First off, this isn't a bad tea, but it didn't strike my as anywhere nearly the powerhouse of mint flavor or smell implied by the name and packaging design. Given that peppermint is a slight majority of the entire bag contents (see below), and spearmint also is there, this was surprising and, at first, disappointing. Yet I do like fennel in tea, and that secondary ingredient (volume-wise) matches or even slightly exceeds the combined mints in taste presentation. For that to happen, they're using either strong fennel, or more likely, weak mint. I grew to like the fennel-mint combination, which I hadn't had before, but wish the mint were more dominant.

In a nutshell, this tea did somewhat please me taste-wise after I got over that weak-mint aspect and treated it for what it really is, a roughly evenly balanced mint-herbal flavor mix. [The ginger was imperceptible.] Yet it has a disappointingly feeble aroma in all ways—dry bag, in-cup, wet bag. In my experience, top-quality mint teas both taste potent and still leave enough of the menthol oil/ester in-bag to deliver a sinus-penetrating, almost aromatherapy-quality wet-bag scent. Not this. The wet bag hardly smelled of mint, and instead reminded me of a cheap green tea with some mustiness overlaid.

Now for a couple of side notes on ingredients and packaging: kudos to Clipper for stating online not only each specific ingredient, but the precise percentage of each down to the ones integer. For this blend, that's peppermint (54%), fennel seed (20%), spearmint (18%), and ginger (presumably the balance, 8%). Now that's a win for full disclosure! There's no ambiguity at all on what you're chugging, and how much.

Each bag has a string and tag, but the string is tied instead of stapled, the bag unbleached. I only noticed this since they made a strong point of emphasis on environmental friendliness onsite and on the box. If Clipper wanted to go all-out on minimal impact regarding packaging, instead of partway there, they could eschew tags and strings, as well as use pouches without individual wrappers, all sardine-stacked into a shell of degradable wax paper, like Celestial (whose mint teas and blends all are a lot stronger) and some Trader Joes teas.

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