Ridgways

Finally! Some decent tea bag.

I was in mood for black tea, but somehow lazy to brew loose leaf. So I picked this one, although bit nervous because their teas were okay mostly.

This one is not great either, to be honest, but certainly one of the best from Ridgways I had. Dry bag aroma is okay mostly, nothing distinctive, but nothing worrysome.

When brewed and steeped, some notes started to appear. I guess it is mostly malt, bit of stonefruits and mostly – and appeared in taste, cherry wood (and general wood) flavour. It was, honestly, surprising to notice cherries in my cup. As it cools down more generic wood was present, but it wasn’t something to avoid. Maybe I would not call it English Breakfast, but overall, it is interesting – and nice, blend.

“A light, delicate and fragrant Fairtrade tea known as the “champagne” of the tea world"

Ehh, I don’t think so. It is quite robust black tea, but with watery aftertaste. Delicate? Nope, rather just drying and bit dirty in taste as well. It wasn’t nice floral taste I expect from Darjeeling. It was drying, dirty, robust tea. Weird and not pleasant watery aftertaste though. It is weird it can be ro strong on sip, but then… nothing.

Aromas weren’t present much too, t was rather some common, black CTC tea – not Darjeeling by scents at all. Sadly, one of the worse Darjeelings tea bag.

Another bag from huge bags section.

As I haven’t got good experiences with this company, I have to say I was kind of afraid how bad this one will be.

And it is not so bad. Maybe short steeping time helped actually more than I want to admit. Anyway to the tea. Although it wasn’t too aromatic, the taste wasn’t watery, weak or just bland. Yeah, I had better Assams, that’s for sure but this one was:
quite full-bodied, but one-dimensional; hints of wet wood, maybe wood wine kegs, as it reminded me bit of Port wine. But it was actually only flavour; it was bit lingering and bit boring. At least it wasn’t that bad as their Earl Grey.

This is plain bad tea.

Maybe because of age, but I do not think so, because of foil wrapping. No aroma in or out. Clasical set-up, mug with boiling water and tea bag (!) in. I did shorter steeping time than they suggest (3 minutes), becasue it turned out cloudy and dark brown so quickly. And the scent was – just awful! Wet socks, no maltiness, no citrus notes, just dirty, wet socks.

The taste if there is any of it, is bit malty but rather watery, again no Earl Grey notes, no tea notes. Yuck!

This is really sour, but the flavour is better than most berry hibiscus herbals I have had. I think it has more raspberry flavour and that makes it stand out against the generic berry ones. The teabags I got were free (hotel room), so I can’t complain. I think my next cup will need to be sweetened and iced. Coldbrewing is recommended.

I am not normally fond of herbal teas, but as I needed a caffeine-free drink and I had a teabag of Ridgways Citrus on the hand, I decided to taste it.
The first thing I noticed is the smell: the incredible scent of fresh lemon. I tasted the freshness of the lemon too when drinking it, though the flavour faded away after a couple of seconds to become a less fresh lemony taste.

I did not expect much from this tea bag but it’s certainly the best Citrus-y infusion I’ve ever tasted. It’s not tea but it’s pretty good.

You know when people said they dislike Earl Grey tea because they found it tasting like cleaning solution?
This is the perfect example of that cleaning solution-like taste. Yuck!

Herbals are my least favorite category of tea. But I’ve had this in my office all winter and have gone through several boxes since I first discovered it. I’d recommend it for those who don’t usually like herbals or who are looking for something a bit different in their herbal blend. The combination of the four berries blends well and is much smoother than herbals tend to taste.

an ok tea, sort of bland.. the aroma and taste is similar to wine

Wonderful, bold assam. yummie. At times, I drink it with whipped cream to make it extra special. :0 in the Frisian way.
Also very nice without cream/sugar. Bold, no bitterness though. And tea doesn’t stew.

one of the few bagged teas I really, really like, and even prefer over some loose leaf assams…

And that’s the end of it. It’s not the worst tea I’ve ever drunk but it’s probably not good enough to be worth the effort of making tea from loose leaves. So powdery that I always had powder at the bottom of the mug that came through the sieve. I won’t be buying it again

This was a good way to start my saturday, but I always end up with some tea dust at the bottom of the mug because my strainer isn’t fine enough to cope!

This has a nice clean taste, as most organic teas have. But it’s nothing special, as you’d expect from such dusty tea (from Tesco)

Very strong, very malty, unmistakably Assam. If I handed this to someone and did not tell them what it was, they might think it was coffee. Milk and sugar was not enough to tame this beast; it required some agave nectar as well. A definite wake you up kind of tea.

Tonight I am having a cup of Rooibos with honey and a little Vietnamese cinnamon. Yum! Honey is definitely better than sugar or splenda, and the cinnamon complements the tea very nicely. Milk is really not necessary, might even detract from the taste.

This Rooibos has a woodsy flavor and a honey-like sweetness that milk and a teaspoon of sugar brings out. Honey would probably accentuate this taste. A pleasant caffeine-free tea for the evening.

This tea has a gentle flavour when served black, and doesn’t become too astringent until the second cup. Served alongside pastries during afternoon tea, this blend of Indian, African and Sri Lankan teas would simply be a part of the scene, but doesn’t stand out as anything extraordinary.

It’s okay, but not extraordinary. Like any other average black tea I’ve had. The tea bags are of the circular design, hence the contents are the typical ubiquitous black powder that has become oxidized over time due to a greatly increased exposed surface area.

While it does not have any additional flavourings or colours added (this is a good thing), ground up tea powder will always be sub-standard to loose leaf tea in flavour and medicinal quality. 3/5 stars.

Additional notes: Sad sipdown on one of my oldest teas. Tasting notes from seven years ago! Wow. It’s still delicious. But I probably will never be able to find this one again.

I only have a few cups of this left and I checked the site and they don’t have it anymore. I really love it. I’m going to up the rating a bit. I wanted a strong black tea today and thought of this one. The flavor is a nice hearty black tea. It’s a triple threat of darjeeling, assam and ceylon. I think the ceylon must give it that stronger flavor while the assam adds a sweetness to it. So good. It’s a flavor that really lingers on the tongue. I received this in a non-Steepster tea box a while ago. I wonder if this is an older tea since no one else has reviewed it and it’s not on the Ridgways site (let’s hope it isn’t as old as Queen Victoria’s time). But it tastes so fresh and delicious, it can’t be that old! I think Queen Victoria would have wrote a nice tasting note on Steepster for this one. I’m going to miss this tea when I’ve finished my last cup!

A great strong black tea. I can never say ‘blah’ to a black tea. They are always good. They are my favorite after chai teas.

Just had another cup, and weirdly, I could taste liquorice. This isn’t a good thing – I really don’t like liquorice.

I just got given 7 cases of this from a friend (I have no idea how or why she got that much) and I don’t really know what to do with it. It would be ok if it were a nice tea, but I don’t really like it. It is very, very strongly scented and adding milk and/or sugar doesn’t make this any better. Its a bit of a shame really, because I’m quite partial to Earl Greys.