Grace

What’s that? Tea in a bag, by a supermarket brand, not just bought in a shop on a whim but sought online? I regret nothing! I first had Lipton Imperial Earl Grey (well, that’s what I’m assuming it is, because I bought mine online from France, trying to replicate the Lipton tea I drank when I was in Paris, and what I bought tastes just like it [and has the exact same ingredients as the tea Lipton elsewhere calls Imperial Earl Grey]). Clearly, this probably isn’t the best quality earl grey that can be gotten, but I like it. Unlike other bergamot teas, it doesn’t get that annoying peppery aspect, yet has a lot of floral flavour. The downside is that it can get a little bitter and at times have something like a bit of a very slight baking soda kind of flavour. But overall, I like this tea. I feel like it’s got a pretty great flavour for bagged tea, and it’s very drinkable without seeming like it’s playing it excessively safe with its flavour. It’s good with a bit of sweetener and while best hot, can also be drank cold.

I don’t know if the cornflower and jasmine petals are present in big enough quantities to make any difference to the flavour (they’re .5%), but the tea does taste floral in a more complex way than some other earl grey teas I’ve sampled over time. As I see it, one of the main benefits of this variety of earl grey is that the bergamot flavour doesn’t taste cheap and out of place. The tea tastes complex enough for its dominance to be a good thing, and the floral aspect blends in almost seamlessly. At the moment, this is my go-to earl grey, but I’ll be open to other options in future (maybe not earl grey rooibos so much though, since the last one I had just couldn’t stack up to the rich flavour of black-based versions [on that note, I feel like I’ve lost a lot of faith in herbal teas over the past few months as I’ve drank more of the caffeinated ones]. Anyway, good stuff!

This was quite good! If you’re from Australia, you’ll know the taste of this as a smell you often smell in tree-lined walkways. When it brewed my immediate thought was, “Mmmm! That smells like Australia!” I liked that thought, because I’ve been out of Australia for nine months now, and I guess it’s the little things that count. If you’ve never smelled or tasted lemon myrtle, tsk tsk! I’d compare it to a cross between lemongrass and lemon zest. It’s good! This tea just works, and really well. It has a fresh, bold taste, and doesn’t have that fake flavoured downfall that many other “green + something” teas seem to have.

The lemon myrtle is not only clearly present, but strong and assertive to an extent I wouldn’t necessarily have expected when it’s only 20% of the content. Yet the green tea’s flavour is still there, especially at the end of the mouthful. It has an aftertaste that’s like a smoother version of green tea mixed with lemon zest, and leaves your mouth very clean tasting. I think this is some of the best quality green tea I’ve found in bags. The difference between this and the mass market fanning ones I used to regularly drink is pretty clear, and the mingling of higher quality green tea and the lemon myrtle in this tea is so delicious to me.

There’s not that much to say about this tea—but not because it’s forgettable or disappointing. It’s because it’s simple and effective. There’s only two elements here, but because of their obvious good quality, the tea’s flavour is great. Unfortunately, I got just one full leaf tea bag of this as a sample with a tea order, so I have no more, but I think I am going to check it out online and maybe get some for my parents, too. I’d recommend this tea to you (if you can find it) if you like green teas with something different. It’s not a groundbreaking concept for a green tea combination, but who cares? It tastes damn good!

The bite of the myrtle does become more of a thing if you steep this tea longer, but it doesn’t become bad-tasting or even problematically bitter. I had this without any additives, and I think that was the best way to go. However, it could also be good iced with some sweetener, mint, and citrus juices.

Unsweetened and without soy milk, this tea tasted bizarre and quite unpleasant. The best way I can describe it is to say that it tasted like what it would be like to drink paper. Really. With sweetener and no soy milk, it was pretty much the same story. I was going to write this off as a complete failure, but thought I’d give it a go with a bit of soy milk (I’d guess about ¼ of the drink was made of up soy milk and ¾ from water.) It changed the tea a lot! It then had a taste (and I know this sounds like not the best thing, but bear with me) that was creamy, woody, milky, and sweet. There’s something just a bit unpleasant in the end of the mouthful, but otherwise it’s pretty comforting, soft, and smooth. If the idea of drinking something that tastes like wood sounds off-putting to you, just think (in this case, at least): the smells of vanilla and wood together are so good. This is that smell in drink form. It makes sense.

After this experience, I would strongly recommend never drinking lapacho tea without milk and sweetener. It’s really gross, to be honest. The milk is essential here. Otherwise, you’re drinking bitter, paper tasting, wood water. Does that sound appetising? What about a milky, light, sweet combination of woodsy tastes with a very subtle hint of cherry and a delicate taste of vanilla? I didn’t know what to expect with this tea, and the smell beforehand told me nothing. If it were nothing else, this would be a unique take on vanilla tea for sure. But it’s also an airy, comforting tea that for some reason reminds me a little bit of drinking warm milk before bed when I was younger.

Update: I drank this again today…it tasted like drinking dirt. I don’t know if the tea went off or something, but I was not at all impressed with what I tasted. There’s “earthy” tastes, and I think they can definitely be appealing, and then there’s things that just taste like licking the ground.Id have to put this in the latter category.

This tea has a number of very negative reviews on here, which certainly didn’t make a case for my trying it. What did urge me to do so was that it has almost the exact same spice mix as my holy grail chai—something I’ve been unable to get in other chais, maybe because they rarely have star anise and nutmeg, which I find really rounds out the flavour. The only difference between the ingredients is that this has vanilla, pepper, chicory, and black tea. Other than that, in its ingredients and in the thrust of the flavour, it’s somewhat reminiscent of my favourite chai, and more so than any other chai has been so far. Of course, the quality of the other chai is much higher, because it uses whole spices that are boiled for a long time and this uses a tea bag (and as anyone who uses spices knows, when spices are ground or cut into little bits, they lose their flavour and potency more quickly than whole spices do.) Wanting a spicy cup of deliciousness, faced with the lack of availability of my favourite chai, and unwell to boot, this chai was what I needed. Yes, this tea’s not fancy, but it does the spice mix pretty well and it’s a quick, easy treat.

I had this as a latte with sweetener, the way I always drink chai, so I can’t comment on the bitterness other people have had (I really can’t understand the idea of drinking chai unsweetened, anyway). This tea smells good, tastes good, and in stark contrast to my favourite chai, is quick to prepare. It’ll never be my favourite chai, but unlike a number of others I’ve tried, it’s worth drinking again.

