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I honestly wasn’t feeling like drinking any tea last night, but I was frigid from working outside for a little while and wanted something hot to take into the shower with me. (If you have a ledge big enough for a mug in your shower, shower tea is fantastic. 10/10 would recommend.) This is one of two decafs that I haven’t tried yet and smelled the least offensive.

Dry, it smells very pleasant, like a naturally sweet juice cocktail. When you dampen it with that boiling water, it…. smells identical to Fructis hair care products. If I was still using them, I would have instantly thought I managed to get some in the cup, because it tastes like them too in a non-soapy way. Is that a bad thing? Not sure! It certainly has the most flavor of any decaf tea I’ve ever tried. Not sure if I’ll be drinking it again, though, since I only made it halfway through my cup before I had to stop drinking the aroma of Fructis shampoo.

This does an excellent job at smacking you in the face with the lemon in it. I don’t mind, I love the lemon. The gunpowder is subtle in comparison to the lemon but definitely there. Not grassy, a little smoky, just how I like my green teas. All the flavors here are right on the surface and you don’t have to sit there taking little sips to figure out what’s happening with the notes. Definitely going to be keeping a tin of this on hand from here on out!

I am begging run-of-the-mill tea blenders to stop adding green teas to black blends. Please. If you want a jasmine flavor, add actual jasmine flowers and not a cheap “jasmine green” that tastes like bubblegum because someone tried flavoring it with essential oils instead of real jasmine. This would be a great inexpensive tea blend if it weren’t for that green tea. There’s just enough of it to overpower the taste of the earl grey and rose petals and give you the oversteeped boiled green tea taste instead (but with a note of bubblegum.) Eugh, I’d put the rest of the bag into the worm bin if there weren’t clearly essential oils in this. Those don’t belong in tea! Leave them out!

Made a quick and dirty cold brew of this before leaving the house yesterday morning. About a tablespoon of leaves unceremoniously dumped into the bottom of a 16 ounce double-walled glass thermos, filled with cold tap water, flimsy mesh strainer insert to keep the leaves down in the liquid where they belong. It then got to sit in my icy cold car (yay, 11F February afternoons!) until 3 pm, when I was able to briefly scuttle out of the haul truck I was operating and nab it to sip on for the rest of the day.

First impression: smells like warm red grapes and tobacco. I had made a heavenly batch of cold brewed Shan Tuyet the day before using the same method, and the contrast between those two cups really shows how different black teas can be. They can go from the malty cocoa goodness of cold Shan Tuyet to…. well, tasting like blood on the first sip. Really thought I screwed something up with this one because it has that overripe red raspberry flavor that teeters into the sanguine category of tastes. Lots of acidic, wine-y, tobacco notes behind that. It has depth once you get past the initial pungency.

It’s not unpalatable by any means, but I don’t think this tea and I are compatible. Going to try it in hot water before I give it a numerical rating. Who knows, that blood flavor might go away with some heat! (I hope.)

Found this sitting in the pantry unopened from when actual tea gave me horrible stomach pains and I was drinking just about any herbal I could get my hands on. Tastes like a gentle spearmint-chamomile blend. Color me surprised, I’m used to sleep aid teas being horribly medicinal and hard to finish. (Looking at you, 90% of bedtime teas with licorice components.) Not usually a big chamomile person, but it works here. Probably the lack of strongly flavored ingredients that allows it to shine through instead of present itself as a “yep that’s chamomile” note? And the valerian has me blissed out against a pillow with my eyes fluttering closed at 8:45. Gonna give into that urge to sleep and let this stuff do its magic.

This sure is…. bagged tea dust with some artificial flavoring and spices. The meyer lemon peel flavor masks the actual taste of the tea, which is saying something, because the lemon is barely noticeable. There’s some spice here that’s blended in about as smoothly as a shake of cinnamon and nutmeg added directly onto the top of a brewed cup of tea. Can’t say my standards were super high with 1) it being actual tea from Bigelow and 2) it being decaf, but dang, this tea tripped on the bar that was hovering above the ground. Hot water would have been a better bedtime cup.

Brewed some of this in a Pyrex measuring cup before pouring it into a plastic travel mug like a sophisticated person last night. Didn’t want to waste my last chance to have a cup of caffeinated tea even though I had to run down to the barn after work for horse activities. It’s a really interesting brew, even with the notes of polymer that you get from pouring hot tea into a “microwave safe” plastic cup and letting it sit in there until it’s cool enough to drink.

First of all, the dry leaves are beautiful. Spindly and long like antlers, they hook around each other with the curled ends and lift out of the bag in gnarled clumps. The scent is peppery and dark with hints of grape. When you brew them, they smell… like a classic black tea. Heady and brisk with a hint of tannins that you don’t actually end up tasting.

The flavor is completely free of astringency—I think. The plastic notes were overwhelming some stuff in the flavor, but I’ve had it once before in a proper mug and recall it being terribly smooth—with a definite brandy taste. Red grapes, aged wine. Nothing sour or tart about it. It’s easy to forget that you’re drinking this because there aren’t any potentially unpleasant or out-of-place notes that grab your attention. I think the best way I can describe it is as a polished Lipton. It tastes familiar and I wouldn’t hesitate to offer it to someone who likes a plain black cup of tea without any frills.

Still love this and I don’t know why. Might be because of how fresh and minty it stays in that foil pouch, or the balanced blend of finely chopped peppermint and spearmint that almost instantly infuses into the water without leaving any dust in the bottom of the cup. It’s my go-to relaxation tea and I will shamelessly take a mug of it into the shower with me after a long day of work. (If some shampoo gets into it while it sits on the shower ledge, eh, it’s 10 cents a bag. Not out that much.)

Filling in for the accountant who suddenly had to take the day off at the retail branch. This is the lone box of tea sitting in the kitchen beside the poor neglected Bodum electric water kettle that’s positively crispy inside with calcium from the questionable tap water. (Well, there’s also some Soothing Caramel Bedtime from Yogi, but I would sooner bite off my foot than try something with that ingredient list.)
Definitely haven’t had any of the zingers in awhile, but I liked them with some honey when I was younger. This one is tart, tart, tart from all of that hibiscus and added citric acid. It’s got enough cherry and blueberry flavoring in there to keep it from tasting like unsweetened hot agua fresca. It’s a solid hibiscus tisane if you’re looking for something mouth-puckering in the tea aisle of the grocery, but True Blueberry will always be my favorite from Celestial Seasonings. Can’t beat that blueberry pie filling brew.

This is a really beautiful cup of tea. The smell from the pouch made me feel like I had made a horrible mistake in buying a sample, because it has the approximate aroma of a burnt forest floor and charred bone right off the bat. Decided to give it a try this afternoon, though, so I can stop fearfully side-eyeing the pouch whenever I open up my tea chest.
The whole leaves are easily pried apart from the compressed brick with the tips of your fingers, no pu’erh pick necessary to avoid breaking them into dusty pieces. They smell like burned oak leaves; or the first whiff of a freshly opened scotch with tarred rope, heavy smoke, and peat notes. The liquor is a much lighter hue than you’d expect. Dusty rose brown. A very smoky aroma, but not an off-putting one. The taste is spectacular to me. Not savory, but ever so gently sweet, with a clean pleasant smokiness. A touch of minerals, a hint of aged wood, and the oakiness of something aged in a barrel. Feels like something that would be served to you by a chivalrous sasquatch in a pacific northwestern pine forest. He could easily win you over with it and weasel his way into a second date.