Grace

This tea is excellent.

I’ve gotten fanatical about jasmine teas (not reflected in reviews because lately I’ve been reviewing teas on paper scraps, but they will be on Steepster later), and what I’ve noticed is that some lack the freshness of taste that really makes a good jasmine tea delicious, which is a real shame. This tea does not. It’s fresh, heady, and makes a thoroughly good iced tea. It’s almost a bit perfume-y, but that gives the impression that it’s fake tasting or excessively strong, which is isn’t. I don’t know how they’ve achieved this strength of jasmine flavour without making it taste perfume-y in the negative sense. It’s balanced very well. It’s the best jasmine I’ve had, and I’m now so glad that I have a big pack of it in this hot weather.

I have something like eight or ten more jasmine teas on the way to me from Upton Tea Imports, and another bag that I got from a critically praised tea shop in Sydney, so my mind might change, but at the moment, this is the best to me. It’s just so damned good, and when mixed with a little freshly squeezed orange juice makes an iced tea to die for.

I drank like a litre of this out of a mixing bowl from the freezer today, after having drank a giant three-cup mug of it earlier. I’m not even ashamed of those facts.

I was reluctant to buy this and the other (Melbourne Breakfast) T2 tea that I got, because T2 doesn’t offer sample sizes, and I didn’t think buying full-sized boxes of chain store tea would work out well, but in this case, my reservations have been really unfounded.

When I’ve been buying/ordering tea lately and there’s been so many jasmines, a tiny part of me has thought, “Do you really need to try more jasmines? Can’t you have too much jasmine?” This tea has simplified the answer: NO!

Oh, I don’t know what to say. I got this tea because a while back, when I first heard of lapsang souchong, I thought it seemed like an interesting idea. Today, I saw the mini 10 packs of this for sale at the supermarket, so I thought I’d give it a try. I had it with sweetener and soy milk.

The aftertaste of this, especially at the end of the cup, reminded me of when I was young and stupid and used to smoke sometimes. That’s not a good thing to be reminded of, because as a firm non-smoker these days, an ashy taste in the mouth is pretty repellant. Otherwise, this tea smelled a bit like bacon before brewing, which was also not promising to me. But I do love the smell of burning wood, and mixed with the creaminess of the soy milk, it was kind of cool. I think this tea could be better mixed with something vanilla-y, like a black tea with vanilla, or some vanilla bean. The smoke element is very strong here. Maybe it wasn’t a good choice as a first lapsang souchong, but I got it mainly because I didn’t want to spend heaps of money on a fancier one when the smoke could be a deal breaker from the get-go.

I’m going to drink this at least one more time, for a better review and to really get my thoughts about the combination of tea and smoke together, but it’s really weird. If you don’t eat meat, it might make a good thing for cooking, because it’s strongly flavoured, and the smokiness is reminiscent of smoked meats and wood smoke, which is always good in savoury stuff.

Pretty good, and perhaps a bit better in terms of flavour complexity than the bagged vanilla rooibos varieties I’ve gotten in Germany (which have been pretty decent). There’s a nice balance of a vanilla flavour and that woody element of rooibos. I don’t want to be pointing this out in all of my rooibos reviews, but it still can’t compare to a good vanilla black tea.

I got this because I read somewhere that green rooibos “tastes a bit like green tea.” I thought this would possibly be like a green vanilla tea, which would be delicious. It was not at all like that! The vanille tastes kind of weak and the tea doesn’t taste fresh or flavourful. Nothing here really tastes of quality and something in the aftertaste reminds me of that gross taste you get in your mouth if you accidentally eat an ant. Before you get that taste, there’s a nice, woody, kind of vanilla-y taste. If that were the whole tea, this would be delicious. That second taste is inescapable though, and it’s not good at all. This product just kind of tastes cheap and of low quality. I don’t recommend this product or anything from this brand, which I unfortunately bought five products from online.

No notes yet.

This is kind of crap. It’s a bit like a vanilla rooibos gone wrong, with some kind of wood and off fruit notes in it.. I had it with milk and sweetener, and I kept taking sips, thinking that it might be one of those times when you need to keep drinking it to suss the flavour out, but no. Also, I used two tablespoons of the tea for one large cup, and it was still a bit weak (which was perhaps good, since the flavour wasn’t nice.) If you can think of nothing better than to drink something very weakly vanilla, with a lot of wood, and a fruity tang, this is for you. I’d have to question your taste in that case, though. Overall, I think this brand is of pretty poor quality.

The smell of this when brewed is like lemon washing up liquid, which it tastes like, with a spicy ginger element

Not bad for a tea that combines lemongrass with mint. I expected it wouldn’t be very good, because it seems so easy for lemongrass teas to go wrong, and mint teas often taste pretty bad. The use of spearmint keeps it fresh, and the lemony flavours keep it from tasting too leafy. Light, fresh, upbeat.

