding can be confusing.

As for the tea itself, the dry-bag aroma was practically nonexistent (an experience I'm finding common to bagged green teas). A deep sniff, however, yielded a pleasant, somewhat rice-like and grassy aroma that translated well to the wet-bag and in-cup aromas, which were a notch stronger, and the taste itself, which was considerably stronger still. All aromas and the direct flavor were consistent and straightforward, just variable in intensity. I found the taste to be rather pleasant, and preferable to most other bagged greens from planes and hotels. The aftertaste, however, rather quickly became sticky, surprisingly bitter and musty, remarkably different from the flavor and aromas, and took many minutes to go away. Taking another sip or using mouthwash was the only quick fix.

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Comments:

Alex Zorach wrote: on June 3rd, 2020

Branding and product identification is pretty confusing across the board on mainstream tea brands, and this is a great example of how they can be confusing.

I have encountered literally hundreds of examples of stuff like this over the years, and in many cases I haven't been able to resolve it. It simply isn't worth the time or effort to reach out to tea companies to resolve it, especially when some of them don't get back to me, and now when this site is barely paying me a pittance after the collapse of ad revenue that happened a few years back.

Why is the branding this confusing? I don't fully understand.

It is common for companies to make different lines of product to sell in different settings, which could be different markets (retail vs. food service, different countries or regional markets, or high-end vs. low-end stores, "regular" stores vs health food stores, etc.) and they often end up with a staggering array of different products, some of which are just repackaged and rebranded versions of others, but some of which are unique.

I really love when companies make clear what is what. But unfortunately, this is not the norm.

I think there may be a degree to which companies actively avoid sharing this information because some degree of it constitutes "trade secrets". Sometimes the same product might be sold in different settings for different prices, and they might want to hide that even from the customer or client, so they don't purchase the same product cheaper.

But yeah, I notice weird and confusing inconsistencies like this all the time, and most of the time even if I put effort into it I can never figure out a good answer.

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