English Tea Shop

I’m ready to scream, why is everything in this advent calendar so samey?! Generic, astringent green tea base, with the same blend of chai-style ‘holiday’ spices as all of the others, and again I can’t taste any of them. I’m drinking this at the same time as an iced black coffee, and the coffee is genuinely more enjoyable. It certainly has more flavour.

It seems they’re just swapping one or two of the spices around without much thought and calling it a day for the majority of these teas. I’ve just counted from the ingredients breakdown on the back, and 7 of them sound extremely similar, which is not good considering they’re doubled up and there are only 13 ‘unique’ teas in the whole calendar, so that accounts for half of them! I don’t think I’ve tried them all yet, but so far there have only been one or two I’ve truly enjoyed, while the majority have been just this average blend of disappointing nothingness.

This rant is aimed more at the calendar than the tea itself, which is just the latest of these blurring together of samey teas, but it is probably the worst one yet. Maybe I’ll be in a better mood when I drink the second bag of this and able to give it a more constructive review, but for now I’ll just say that at least the box is pretty.

I’ve just remembered the garlic tea. Never mind, it’s the second worst.

Another nice one from the advent calendar! You can’t really go wrong with a green mint tea. This one has a decent amount of mint without being overpowering, and there’s a hint of creamy sweetness rounding it out from the vanilla. There’s not as much green tea in the blend, it looks like it’s about 50/50 tea and mint leaves, and I think that’s a decent proportion. The green tea is definitely present, and gives the tea body, but it’s not astringent and just buoys up the creamy mint, which is the star of the show. As with the other teas in the calendar, there are a whole bunch of completely unnecessary ingredients which add nothing at all to the flavour, and just seem like a waste of time. The cinnamon, orange peel and chicory don’t come out at all. I’ve had better ‘candy cane’ type teas in the past, but I wouldn’t complain about drinking this again.

I don’t know what I did differently, but this is much nicer than the cup I had a couple of days ago! Maybe I used cooler water this time (I have to eyeball it since my temperature-variable kettle is packed away in the garage), but the green tea is less astringent, and the fruitiness comes through a lot more. I still wouldn’t say it tastes like pomegranate, more like blackcurrant, but it’s actually quite prominent and makes for an enjoyable cup. Still no sign of the spices anywhere, I have no idea why they bothered to add so many. Bumping my rating up from 52 because I’m actually quite enjoying it this time!

Of all of the English Tea Shop advent teas I’ve tried so far, I think this has the longest list of ingredients, and most of them are completely undetectable. I’ve also noticed that a lot of them are quite similar in their ingredients, so I’m not too impressed with this one. The green tea base is weirdly more astringent than the last one was, I was hoping that a longer steep would bring out some more of the flavours but in the end I had to take the teabag out as the astringency was becoming more prominent. It’s mostly an average green tea with some nondescript fruitiness which I wouldn’t say tastes like pomegranate. I can kind of smell the cinnamon, and if I concentrate really hard I can just about convince myself that I can taste it, but the rest of the huge long list of ingredients fades into nothingness. Not my favourite!

Welp, I did not remember to take the teabag out and improve on the tea like I hoped in my last note. In fact, I steeped it in too-cool water (for the second time today) and all I got was the metallic note without any of the yummy berry. So sad. I really should read these things before I finish my cup, not after…

Well this is gone now. Not technically a sipdown since I never added it to my cupboard, but only one tea left from last year’s advent calendar and then I’m free to drink whatever I fancy!

This one is nice!

The green tea base is delicate and not very astringent, it’s barely there until the very end of the sip, which I don’t mind as I’m not really a lover of green teas. After a couple of minutes, it was a really nice berry tea, most likely from the acai, and I probably should have taken the teabag out like the instructions said. But I left it in, and it still has the juicy berry note, but it’s competing with a slightly earthy, slightly metallic note I could have done without. It’s still nice, and not at all unpleasant, I just wish I’d taken the teabag out and kept that delicious, bright juicy berry tea! The advent calendar I’m working through has a couple of each of the teas in it, so I’ll have to remember that for the next time and hopefully improve on the rating. This is my favourite from the calendar so far!

Ugh, this one again. At least it’s the last of it from the advent calendar, and I will never have to drink it again! Garlic still prominent, sadly. It’s mostly a plain rooibos in the sip, with a lightly spicy, lingering garlic aftertaste. Just, why?

Teabag left in during drinking.

This is a weird tea. At first it smells super sweet, but it contains turmeric and garlic and after a couple of minutes the garlic really comes through. Vague spiciness in the background, but really, it tastes mostly like a garlic-y rooibos and that’s just not something I’m on board with.

As I noticed with my last English Tea Shop blend, this also seems to be a renamed organic version of an existing blend from the company – this time Ginger Bread Man.

I left the tea bag in to steep while I was drinking, and noticed that the ginger became a lot more prominent as I drank. At first, the cinnamon was the most prominent note in the initial sip, followed by the apple and clove intermingling, chased by the ginger, which was faint but present. As the tea steeped, the ginger became more prominent until it was the most prominent note throughout the sip, with the cinnamon, apple and clove becoming background notes which are only noticeable at the end of the sip.

It doesn’t taste much like gingerbread, and ginger isn’t my favourite flavour to begin with, but it’s a decent cup for a winter’s night. Not bad, but not one I’d run out to buy.

Procrastinating writing an essay by writing a tasting note for the first time in two years, apparently…

Bag left in while drinking. Nice malty black tea with very little astringency, slight hint of the spices with the star anise the most noticeable, followed by the cloves and then not much of the ginger except for a little warmth at the back of the throat. Take this with a pinch of salt though, I’m drinking through an advent calendar from last year so there’s a good chance the tea has just gotten old and lost flavour! (I will admit though, with some shame, that I have much older teas than this in my cupboard which still have much more flavour).

Anyway, I’m going to attempt to get on with my essay now and not get too too distracted! If I start writing dozens of tasting notes over the next few days, somebody please stage an intervention.

Edit: The more I drink, the more I feel like there is some mint coming through, though it’s not listed in the ingredients. Looking at English Tea Shop’s ‘Spicy Anise’, which looks very similar but lists mint, I have a sneaking suspicion that this might be the same blend but renamed for the ‘organic’ version.