I’m unclear on whether the reason people don’t like this may be because the spices are different to that in a lot of chais and that doesn’t appeal to them. It’s hard to tell, because a lot of them just seem to say, “It’s not good!” I’d say for me, the main disadvantages to this are the vanilla (not only was it a bit strong for my liking, I still kind of feel like vanilla is a bit inappropriate in chai [maybe that’s just because it’s easily overdone, though]) and the fact that the spices weren’t assertive enough with their spiciness. The combination of the spices not being spicy enough and the vanilla being a bit strong meant that, although the spice flavour itself tasted authentic, this execution of chai didn’t seem very much so. I missed that sense of heat that I got with my favourite chai, something that I think really adds to that “chai comfort effect”, and I felt like the strength of the vanilla in this pushed it into dessert territory in a negative way. Also, the black tea flavour doesn’t make its presence felt that much, but since I’m really in the chai for the spices anyway, that didn’t matter to me.

I guess if you’re looking for a robust black tea with heavy chai spiciness, this isn’t going to be for you. But if you’re looking for that, do you think you’re going to get it in a tea bag, and one with a dessert-y element like vanilla at that? If you read the box and thought that the black tea would be “rich and hearty”, the spices “lively”, and the vanilla present as just “a touch”, then I could maybe understand disappointment with the product.

After the fail that was Linea Natura’s Orange Sencha, this has pleasantly surprised me. It’s not a black earl grey, so I feel like it would be lazy of me to criticise it by saying “It’s just not a black!” But that’s the thing—it’s a good approximation of a black earl grey, but it’s really its own thing. I’m trying to find a way to describe it, but basically, it’s a combination of the taste of rooibos and the citrusy taste of earl grey, and that’s kind of all there is to it (I’m not saying that in a negative way.)

The flavour of this tea is actually better than I thought it’d be, but a notable downside to it is that it just isn’t delivering that assertive, deep flavour that black tea can. The upside is that it’s 2am and I know it’s not going to ruin my chance of being able to sleep at some point. The tea actually tastes a tiny bit lemony, particularly in the aftertaste, which makes me think of iced tea (and makes me think this could really make a good one, maybe benefitting from the added lightness of rooibos as opposed to black tea.) Alternatively, it may seem that way to me because the other earl grey I have isn’t quite a straight-up one, containing flowers as well as the bergamot flavouring, so when I think I know the taste of earl grey, my ideas about it might be a little different to other peoples’. Also, the lemony kind of taste could also just be the way the bergamot combines with rooibos. Maybe the lighter flavour of rooibos showcases the flavour of the bergamot in a different way. In any case (taste-wise), I’d describe it as about 70% rooibos, 20% bergamot, 10% lemon. I haven’t really thought about this until now, since the last time I drank rooibos I didn’t have Steepster yet, but it’s a little bit difficult to describe the taste of rooibos. To me, it’s a bit like the second steeping of a black tea, or a watered down black tea, but the aroma and taste has something different that’s hard to really put my finger on.

Also, I think this tea would go really nicely with something peachy, like peach juice or something.

Anyway, this is good tea. It’s certainly not as good as my black earl grey, but it’s good all the same.

I feel pretty let down by this tea, and that concerns me, because I got a delivery today of this and four other bags of this brand’s tea. I had been looking forward to it and there’s a whole lot of tea here. This tea probaby would have been a decent quality plain sencha, but instead of setting it apart, the orange flavouring seems to have ruined it. It imparts an orange sherbet candy kind of flavour that has a strong soapy element and it just really doesn’t work. I added sweetener and soy milk because when I first tasted it I was like, “???” and it needed something to change the taste, which was basically gross. This made it drinkable (not enjoyable, but drinkable), though it’s a big disappointment for me overall. Like with other teas that disappoint me, this one could probably be at least in part redeemed by adding some fresh flavourings like orange juice or zest, but the flavouring added to it is quite prominent and it may well keep the tea being a letdown.

I wouldn’t have guessed that being too strongly flavoured would be a problem with organic, fair trade tea. I associate those things with a higher level of quality (perhaps more justifiable with organic than with fair trade, but anyway) and I thought that if anything, the flavour would be a natural, possibly too subdued, zest-tasting orange. It’s not at all. It’s harsh, soapy, chalky. In short, the orange tastes pretty fake. It says the flavour is from natural orange oil, so the problem might be that it’s gone rancid over time or something like that. It was pretty cheap tea (about 5 euros for 100g, though maybe I’m not the best judge of good value, since I think this is the first time I’ve bought loose leaf tea), but as usual, money isn’t the issue—it’s that feeling of being letdown by tea that isn’t what you wanted.

This tea could perhaps be good in cooking, if making something in which a Pez kind of flavour is no problem or is desired. Generally though, if someone asked me “Hey, do you wanna try this tea? It tastes like orange candy!” the answer would probably be “No. No, I don’t.” I don’t know, maybe it’s just the fact that this orange flavour is not only candylike but is also soapy (which probably isn’t a necessary characteristic of a candy-flavoured tea [as you may have realised by now, I’m no expert on the subject.]) Ultimately, this tea is neither what I expected it to be, nor something different that has left me pleasantly surprised.

After the somewhat yucky latte, I tried the leaves re-steeped in a cup of boiling water with the zest of a whole orange. I microwaved it until it was bubbling to really get all the flavours together. I strained it and added sweetener and a bit of cinnamon. It was okay, but by that point it really just tasted like one of those drinks from orange concentrate. Yes, this drink’s healthier than those are, but that’s hardly the point! With a bit less zest and from the second steeping onward (when some of the dreaded flavour may have gone out of the leaves), this could be a passable drink. I don’t think any modifications could make it any more than that. Overall, this is essentially a tea for someone who wants to put in a log of work to get an average drink—i.e. no one.

I don’t have that much experience with sencha, so the bad taste could actually be partly to do with the fact that this sencha is perhaps not as good quality as others have been, though that would explain the soapy taste at most and could do nothing to explain the sherbet-like orange flavour. Then again, the particular type of orange flavour would possibly not have tasted bad or as bad had the soapy element not been there.

I really don’t like throwing tea out, and I’m not going to throw this out immediately (probably because with this very flavourful, strongly zested version of it I’m sipping now, the soapiness is out of my mind), but I think the possibility of ever really liking it is slim. In principle, I’m not opposed to soap. I just don’t want to drink it.