This tastes slightly better than the average peppermint tea, but it basically tastes like every other peppermint tea—not that good. It also has a gross soapy element at the end of the mouthful. No wonder I’ve drnk barely any of this box of tea.

Fora supermarket quality herbal tea, this is unexpectedly delicious! Maybe I just like it so much because when I was growing up, I drank a lot of blackcurrant and apple juice, and Ribena. I don’t know, but it tastes really good to me. It’s a lot like what you’d probably expect less sweet, hot apple and blackcurrant juice to taste like. That maybe doesn’t sound so good, but this is yummy.

Hmm, I don’t think very much of this. The tea has a weird aftertaste and the apple flavour is just too full-on or something. It’s really acidic and has this subtle element in the flavour that tastes somehow vaguely ashy to me. I wouldn’t get it again.

This isn’t very impressive a tea. I could barely taste any vanilla, and the apple flavour was fairly weak. I thought these problems might have had to do with the fact that I used too much water, but I added another tea bag, and it hardly made any difference, except for increasing the acidity somewhat. The tea has a pretty nice aftertaste that reflects more of a dessert-y vanilla-apple mixture than the weak, acidic apple flavour you actually taste when drinking the tea, and the flavour’s just not adequate when you’re actually drinking it. It needs more vanilla and a bit less acidity. In short, the whole taste should be the taste of the aftertaste. How could more vanilla in anything ever be a mistake, anyway?

Not that much going on flavour-wise, but perhaps a little bit more dimensional than Teekanne’s Spanish Orange, especially at the end of the mouthful. It’s very sour (even with sweetener), and as you might anticipate if you’ve had oranges and blood oranges before, the flavour is less obviously orange-y.

As with a lot of other herbal teas, the flavour of this is kind of one dimensional. It has a nice acidic tang at the end of the mouthful, and in general kind of just tastes like orange cordial.

I thought this would be unappealing because a lot of ayurvedic products I’ve had in the past have tasted yucky. It wasn’t bad, though, especially for a tea with fennel. It needed sweetener. The flavour is predominantly fennel, with a bit of orange, and maybe a tiny quantity of cardamom.

The company calls this a “bold jasmine handiwork.” I don’t think “bold” fits. The jasmine is noticeable, but the green tea flavour is strong and dominates it. I really love jasmine, and want jasmine teas to be pretty strongly floral. This tea is very green, and although the jasmine is clearly present, it’s not a satisfactorily significant element. The last jasmine I drank before trying this was Kusmi’s, and I think that was way better.

There’s nothing unpleasant about this tea, and it smells and tastes pleasant, but for those looking for an assertive jasmine taste, this tea isn’t so good. I’d recommend it for something like a worn out Sunday afternoon cup of tea, when I’d wanted more of a hot, strongly blossom-y morning cup.

I thought this was pretty good. There’s one slight problem with it—a problem shared by many earl greys I’ve tried with the exception of Lipton’s Imperial Earl Grey and some British one I haven’t logged yet—something about the floral element of it tastes too lavender-y to me. In the German version I’ve got in the pantry, I’ve found it to be a much bigger problem than it was in the case of this tea. The bergamot in this case blended right in with the tea base, and there was no bitterness. Lipton’s Imperial Earl Grey doesn’t taste like lavender or ever have that peppery element I’ve experienced in some bergamot-containing teas, and I still think it is my favourite earl grey, but I’d probably put this one second. It’s kind of weak, though. It’s a bit like the second steeping of the Lipton. Longer steeping could change that, but I didn’t want to get bitterness, so I heeded the recommended few minutes. Good with sweetener and no milk.

Not as good as my holy grail chai, but pretty good! Dominant ginger and cinnamon notes, and a smell of gingerbread. Great with soy milk and sweetener. Sad I only got a single pack og this now, because it’s really quite enjoyable. The spices aren’t particular spicy or dominating, so if that’s what you’d like, I’d suggest you look elsewhere, but if you want a smooth chai, I’d recommend this. It might be better steeped with more than the recommended amount of tea for a stronger flavour, but it’s really good, and unlike the Celestial Seasonings chai, it doesn’t have that heavy vanilla that makes it seem inauthentic.

Overall, this is a good quality, easy-to-drink chai for people who are keen on ginger and cinnamon as the key players of the flavour, and who are perhaps not looking for a dessert-y experience heavy on vanilla.

