Brand:

Flavour: Time to Unwind

Ingredients: Lemon balm (43%), chamomile (18%), lime flower (3%), natural strawberry flavouring with other natural flavourings (12%), liquorice root, beetroot, vitamin B12, natural flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: Around £3.50

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: It smells like a bunch of flavouring…with a touch of fruit. The flavour isn’t too bad…because you can’t really taste anything. It’s like water…and then a hint of…something. Maybe chamomile. Yet, despite all that, there’s then an aftertaste that really lingers. This might be the addition of B12 – and flavourings. The combination strips your mouth with fakeness. All that said, we’ve had worse and can imagine someone – maybe – enjoying this. We just…no, we won’t be buying it again. There are much better alternatives out there.

Best time of year to drink this: No idea

Best time of day to drink this: Evening / night

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Flavour: Deckchair Dreaming

Ingredients: Chamomile (30%), apple pieces, rosehip, linden blossom, hibiscus, valerian (5%), orange peel, natural flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7 for 50g

Review: Just as the blend promises, it smells mainly of chamomile and valerian, with citrusy notes. The taste is as you’d expect, too – slightly sweet chamomile, balanced out by orange peel and general tartness. The overall blend is pleasant and soothing, a lovely brew for autumn evenings. We also really like that you can see whole chamomile flowers in each bag. A highly recommended night time tea.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn, especially

Best time of day to drink this: Evening / night

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Flavour: Ginger Beer

Ingredients: Rooibos, ginger, lime leaves, lemon peel, calendula petals, natural flavours

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7 for 50g

Review: An instant favourite! It smells and tastes just like it promises…but without all the sugar, fizz and calories! We couldn’t really pick up any individual ingredient – everything just blends so perfectly, with a ginger kick at the end, creating a warming, comforting drink to have in the evening – especially if you’re feeling a little warn out or run down. Tulsi started gifting this to family at Christmas, too, and everyone has fallen instantly in love with it – aa definite must-have.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn / winter

Best time of day to drink this: Evening

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Flavour: Winter

Ingredients: Rooibos (63%), hisbiscus, cardamom pods, raisins (4%), orange peel (4%), cinnamon pieces (4%, apple (4%), flavouring (orange, cinnamon, cloves), clove buds (3%), cardamom seeds, ginger (2%), cornflower petals

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £11 for 125g

Review: This inspired mixed opinions. The aroma has the sweetness of rooibos and citrus, with fragrant spices, just as you’d expect for a tea designed for winter. On tasting, Ginger felt the raisins made the blend too sharp and heavy. Tulsi, despite hating raisins, ended up finishing the tin and being disappointed when it was empty. You really need to shake up these bags of loose leaf tea. We probably got too much raisin in that first cup. Maybe there was hardly any, in subsequent cups, and that’s why it was so good!

Best time of year to drink this: Winter

Best time of day to drink this: Evenings – it’s so gentle and relaxing

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Flavour: Midgard

Ingredients: Green maté, lemongrass, spearmint, ginseng, gingko, nettle, cornflower, calendula and sunflower petals

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £6.75 for 60g

Review: This is such an interesting one, because we don’t like maté…but we really liked this. It smells like lemongrass…and more lemongrass…and maybe a little spearmint. The flavour is so nicely balanced, though, that both the lemon and maté blend right in with the other ingredients and become something new. It’s refreshing, a little sweet and very soothing – citrusy but mild. Not bitter and not like cleaning product – simply delicious. Another winner from them!

If you live anywhere near Glastonbury (or visit there regularly), you can bring in your empty glass jar and have it refilled at a discount to the full price. Alternatively, you can order online at their official website. Do recycle the old jars

Best time of year to drink this: Spring / summer

Best time of day to drink this: Morning / afternoon

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Flavour: Dark Moon

Ingredients: Black tea, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, white pepper, jasmine petals, rose petals, lavender petals, clove, nutmeg

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £6.75 for 60g

Review: Our first review for this shop, which Tulsi found on her last visit to Glastonbury. Her husband left her for an hour (it was very clear she would be a while) and she literally sat on the shop floor, surrounded by approximately 90 varieties of tea, sniffing each one of the tester jars until she went nose blind, trying to narrow down her selections for purchase to something reasonable. (She bought seven.)