I don’t know what I think about this. I didn’t notice before making it that it has licorice in it, and my reason for feeling unsure about it might be because of that. Cocoa and licorice? Hmmm. This smells weird and tastes weird. In a way, it’s a good thing, but it also kind of tastes like someone went crazy with mixing spices into a weak chocolate milk, and to me, that’s not really an appetising thing. It might have been better with some ginger, as well. That’s just speculation, though (mostly based on the fact that I think ginger is one of those spices that can make a tea really fantastic.) I’ve never actually had ginger with cocoa. But my dad thinks it’s amazing, and he has good taste.

I wish I could be more descriptive about this but, not thinking, I had a strongly flavoured dinner before drinking this, and I’m having a hard time breaking down the elements of the taste, which is even more complicated because I added soy milk to it, diluting the essence of the flavour. I added it because I thought it went with the taste, but I had tasted it beforehand and there was nothing necessarily lacking, so maybe it wasn’t the best choice. I’ve got a whole box of this, so it’s not a disaster that I can’t be more descriptive about it at this point. From the slightly muddy, kind of mismatched flavour I’m getting from this now, I’d say this is one of those “just okay” teas. I got it because I like spices and haven’t had a spice and cocoa tea before (I don’t even really like cocoa or chocolate, so it was pretty much an experiment from the get-go [though the chocolate flavour isn’t what I haven’t liked about the tea]), and also, I’m auditioning teas without caffeine for drinking on these cold nights in Germany. When it first gets into your mouth and you get that combination of the spices and cocoa (when you take a sip, the cocoa and cinnamon are the most prominent tastes at the very beginning of the mouthful), it works very well, but some element is holding it back by dragging it down into a mess of overly herbal flavour. This is really annoying, because with the soy milk in it and that initial mixture of the cocoa and cinnamon flavour, this seems like an original and quite tasty tea. Then that gross thing pops its head around the corner and offers greetings while my tastebuds shrink away.

Basically, I don’t like the way this tea smells, and when I think of combining spices with chocolate, I think of a rich, flavourful result, which this s not. It’s not bad, and as someone who isn’t that into combining chocolate and spices, I find it drinkable, but I wouldn’t buy more packages of it.
Oh, also I had this tea with my dessert, which was a snack bar made out of dates, sultanas, coconut, and oats. It really went with the overarching coconut flavour of the bar, and I think it’s the spices that matched it. If you haven’t tried having chai (or other spiced teas) with a coconut-y dessert, or even with coconut milk in it, that might be something to consider in future. Chai’s pretty heavy with coconut milk in it, though. It might be a good idea to use the lower fat one.

This is a weird tea. When I smell lemon and vanilla together, I think, “What a combination!” This representation of it doesn’t make me feel that way, though. It lacks the voluptuous vanilla characteristic of Meßmer’s vanilla green, but thankfully, unlike Meßmer’s “lemon green”, the lemon here is clearly lemon, not some kind of lemongrass-tasting business. This tea’s taste kind of reminds me of a lemon flavoured cold-remedy, even though it’s been at least 10 years since I’ve drank that. The lemon isn’t at all fresh-tasting, juicy, or zesty. It could well be the hint of vanilla that’s bringing it to more of a mellowness, but when I envision a lemon-vanilla combination, I don’t necessarily imagine that subdued nature. I think of an overall smooth, full taste with a zesty, true to life lemon flavour and a full, fragrant vanilla to match. That’s not this tea’s flavour at all. It’s not unpleasant, it’s just a bit “meh,” really. Sweetened, it’s more of just a subdued lemon tea with a tiny hint of something to suggest vanilla, but not enough so that if you drank if unaware it’s a vanilla lemon tea, you’d realise that it is more than a lemon tea. The taste left in your mouth represents it as more two-flavoured than it tastes.

Even though the lemon isn’t very true to life in my books, it might be more real tasting than what I’ve had in lemon-ginger tea combinations so far. It might be a nice sweetened tea to drink if you’re sick in bed, but I don’t think it has as much flavour as it should. Maybe it’s just that the flavour it does have is pretty average. With some powdered vanilla and lemon zest or rind, I may be more impressed, but as it is, the tea’s nothing to write home about.

Geht nicht! Hahaha!
I guess I thought before that the deliciousness of Meßmer’s green vanilla tea would mean that the brand has a lot of other great teas. I’ve tried maybe six or seven, not all of which have been subject to a Steepster review yet, and I think the green vanilla is the only one I definitely want a place for in my collection. This tea is not changing my mind about that.
I don’t know how this tea’s flavour went wrong. It’s like the flipside to Kusmi’s Lemon & Ginger Green (as in, there was actually a vaguely lemon flavour with this green, whereas in Kusmi’s lemon was pretty much non-existent) or the Kusmi Detox for people who don’t necessarily want to feel like they’re drinking wet tobacco. I’m not happy that this is in a full pack of 25 and that I now have 24 more bags to use up. The smell was a bit of a giveaway that the flavour wouldn’t be what I wanted it to be, but I thought it’d be no problem in the end because citrus and green tea is something I think really works, especially lemon and green tea. So what’s the problem? It just tastes like a pretty forgettable, easily embittered green with a hint of a kind of lemon that really does nothing for me. It actually tastes to me a lot more like a lemongrass and green tea mixture than a legitimate lemon green tea. I wish I could be more descriptive, but all I want to do is throw some lemon juice and zest in this tea and sweeten it. I think I’m inclined to be even harsher, because the lemongrassy character of it sends my mind straight back to Kusmi Detox, and that is one godawful tea.

Lemon green tea is a stellar idea, but this is a pretty dismal execution. It’s not cringingly bad or unsalvagable through additives, so I won’t throw it out at this point. I think in future I’m going to be a bit more upmarket with my green tea and lemon selections, because I don’t want to be disappointed again. This combination shouldn’t be that hard to get right, and if I can get a better flavour than your tea has by mixing my own lemon with a plain tea, you’ve failed as a company. I don’t think the average tea drinker wants to be a mixologist to get a good-tasting tea (especially when the desired flavour is ridiculously simple), and they don’t want to have to mix a number of products or ingredients together to get the flavour that another product could deliver right off the bat. If this were some complicated, exotic flavour that’s hard to reproduce in tea form, I might understand why it’d be hard to get it right. It’s lemon and green tea! RDTGHUJKLJHGFDGD!