This is the first tea I’ve tried from this brand. I was optimistic, because the brand’s tea selection is comprehensive and the staff were lovely. I’m not very impressed with this one, though. For some reason, the smell reminds me a little bit of rubber gloves, and the taste just hasn’t got it. Lemon myrtle can be great, but I think mixing it with vanilla is a bad idea (although I actually didn’t taste any distinct vanilla not in this tea at all, and it was more like a weak tea base with some myrtle chucked in.) Lemon myrtle really needs more of the grassy, green flavour to set it off, and white tea doesn’t have enough of that leafy flavour to work effectively with it. It just tastes kind of wrong here. Sweetening didn’t improve the flavour, either. The tea base seemed kind of forgettable, and the precise lemon flavour that came from the combination of the lemon myrtle and the flavouring just made me think back to Kusmi Detox, which is deplorable. I’d drink this tea if there was nothing else, and it’s not so bad as to be a disgrace to tea, but I really didn’t enjoy it, and because I let it oversteep a bit and it got ridiculously bitter, I just gave up and threw it out. This tea’s flavour was ultimately disappointing to me, but with more attentive steeping (the package said only two minutes), others might find it tasty. It did leave a nice flavour in my mouth that reminded me a little of jasmine tea.

I think this is the last straw in terms of my ignoring brewing instructions. I don’t think it’s what ruined the flavour, because not only did I try some of the tea before it had been steeped too long, it smelled weird from the beginning. Even so, I probably would have put up with the mediocre flavour were it not for the extreme bitterness this tea took on. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a tea that’s become so bitter, and I don’t think I ever want to do so again.

Not bad, but I think the combination of chocolate and chai spices isn’t really that good. It’s not good without milk and sweetener, but with them, it’s still not great. I’m not the biggest chocolate fan, which is probably a good idea to say, but actually, I didn’t find this tea strongly chocolatey. It was mostly spices and black tea.

Hmmm nah. I was not really impressed with this, but drank it anyway for testing’s sake and for the caffeine. Without milk, this smells and tastes gross. The combination of the strong orange with the roasted mate and the chocolate just tasted wrong completely. With soy milk and sweetener, I found it okay. I was really expecting the Jaffa taste to come with the dry, Jaffa-like smell, but it has a thick, strong, liqueur-like tastes that was really unappealing to me. I’ve had worse, but this is one tea I’m pretty glad I got as a single sachet sample.

I like it! It has something almost a touch floral and something very vaguely fruity, and a good tea flavour. It tastes good without sweetener, it tastes good with sweetener, it tastes good with soy milk and sweetener. I’m not that much of a fan of unflavoured black teas, and I’ve found the flavour can sometimes be a letdown. It wasn’t so with this tea. It’s not a very complex flavour or anything, but it satisfies.

I’ve wanted to try a green earl grey for a while, and when I was ordering stuff on Amazon last week, I noticed this one was readily available. I tried it for the first time today, and I’m not very impressed. This could be to do with the fact that I really oversteeped it, but it just doesn’t seem to work work flavour-wise. The bergamot flavour is very strong and a little biting, and with the green base, it veers into that off-putting herbal-tasting category. This is bizarre, because with the fresh, grassy tastes of green tea, it’s surprising that citrus doesn’t work in this case (and actually, in other cases with lemon green tea varieties.) I don’t know if it’s just because this is a supermarket quality brand that skimps on ingredients, but I’ve had a number of good teas in this price range over the years, so I don’t think it is. It’s not bad or fake tasting, but the strong bergamot just doesn’t go. My immediate thought when I took the first sip was, “The taste of this reminds me of the smell of citrus detergent.” It really doesn’t taste as bad as that would imply, though.

This was quite bitter for me, but I’ll chalk it up to my irresponsible steeping. Still, the flavour wasn’t very good. It’s not in the “instantly in the trash” category, but it’s definitely not in the “MORE!” category, either. I guess you could apply the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” logic to earl grey with black tea, but I thought this would be good to mix things up. I’d [possibly try another earl grey green in future, and will just assume this is Twinings’ mixing, but who knows! It’s unimpressive and has that annoying lavender element I sometimes taste in earl greys, to boot. Maybe it really is just that black tea can’t be replaced with green when it comes to this flavour combination…

In a word? No. This tea is just godawful in my books. The first time I drank it, I finished the cup, because I’d just had my wisdom teeth out and couldn’t eat anything, so I was taking anything I could get. At the time, I distinctly remember thinking, “This is really excessive on the almond flavour.” When I first drank it those weeks ago though, I didn’t have any soy milk, and I think it’s a flavour that wants milkiness. I tried it again this morning with it. Took some sips, had some pauses to think about what I was tasting, and decided the tea is going to have to be passed on to someone else. The marzipan flavour is like almond extract on steroids. It’s so in-you-face. With a more subtle or nutty almond taste, this could have been a good tea (especially because I think rooibos’ flavour seems conducive to nut mixtures), but as it is, it’s way too much. It’s all marzipan and no rooibos and it’s kind of sickly.

I felt like this was one tea that really made me take to heart those ideas about tea being bastardised into a dessert-y item that waters down tea traditions. Normally, I don’t think much about that idea, but nothing about this felt very tea-like. I think I’m going to have to stop these flirtations with rooibos, as well. Even slightly better rooibos teas just can’t measure up to the richness and flavour complexity of black tea.