This one has a gorgeously earthy, spicy smell. The flavour of the black tea is mild and not too bitter. Although there are a lot of flowers in the blend, it’s not distinctly floral. They got the balance just right, making an infusion that doesn’t taste of any one thing. It’s well-rounded and robust, dark and wintery. It’s so soothing that we have to stop ourselves from drinking it in the evenings – it’s easy to forget the caffeine. It’s also pretty to look at in the jar, too! Highly recommended. And if you happen to live anywhere near Glastonbury (or visit there regularly), you can bring in your empty glass jar and have it refilled at a discount to the full price.

Alternatively, you can order online at their official website. Do recycle the old jars

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn / winter

Best time of day to drink this: Morning / afternoon

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Flavour: Gingerbread & Orange Rooibos

Ingredients: Rooibos, coriander seeds, flavouring, red pepper, pistachio, citrus peel, almond pieces

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £8 for 100g

Review: This is simply one of the best! It smells sooooo Christmassy – and it’s so exciting to see the nuts and seeds as they go into the strainer. The flavour is earthy and nutty, with a hint of spice. It’s soothing, gentle, beautiful. A little savoury due to the toasted seeds, but in perfect balance with the orange peel, making for a refreshing palate cleanser. Despite it including the dreaded ‘flavouring’, you can’t taste it at all. Best of all, it’s different from all the other blends we’ve tried. Sadly, it’s also completely off the market. Confession time: Tulsi bought this, um…ten years ago, and we only got round to drinking it now. True, it was sealed in an airtight tin all that time, but even so…the strength of the flavour after a full decade was unreal. Please, Whittard, bring this one back next Christmas! It’s a definite Must-Drink!

Best time of year to drink this: When it’s cold out – autumn / winter

Best time of day to drink this: Evenings

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Flavour: Cinnamon Spiced Cacao

Ingredients: Cacao shells (56%), cinnamon (20%), liquorice root, ginger, natural flavouring, black pepper, cloves and cardamon

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: All organic except the natural flavouring

Price Range: £5 for 15 bags

Review: The aroma is just what you’d expect – chocolatey with a hint of spice. The flavour is lovely – chocolatey, again, but not too sweet. It’s a little like Yogi Choco Chili, or Hotel Chocolat’s old Ginger & Cocoa blend (but way cheaper and…not completely off the market!). Absolutely delicious – like hot cocoa but without the calories. Soothing and warming, and you’ve finished it before you know it. A definite must have!

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Evening / bedtime

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Flavour: Cocoa Brownie

Ingredients: Lemongrass, lemonbalm, nettle, cacao peels, cacao nips, basil, valerian, St John’s wort, lavender, star anise, passionflower herb, natural flavouring, hop petals

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: All organic except the natural flavouring

Price Range: £9.99 for 50g

Review: Such an unusual idea – chocolate infused with lemon to make a sleepytime time! With a name like Cocoa Brownie, we expected it to smell strongly of chocolate; but it’s largely lemon. That said, it’s not as strong as some of the other lemon blends we’ve tried, which usually bring to mind cleaning products. The flavour is complex, even confusing. It’s lemony but mild, with a belated cocoa taste. It doesn’t really taste of brownie, but it’s soothing and unusual – and we like unusual. It’s even a little malty at the end, which reminded us both of drinking Ovaltine as children. All in all, it’s a lovely blend to sooth you off to sleep at the end of a long day. Just don’t expect it to be very chocolatey.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Evening / bedtime

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Flavour: Blue Apple Lime

Ingredients: Dried apple pieces (28.5%), cinnamon, kaffir lime leaves (15%), blue butterfly pea flowers (15%), spearmint, lemongrass, lemon verbena, flavouring and citric acid (acidifier)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £10

Tin Size: 125g

Our Review: This one is so much fun. It smells citrusy – like lime – and it tastes like it, too! With some apple. Despite all the flowers, it’s not too floral until the aftertaste – there’s a bit of an ‘after-floral’, you could say. It has a subtle sweetness. It’s a hard one to describe – complex and distinct, interesting without being mind-boggling. It’s soothing and a good one for having in the evening, at the end of a long day. We also highly recommend adding lemon juice, which a) makes it taste even nicer and b) changes the colour from a rich bright blue to a gorgeous purply pink in your cup – magic! Just be careful not to overdo the lemon juice. We think it tastes best when the blend shifts into a kind of dark fuchsia rather than going all the way pink.

Best time of year to drink this: Spring / summer

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon or evening

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