Sadly, I felt a bit letdown by this. Why? Because I’ve had two Meßmer vanilla green tea lattes this week and they were the high point of my tea drinking week. I chased this up on Amazon Germany because I knew it existed but didn’t see it in my supermarket and thought it would surely be great given how excellent the brand’s vanilla green tea is. Not really, though. It’s not that the tea has anything really terrible or unappealing about it, it’s just that it tasted pretty much the same as the vanilla rooibos I had a little while ago. I could be drinking rooibos any time of the day or night, but can’t do that with black tea, so the black comes off second best in this situation. I noticed barely any difference between the flavour of this tea and the vanilla rooibos (other than the fact that the tea base here was slightly more assertive in terms of flavour), though admittedly, I haven’t had the vanilla rooibos in several months so there could be differences I’m simplifying.

I don’t know if the vanilla used in this is the same as the vanilla used in the other brands’ rooibos vanilla flavouring, but it tastes the same to me, and I don’t know if the vanilla used in this is different to the vanilla used in Meßmer’s vanilla green tea (the ingredients imply that it’s not), but it tastes quite different to me. It smells the same in the bag though, so it’s probably how differently the flavours combine with black and green teas. It’s a degree of difference I didn’t anticipate.

I don’t think this is a bad tea for the price, and I’m not even that annoyed at myself for having accidentally bought a pack of two boxes of it and thus having 39 more bags of it to get through when one cup of caffeinated tea a day is my maximum—it’s just that there’s probably more enjoyable vanilla black teas out there waiting for me (and I know there’s a huge number of them available) and I mostly got this because I expected it to be as good as the brand’s vanilla green. I wouldn’t specifically not recommend it (it will wake you up, it tastes pretty good, and it’s cheap), but it won’t challenge you, be a uniquely delicious take on a classic theme, or anything else like that. I had this as a latte, but I tried it with just the sweetener (before adding soy milk) and it seemed fine that way, too. With this many bags to use up, I will probably use the vanilla bean powder I bought on my trip to Paris to make future lattes with this tea something to really look forward to.

It’s always so nice when you write a big lot of text for something and then your computer gets crazy and you lose all of it. Thanks very much, laptop. You’ve done well!

Anyway, I was surprised to see that many reviews if this either made no mention of the berry element or downplayed it. To me, it’s primarily a black tea (an assertive one that isn’t dominated by the other flavours) with the second most noticeable flavour being very much the red berries and then caramel. If I’m really looking for it, I can taste just a “vibe” of the bergamot (mostly at the end up the mouthful), but it’s really only a wisp.

The taste and smell of this in a latte reminded me a lot of these chocolates you can get in Australia called strawberry Caramello Koalas. If you’re not from Australia, you probably have no idea what that is, but it’s just milk chocolate filled with a strawberry caramel centre and I’m pretty sure it’d be no different to any of those generic-type boxed chocolates with the gooey strawberry centres. I don’t like any of that, so the fact that the tea reminded me of it wasn’t really a selling point, but the tea was actually pretty enjoyable. It was perhaps a bit too dessert-y with the sweetener and soy milk, but I thought even the aroma of the brewed tea with nothing added was quite heavy on the berries and caramel, so I don’t know think it’s one of those teas that gives you a lot of options. I don’t know—it just felt like a bit much to me to have that strong berry plus caramel plus sweetener plus soy milk. Arguably, you could leave out the sweetener and milk, but when it smells like something from a chocolate box, that doesn’t seem like a good option.

If you don’t like black tea to begin with, you probably won’t like this. It could be that I’m more sensitive to the taste than other people because I haven’t drank that much black tea in my life, but anyway. Also, the dry smell isn’t really an indication of the taste of this tea. It smelled much more citrus-sy (when I didn’t even taste citrus in the brewed version), but really, I always smell these bags before I brew them and the Kusmi ones often don’t taste like their dry smell.

I have another bag of this from my sampler pack to try, but my feeling is basically that this is a nice tea for a change of pace, but it’s not a “regular basis” to for me. It’s just a bit too weird to have all these elements coming together at once in one drink.

This tea is a perfect example of why being pretentious about the teas you buy isn’t necessarily advantageous. This tea cost something like a couple of euros for a box of 25 (fannings) bags, but in my books, the taste simply can’t be argued with. I never make lattes with or sweeten green tea (in fact, I think this was the first time ever), but I thought the incredibly rich vanilla flavour here called for it.

It was probably the best tea latte I’ve ever had.

I didn’t know that something could balance that richness of flavour with a kind of airy, ethereal quality. And the smell is just divine from start to finish. I wish I could put it into words. I love vanilla so much, and this has not disappointed me one bit! Oh, it’s good.

In a way, I have to admit that when I see flavour in tea ingredients, I feel a bit like the company’s cheating. But it’s pretty commonplace, and how a company uses the flavours involved can make all the difference, and show a company’s skill. With cheap tea, it feels like a necessary evil, in any case. I’d probably prefer teas to be sweetened solely through having bits of plants in them, but with a lot of teas, that isn’t the case, and with flavour like this, I feel like I can’t complain. This tea actually contains both vanilla flavour and vanilla. I don’t know if that’s how it has the taste it does, but holy cow!

You can’t re-steep this, but I guess that’s the standard thing for teas made from fannings. I guess I hadn’t really thought about that fact before today because I used to use the used tea bag together with a fresh one to brew a new cup of tea, which I didn’t do with this, because I’m keeping it to one caffeinated beverage a day now (This hasn’t really applied to second steepings of the Kusmi teas I’ve reviewed lately, because you can effectively re-use the leaves again if you steep them for a longer time , or just boil them for a while, which really didn’t work here.) The second steeping still tasted nice, but it didn’t really taste like a proper tea latte or anything.

If you’re looking for something that’s a complex green with vanilla woven subtly in, this will probably not please you. I don’t find it to be a fake-tasting, loud vanilla, but it’s definitely an assertive one, and is there against a backdrop of simple, single note, dry grass-tasting green tea. That might sound weirdly unappetising, but personally, vanilla and grass and two of my favourite smells (that’s the case for a lot of people, isn’t it?), so really, it makes a lot of sense.

