Landing at a Trader Joe's store in Tucson while on a photography road trip out thataway, I bought a box of this, as a presumably acceptable substitute for some of the truly terrible, off-brand and store-brand (here's looking at you, Great Value) bagged green teas offered at motels and campgrounds. It was, but still falls well short of the best bagged green teas I've tried.

Flavor- and aroma-wise, and adjusted for volume (150% more in a TJ's bag), this product is remarkably similar to Uncle Lee's Organic Green Tea. In fact, my review description of that one, "slightly above-average, but not outstanding, bagged green tea available at a price that's hard to top", applies just as well here. I suppose it's fitting that I just ran out of my 100-pack of Uncle Lee's and can swap in what's left of this 50-ct box in its pantry spot, for a quick fix of tolerable but not great, cheap green tea.

One advantage is that the flavor is strong enough to mostly offset poor water quality at some of these places I travel. However, the strength is in both good elements (surprisingly rich vegetal and toasted-rice components) and bad (pretty heavy on bitterness and astringency for a plain green tea). It also might mask poor water quality visually too, since the liquid brews up opaque, and not clear like a better green tea. Dry-bag aroma was weak. The wet bag smelled much better; in fact, it was rich and lacked those bad elements in the taste.

[Edit: Now that I've had a couple dozen bags, I can report that four or five have split open in the cup. I hope this is just a weakness in this box/batch and not a systemic deficiency with the manufacturing.]

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