I suspected something was wrong with the quality (or lack thereof) of this tea when I opened up the tin and there was no scent. (Side note: The best by date isn't for about 2 years, so that's not the issue.) Some teas have a very, very light scent, though. So, I tried to suspend judgment and brewed a cup as the packaging specified. The water did turn color, lightly, so clearly the tea did infuse. But, there wasn't much of any taste. Sometimes, teas have a different (even stronger) taste when you leave them to cool. That wasn't hard to do, because drinking what tastes like hot water is not appealing to me. Yet, when it cooled a bit, there was still virtually no taste. As if this weren't bad enough, the tea (if you can even give it that label) made me jittery -- really, really jittery. It was as if everything were somehow sucked out of this tea, except for an insane amount of hand-shaking, spine-trembling caffeine. (An unusual reaction for me to have to any tea, let alone a black tea, which typically gives me an alert calmness.)

I'd had Darjeeling from Twinings and it did have a taste (it also didn't give me that strange jittery reaction). So, I suspected something was seriously wrong. I looked up articles and tried brewing the tea with a different recipe (i.e. amount of tea, temperature, duration, etc.). But, it still turned out basically the same.

Just to make sure I gave this tea every possible chance I could, I contacted the company. They were courteous, but they weren't any help at all.

I really tried to make this work, and I can only think of one other finicky tea that I've had in my life that I may have brewed more times and given more chances than this. But, it was all to no avail. Insofar as tea is an ideally fragrant dried leaf which produces an ideally fragrant and tasty beverage when infused in water, this fails to even qualify as tea.

If you like tea that has no scent and no taste, I have good news for you! This is actually called "hot water" and can be gotten without the need for spending $12.50 on a tin. Simply bring water to a boil in a kettle, then pour out into a mug and add honey and/or lemon to taste. Then, you can save that $12.50 for a rainy day or give it to charity. This also saves you the indecency of kicking yourself, for having spent $12.50 on tea which actually isn't tea in any meaningful sense of the word.

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