I think sometimes tastes or scents don’t necessarily need to challenge you. Lately, I’ve mostly been trying a lot of these Kusmi teas that have a lot of flavour combinations that I hadn’t had before, and a lot of black tea mixes. Before a few months ago, I hadn’t even drank a cup of black tea in 20 years, nor had I had teas with as many flavour elements as some of them have. This tea is unlike those, and in a way I’m glad about that. I think in a latte, it’s something that could be considered a crowd pleaser—I think this could impress someone who thinks they don’t really like tea, a veteran cappuccino drinker, or someone who just likes sweet, fragrant things. I think milky, sweet things appeal to pretty much everyone, and maybe it’s just because I don’t like coffee, but I think this does a way better job of that than a regular latte does.

It’s tea that smells like cookies and ice cream and doesn’t taste cheap and fake. Do you really need convincing?

This tea has me utterly stumped. Dry, it smelled a whole lot like eggnog to me. Steeped, it smells like lemon, eggnog, and vanilla. It’s bitter and definitely needs sweetening, but I didn’t know about the milk element. To me, the presence of a lemony flavour makes milk a no-no. But the scent of this really calls for that creaminess. I added a bit of soy milk and I think it was a good choice. God, this is a really unusual tea. I’m having trouble finding anything useful to say. It’s quite heavily black, so if black tea is only palatable to you with strong added flavours, you probably won’t like this. It kind of seems to me like a very toned down relative of Kusmi’s Anastasia (less so when milk is added [or maybe that’s just me, since when I drank Anatasia I thought milk would be a bad option]) mixed with a dash of spice and a lot of vanilla. It smells very, very good both brewed and dry.

Sorry, I wish this was a more helpful review, but my main reason for drinking tea just now is that I’m in a rush for class and wanted something comforting and something that would wake me up a bit, since I don’t have time for breakfast. I have another bag of this, so I’ll be elaborating on this soon. It’s what the description would imply, basically-citrus-y, vanilla-y, black tea-y, a bit spicy. The spice is really an aroma, flavour or impression. It doesn’t provide any bite or sharpness like in chai, and the only “bite” comes from the bitterness of the tea, which I found bitter even when steeped according to the directions.

I gave this another try, and found that eggnog-y smell yet again : ) Brewed, it smells and tastes absolutely nothing like that, and to me, not at all like the dry impression. I tried it without milk at first, again, because with both this and St. Petersburg, I feel like it’s hard to really get an impression of them. I tried to figure them both out last time, and this is a continuation of that aim. Without milk, I got a kind of citrus and for some reason vanilla-turkish delight-y flavour. It seemed lacking without milk as the first time I drank it, so I added a bit (really not like when you add 1/2 or 1/3 of the cup—I do mean a bit). It has a strong lemon note this way, and with the milk, it seems wrong. I only get vanilla at the end of the mouthful, so it’s mostly a black tea with lemon with an appealing vanilla aftertaste. There’s some incredibly subtle clove, as well. I had some bitterness like last time, but I did oversteep it. The aftertaste is so weird and delicious.

This was my last bag of this from the Kusmi essentials box I’ve got, so now I’m wishing I’d given it more of a go without milk. It’s not awful with it or anything, but I do get the sense without milk is the way to go. Overall, I’m not impressed. I wouldn’t buy a tin of this, but if I got another sampler or it came with something else, I’d still drink it without grudge.

Another review my lovely computer got rid of when my browser “quit unexpectedly.” It’s not like these reviews are priceless high art or something, but having to rethink them still makes me want to throw my computer at a wall, especially when I’m not drinking the tea at the moment.

I don’t have much experience with jasmine teas, but this was beautifully fragrant and it was a lovely, calming experience drinking it. I enjoyed it a lot and wish I could say more about it now, but will update this when I drink my other bag of it. I drank it unsweetened and without milk or anything else and I think that’s the best way because of how precious that fragrance is. However, I did have something in the Lebanese restaurants in Paris that tasted like jasmine tea with a bit of sweetener and orange blossom water. It was delicious.

For a type of tea as traditional as jasmine, I’m inclined to think that better quality or fuller flavour might be found in teas from a brand specialising in Asian teas. I like Kusmi a lot, but I don’t think this is the best jasmine I could be drinking. I never thought it would be, it was just one component of the sampler I got. This tea doesn’t taste like it’s not good quality or anything, though. Side note: you can’t effectively re-steep these leaves.

I’ll try more jasmine teas in future, and it might be interesting to see how the jasmine tastes alongside green teas with slightly different flavours.

I’d like to preface this review by making clear that I’m hardly an expert on straight-up green teas. Anyway, I felt like this tea was just another that made me think “a green tea is a green tea!” I know there’s some pretty different-tasting types on the market, like jasmine and matcha, but this isn’t one of them. It had a strange aroma that reminded me a bit of baking soda combined with dried grass, and the taste was pleasant but not really memorable. I like green tea, so this isn’t a negative review—it’s just one that confesses that I didn’t find this much different to other green teas I’ve had in cafes or bagged supermarket brands. My experiences in those contexts haven’t been negative, but Kusmi is a bit premium, so I guess I would’ve expected that the flavour of this might have something different. It’s very slightly fruity at the beginning, but that aspect was barely noticeable. It had a pretty “Japanese” flavour for some reason, and I think it tastes the same as genmaicha but without the rice bits. That probably sounds stupid, but what I mean is that the tea in this must be the same tea that’s based on. It’s very grassy, though not in a particularly fresh, sweet kind of way, and has a bitter, green aftertaste.

As with other green teas, this really does get bitter when you over steep it. The grassy flavour ends up being a combination of grass and sharp bitterness after maybe 10 minutes (“Who steeps their tea for 10 minutes?!” you ask? I like to try things a number of ways, and tasted it throughout the process, to see what would end up happening). Be mindful of that (even though this is not as easy to do in this case as it usually would be, because the water doesn’t get flavourful for a little while), and perhaps don’t expect this to have an especially unique flavour. It also didn’t really work re-steeping this. There was little flavour on the second steeping and it was a bit like drinking slightly bitter hot water.

I had it unsweetened and without soy milk, which always seems like the only way with plain green teas. It’s that kind of experience.

The first thing you’ll probably notice about the tea is the smell. It’s pretty much just citrus when dry, but when brewed and hot, it smells like some kind of beautiful cake. I couldn’t stop smelling it. It smells like cinnamon and orange and something vanilla-like. It’s such a good smell! Unfortunately, the flavour isn’t really a match for it. I’m sad about that, because if it were, I could drink it all day.

For me, the tea required more steeping than recommended. This may have been problematic: some reviews elsewhere said it needed no sweetening because of the licorice, but I beg to differ— mine was bitter and the flavour was just kind of dull with no sweetener, and the spices weren’t being brought out. When sweetened, the cinnamon and liquorice spice element can’t be ignored whereas before it was kind of just a nondescript spicy, herbal “vibe.” I think mostly this tea is yet another reflection of the fact that orange and spice consistently mix badly in teas. That’s unexpected (they can mix well in baking and perfumery, for instance), but this is not the first time I’ve felt this way. On that note, maybe part of my negative impression is based on the fact that it reminds me of Teekanne’s Oriental Spice Tea, which was literally the worst tea I’ve ever had in my life. Fortunately, this tea was nowhere near the trainwreck that was, but the base flavours of orange, cinnamon, and vanilla are common to the two. I’m going to try to stop thinking about that fact now, because the memory of the Teekanne tea seriously haunts me and it’s making me disgusted.

This tea has some stellar reviews around the Net, but I found it just okay. It wasn’t unpleasant or undrinkable, but the large amounts of liquorice and cinnamon gave it kind of a herbal, bitter, spicy, medicinal taste. At times some of those characteristics can be positive, but when you combine them all, as has been done here, I don’t think it’s a recipe for success. One strange thing was that, and I don’t know if it was just the combination of the spices or something, I could’ve sworn something tasted a bit cardamom-y. Normally, that would appeal to me, but in this kind of brew, it wasn’t a selling point. Those strong, medicinal-smelling spices like cardamom or liquorice with chai spices and soy milk? Sign me up. Those spices in a thinner, bitter brew? Hmmm, I’ll pass.

If I had some of this tea given to me (or got another couple of bags of it in a Kusmi selection pack), I’d drink it (because it’s not too bad and I love tea), but I wouldn’t buy a tin of it based on what I’ve tasted (based on what I’ve smelled? Well….) It wasn’t wholly unappealing, so if strong spices with some orange sound good to you, you should still give it a try.

I was bracing myself for completely hating this since, even though it smelled good dry and brewing, the last Kusmi mate I had tasted thoroughly awful. Well, I was surprised (there seems to be a lot of that surprise happening with the Kusmi I’ve sampled…) It’s essentially the green chai I never would’ve wanted to sample—except it doesn’t taste wrong like I’d always thought a green chai would.

Unsweetened (on the first steeping at least), it tastes like a bit of a harsh cinnamon bomb in that it has the sharp taste of something to which too much cinnamon and nothing sweet has been added. Sweetened, it’s interesting. Sweetened and with soy milk, it’s a different and pleasant take on chai. You wouldn’t necessarily guess it was made with green and mate teas unless someone old you, because it produces a nice, light chai latte that doesn’t taste grassy or weedy in any way. It’s less fragrant and spicy than a regular chai, kind of like the polite, delicate younger sister of normal chai or something, but I think the flavour is still essentially chai. A key difference between this and the other Kusmi chais I’ve had (Sweet Love and Tchai) is that cardamom is not one of the most dominant notes here (its place is taken by cinnamon).

It’s good, but if you want chai, there’s better stuff around. It might be a good tea for you if you like to rotate different chais or something like that.

When dry, this tea had a smell I think I can’t really describe. It didn’t smell much like any other tea I’d ever smelled before, though earl grey would be the closest comparable smell. Like all other blacks I’ve had, I found it needed sweetener to be palatable. Hot and with sweetener, the flavour was something completely unexpected. There was a faint hint of orange blossom, a bit more of lemon, and a real sense of floral. The first thing it reminded me of was actually Kusmi’s rose tea with some peachy kind of overtones, to the extent that my first thought was to wonder whether it had rose in it. When it cools, it’s really more like those pre-made liquid iced teas that are black plus lemon, which is nice—except for the annoying peppery note in it. That damn peppery note! Y u do dat, Kusmi? Hahaha! Seriouly though, it’s a letdown that it’s there, because otherwise this is a nicely fruity, slightly floral black that could be good both hot or cold. As it is, I don’t think I could bring myself to buy it. That demonic peppery element lurks there in every mouthful. It doesn’t even lurk, actually—it’s the first thing you taste. Only after it do you get the delicious tea taste and well-executed fruitiness.

It’s hard to not be on the fence about this. I can’t stress enough how tasty the fruitiness is. When I lived in Australia, I used to drink the pre-made Lipton iced lemon green tea and iced peach black tea, and they’ll always have a place in my heart, though their flavour is hardly groundbreaking or exotic. This tea (once you get past the damn peppery aspect, of course) reminds me of it and I like that.

I didn’t try this with milk (well, I did take a spoon out and add some milk to that just for a tiny test, but the flavour wasn’t tempting), and wouldn’t suggest it, because the fruity flavour is more lemony than orangey, which I think makes it a poor candidate for a latte (and a good candidate for serving iced). I’d recommend giving this tea a try (do try before you buy), and perhaps adding fruit juice like lemon or peach to it, on top of the sweetener. Also, the peppery thing goes away a bit when the tea cools and may have been exacerbated to a degree by my over-steeping (but if it was, presumably the fruitiness was too), so all hope isn’t lost with this. At room temperature, I thought it had something of a classic iced tea flavour (but a bit less fruity), which wasn’t what I was expecting of something whose description makes it seem kind of complex and refined. That’s not a criticism, though if you were expecting something that really balanced all of those citrus ingredients and genuinely represented lemon, orange, and lime all at once, you’d probably feel disappointed.

Update: I raised the rating for this a little bit because on the second and third steepings (the third was pretty weak, so don’t count on it being satisfying), there was almost none of the peppery note, and iced with a bit of lemon juice and sweetener, it was good.

I tried this again, hot, with sweetener, and with no milk. It seems really different to what it was last time. The aftertaste has a beautiful delicate orange flower sense if you really pay attention, and this time, even though I oversteeped it as per usual, there wasn’t an annoying peppery element, and no bitterness. It seems a lot less lemony than I found it last time, but overall, I think I was wrong about my impression that this is no more than a failed earl grey. The more that orange flower element gets to me, the more I want to raise the score of this. I raised it two points, but the taste in my mouth says that wasn’t enough. The tea of adequate strength without being dominating, it’s ladylike without being overly demure, and it’s floral without being perfumey. Not bad, Kusmi! I’d drink it again!

This tea smelled like chai when it was dry, and like chai when it was brewed. With sweetener and no soy milk, this tasted like what I would describe as a “chai and friends” kind of tea. It was like a weaker chai with a little something extra. Some bitterness, some natural sweetness, some very slightly soapy kind of element. It was fine without soy milk, but it was so reminiscent of chai that I felt like it was begging for soy milk. It’s very heavy indeed on the cardamom (which I love about it), and I think the cinnamon and pepper really just create an aura of warm spiciness rather than contributing identifiably to the flavour. There’s almost something vaguely Coke-like about the aftertaste.

If you plan to use this as a latte base as I did, it will be satisfying to you if you like chai and especially chai with a lot of cardamom. Surprisingly (perhaps in a pleasant way), I didn’t really notice any of the flavour I generally associate with licorice root (i.e. licorice!) with what I tasted, but the flavour is obviously more easily perceptible when the tea has no soy milk, and I drank most of mine with milk. I found with tea quite stimulating, which makes sense given that it has tea and guarana, so don’t try drinking it in the late afternoon. It’d be interesting to do a comparison between this and Kusmi’s regular chai, with both being served without soy milk so that the difference is clearer.

Oh my God. This tastes like cigarettes. Like wet cigarettes or something. I can’t believe a tea this afwul is made by Kusmi! Christ on a cracker, this is just vile. It doesn’t get the lowest possible score because there’s a very slight hint of lemongrass in the smell and taste, and I like lemongrass, but the tea’s basically not good in any way at all. This was undrinkable, and I don’t often come across teas I can say that about. Don’t let the pleasant citrussy dry smell fool you—it’s really bad.

I’ve tried this again today because I got another of the Kusmi variety packs and I didn’t want to just write it off based on the first bad experience (time heals all wounds, right?) No, though. This tea is offensively bad. When it’s dry, it smells fine. In the first minute of steeping, it smells okay. After that, and into the recommended 5 minute steeping time, it becomes completely foul. I actually can’t even believe how bad this tastes. Hot, cold, unsweetened, sweetened. Nothing fixes it. It smells like stale cigarettes and tastes like a bitter, watery form of the same. It’s a bit deceptive, because if you have the tea in a hot, sweetened for, when you take a sip, it seems for a fraction of a second like this is a lemongrass tea. Then that cigarette flavour makes itself heard. Arghhhh. I tried to really give it more of a go, but even as you raise the cup to your mouth, it’s like breathing in cigarette ash. As it cools, the cigarette-y flavour just gets worse and worse, though there’s not that scent wafting effect like when the tea is hot.

I feel bad wasting tea, but this cup of tea and my unopened second sachet of it from this sampler are going in the garbage. I think what added to the disappointment I felt with this tea was that I really love lemongrass and dry, it genuinely smelled like it would be very lemongrass-y. You can still smell that in the brewed tea a bit, but it’s very much overridden by that cigarette aspect. Even the squeezed-out bag smells quite lemongrass-y, so just where is the lemongrass flavour going, Kusmi?!

I poured this out in the sink in my room and now from a combination of the steam from the tea having gone into the air in the room and the liquid having gone down the sink in the room, there’s a faint cigarette smell in here. It’s truly disgusting.

The first time I made this, I brewed the tea, added half soy milk after it had steeped, and went to pour in some sweetener. Before I knew it, a very large amount had come out. The drink was overly sweet and the tea flavour that was coming through was rather forgettable. I thought just to give it a fair shot (and also because I needed the stimulation and hadn’t had a cup of chai in a long time), I’d empty out the contents of the tea bags and put all of the liquid into a saucepan and boil it for a while to get more of the tea flavour out. In the meantime, I started writing a review on how this tea is basically another average-at-best black tea chai, one that has confirmed the fact that black tea just muddles the delicious spiciness of chai and that the only worthwhile chais are the large whole spices by themselves or a rooibos mixed with these.

I came back to taste the tea after a while, and I felt inclined to backspace everything I’d written. This tea was a surprise to me in the end, and pleasantly a slight bit reminiscent of my holy grail chai, Rainbow Chai (which I can’t buy in Germany).

Tragically, I was neglectful of the pot because I was trying to get ready for a meeting at the time, and part of the tea boiled over, so I didn’t get the full serve I would’ve liked or that would’ve been useful to give a more comprehensive first impression in terms of the flavour. Instead of two cups of tea, I got about half a cup : ( Some notable things I can share about this tea are that it seems refreshingly traditional and makes cardamom a key player. It’s not a weak cinnamon-ginger bomb, it’s not packed with yucky things like licorice, fennel, pepper, etc. It was pretty tasty. It took me until the third time I tried this tea to pick up on just how evident the presence of the anise is (previously, I had just got a nice spicy melange with black tea that had with the longer steeping miraculously gone from dominating to being put in its place as just one ingredient of a spicy, complex brew), but even by then I didn’t feel like I tasted anything particularly laurel-y, and I didn’t taste that much clove. It seemed to be mostly ginger, cardamom, and anise, with a touch of cinnamon, and a backdrop of tea. It can be a bit hard to pick these spices out, though—probably because they’re often used together in teas and baking, so it’s easy when they’re always mixed to get a bit thrown off. I like this tea, but it could never replace my beloved Rainbow Chai. There’s also something vaguely medicinal about it, and I don’t mean that (appealing) eucalyptus-y cardamom taste. In fact, the smell of the tea brewed and with soy milk for some reason strikes me as a combination of a milky, gingery chai (this one smells a fair bit like lebkuchen) with a very faint, far away note that is for some reason like antiseptic iodine solution. A problem unrelated to the scent or taste, but which is noticeable and must be noted is that the tea is not as spicy as other chais, and I think that’s a real drawback. The spiciness is part of the comfort for me, and it feels much too subdued here.

If you’ve found black chais unsavoury in the past, I’d give this one a go. If it doesn’t satisfy you on the first round, steep it longer with your milk and sweetener. The tastes I got on the second and third tries were unlike like what I tasted the first time around. When I first wrote this entry, I said, “I’m pretty sure I’ll be buying it again. I found it comforting and well executed.” I’ve tried it three times now, and I don’t think I necessarily feel that way anymore. It’s not because there’s anything wrong with the tea as such, it’s that I’m comparing it to something I tried long before and developed a real love for. Kashmir Tchai came as a pleasant suprise to me, and needless to say, I was devastated when I came back downstairs the first time I made it thinking, “The entire cooktop looks brown…why is that?” before realising that it had been inundated with the tea I’d been looking forward to. Ultimately, though, it’s like a chai rebound to me or something. I feel like I can enjoy it when I’m drinking it, but subconsciously I’m thinking about missing Rainbow Chai. This chai still cut it to some degree, as with other chais I’ve had while in Europe, but in a way they all feel like new chai boyfriends that make me reminisce about the good times with my ex-chai.

I didn’t really know what to expect from this tea—firstly because I’ve never had rose in a tea and secondly because when dry, it had a strong, perfumey smell that was a bit reminiscent of pot purri or even a rose perfume. Well, it’s not great in my books. I’ve not found it truly disappointing or poor quality or anything, but it just has a kind of dull, herby, very faintly peppery kind of taste. It also gets kind of bitter if you steep it for a while, so watch out for that. This tea needs sweetener and is so far the only Kusmi tea that as early as the second steeping has lost significant flavour (in comparison, I drank the spearmint green tea yesterday and got three or four steepings out of it, witht the cool, clean flavour still clearly perceptible throughout). I don’t think the downfall of this tea is its demure quality, because that is also a characteristic of the strawberry green tea by Kusmi, and I thought that was a pretty great tea. I think the problem with this tea is perhaps that the rose flavour, while certainly notable, is not necessarily a good match for the green tea (it may be this type of green tea [a lighter, sweeter, grassier one could work better], but I’m not sure there). This tea is pleasant, but I don’t think it’s very memorable.

If rose is a “thing” for you, maybe you should give this a try, but if you pick it up and think, like I did, that that lavish, rich eastern quality of rose’s fragrance as in rosewater or rose sweets will be well reflected in the tea, I don’t think this will be what you’re looking for. Rose might be a better match for a lighter green tea (potentially with jasmine), or a white tea. A rose fragrance that’s as strong as the dry scent indicates this one is could be really good on its own, too. This tea is basically a good concept executed somewhat unsuccessfully. Overall, I’d mostly recommend this to someone looking for an appropriately flavoured green tea of decent quality to pair with a Lebanese meal. It might also be more interesting mixed with chai or a floral tea of a different variety. There’s a difference when it’s cool, so it could make a nice iced drink with more sweetener or a little something added. It would also probably go quite well with milk.

This is probably the only mint tea I’ve ever had that’s had any of the freshness you’d expect from a product containing mint. The spearmint must make all the difference here, and instead of that usual weedy, bitter, dull flavour, there’s a fresh, clean mint taste with a backdrop of grassy, non-bitter green tea. The mint flavour is a very pure one, a “straight from the leaf” taste. I’m taken aback by some of the average reviews Kusmi has had. I’ve found the brand pretty reliably good so far, and that’s relying on the tea bag set I got, so the quality I’m tasting probably isn’t even the best they have to offer. Surprisingly (given that in Be Cool it’s peppermint and here it’s spearmint) the mint flavor is kind of reminiscent of that in Be Cool, but the green tea makes it less in-your-face minty. Since I’ve found a number of minty teas average at best in the past, I’m shocked that I’ve found this one so well carried out. If you’ve disliked mint teas in the past, I’d recommend sampling this one. It has the downside of not being caffeine free like pure mint teas are, but I’ve found the combination of the mint and green here really works.

This tea’s flavour was really set off with just a little sweetener, but I had the first two cups of it with none, and that worked, too. I also tried it iced, and that surprisingly clean, refreshing flavour it has is much more conducive to serving cold than the usual (and frankly off putting) taste of mint teas. It was very refreshing. It wold go especially well with some fresh mint and lemon or lime juice/zest. Vodka could also work if it’s that kind of moment for you. Like all of the Kusmi products I’ve used, I’ve successfully re-steeped this. I don’t know how well it’d work if you were more anal about the correct steeping time than I am (and by “more anal,” I pretty much mean at all concerned about taking the tea bags out before it cools), you might not have as much luck getting this much flavour out again.

Overall, I don’t really know why some people have had negative things to say about Kusmi. Maybe it’s because it’s more of a “trendy,” image-conscious kind of brand than others, and tea purists might frown on the flavours. It may also be expensive compared to what one would pay for other brands (honestly, I don’t think much about this. If it looks/smells/sounds good, I’ll buy it), but to me, it’s a tolerable 75 euro cents per cup (at the more expensive rate that comes with using bags) and I haven’t been truly disappointed by a single flavour yet. I’m no tea expert, but to me, that’s a win. Admittedly, I might change my mind when I’ve tried some more premium-type teas, since I’ve mostly used supermarket brands up until now, but I’m pretty satisfied.

I’m really surprised that so far only one person has mentioned the vanilla note in this. To me, it’s undeniable—so much so that when I first tasted it, my immediate thought was of a vanilla green tea made by Lipton that I used to drink sometimes. If anything, I’d call this a strawberry-vanilla green, but I would understand if someone thought that there was no strawberry at all and just a general fruity kind of lightness that’s a bit nondescript. It’s identifiable as strawberry if you know it’s a strawberry green tea, but otherwise, I think it may not be. Before you steep it, though, it’s very strawberry indeed. It smells exactly like strawberry candy or a strawberry lip balm. Upon steeping, that’s pretty much gone. You’ve got some light, fruity sweetness (this was brought out in mine with sweetener, but this is one of a small number of flavoured green teas I’ve tried that I’d say you could be satisfied with unsweetened), but to me, the vanilla note is what’s predominantly there with the green, which is a pretty subtle green. The strawberry taste does come out more when the tea is cool, though, so if you’re having this at room temperature, it may come across as more true to name.

Because vanilla’s pretty much my favourite thing ever, I didn’t have a problem with the fact that this wasn’t strongly berry-flavoured. Someone commented that the flavour may reflect that Kusmi’s claims of using natural flavours may be dubious, but if anything, I’d say that the kind of weak berry aspect could be a reflection of strong-tasting, artificial sweeteners not being used (I have to say, though, the smell before steeping does make it seem a bit fake [but the smell is here no indicator of the flavour]). I thought it was a pleasant tea, but it didn’t really feel original (though that means that it could be a crowd pleaser if you’re having a tea party or something [depending on the attendees, obviously—I wouldn’t serve it to my parents]). I’d probably buy it again, and it might have other uses (I used to blend up the Lipton vanilla tea with fruit and some other things for a smoothie, and that would work well with this, especially if you’re someone who wants something new to do with your tea).