Brand:

Flavour: Royal Moroccan Mint

Ingredients: Green tea with a blend of wild mints

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £8.50 for 50g

Review: This is, quite simply, one of the best teas we have ever tried, and the best green tea we’ve had. It supposedly only includes a blend of green tea and various mint leaves. However, the aroma is like rose petals, even just when you smell it in the bag. It’s sweet and fragrant, like very expensive face cream. Thankfully, the flavour is not too floral, only lightly rosy, and almost chocolatey – perhaps chocolate mint is one of the varieties included here. It’s nothing like your standard Moroccan mint. There is zero bitterness. It has a smooth, creamy texture and it’s simply delicious. We could drink it all day, all year round – though it’s probably best had in the first half of the day, due to the caffeine content. Even just the experience of it – sitting with the cup, smelling it, is like being in a spa with aromatherapy. This is hands down a must-have tea for all, and a strong contender for our favourite tea of all time.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Morning or afternoon – but if we could, we’d even drink this in our sleep

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Brand: Kusmi Tea

Flavour: Green St Petersburg

Ingredients: Green China tea, bergamot essential oils, and flavouring (red fruits, vanilla and caramel)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: Around £11 for 100g (loose leaf)

Review: Another nice one from Kusmi Tea. The smell is sweet, with just a hint of tartness, promising to deliver what’s on the tin: ‘scents of citrus fruits, red fruits, vanilla and caramel’.

The flavour is subtle. It’s a little bitter, due to the green tea base, but with a hint of fruit – particularly hibiscus. Despite the ingredients including quite a lot of ‘flavouring’, it doesn’t taste artificial. It also isn’t that sweet, despite the ‘caramel’. It’s basically a good green tea, but with a little something extra to make it more interesting.

It’s not our favourite of the Kusmi range, but definitely something a lot of people will like.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Morning or afternoon

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Brand: Kusmi Tea

Flavour: Kashmir Tchai

Ingredients: Black tea, spices (green aniseed, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, clove, bay – 34%), flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: Around £11 for 100g (loose leaf)

Review: As the name suggests, this is a chai blend originating in the Kashmir region on the border of India and Pakistan. Some chai brews are very spicy, or too heavy on the clove, to the point where your mouth goes numb. This one is subtler – less clove, and also less aniseed, which means it’s not as sweet as some chai can be. It has a mellower flavour, and it’s a bit savoury because of the bay leaf – an interesting ingredient we haven’t personally seen in other such blends. We really liked this one and think you will too. It’s a delicate blend that hits just the right spot.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Morning or afternoon

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Brand:

Flavour: Troika

Ingredients: Black tea, essential oils of bergamot, orange and mandarin

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: Around £11 for 100g (loose leaf)

Review: As you can see from the ingredients list, this is essentially Earl Grey. It’s a bit strong on the black tea, with subtle citrus notes – a bit sweet, but not overly floral. The blend is delicate and lovely, adding just the right amount of flavour to perk up a standard black tea, and it doesn’t taste remotely artificial like some Earl Grey brews can.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Morning or afternoon

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Brand:

Flavour: Euphoria

Ingredients: Toasted maté (50%), cocoa beans (30%), flavourings, orange peel (8%), orange blossom

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: Around £11 for 100g (loose leaf)

Review: Mmm…. We could easily leave it at that, but we’ll give you a little more. The aroma is very chocolatey, with notes of orange. It’s lovely and sweet and just about the most inviting-smelling blend we’ve ever tried. Happily, the taste lives up to the scent. It’s more orange than we expected, with just a hint of chocolate, not too sweet, and we couldn’t taste the maté at all (in our opinion, a good thing). Although this brew includes ‘flavourings’, nothing about it tastes artificial. The balance of ingredients is just right to create a smooth flavour that’s both delicious and comforting. We couldn’t get enough of this one and went through the box very quickly. It’s well worth the high price tag and makes it onto our ‘Must-Have Teas’ list.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime, but it feels especially wintry

Best time of day to drink this: Morning or afternoon

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Brand:

Flavour: Jasmine Green Tea

Ingredients: Green tea, and jasmine petals (2%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: 100% organic

Price Range: Around £11 for 100g (loose leaf)

Review: Jasmine and green tea make a gorgeous blend, when done right – and this one definitely does it right. There isn’t a lot to say, other than the scent is very jasmine, and the taste is strong on jasmine too, despite there being only 2% petal content. It has that lovely, soothing floral flavour, with just a hint of bitterness from the green tea. It’s balanced beautifully – and best of all, it’s 100% organic and comes in lovely little muslin sachets so your tea doesn’t become infused with plastics. So, it’s pricy, but we think it’s worth it.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Morning or afternoon

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Brand:

Flavour: Sweet Love

Ingredients: Black tea (35%), cardamon, liquorice root, cinnamon, aniseed, clove buds, pink pepper (3%), guarana seed (2%), flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: Around £11 for 100g (loose leaf)

Review: Kusmi originated in St Petersburg, Russia, in 1867, before the Russian Revolution drove them to relocate to Paris, France, in 1917. Russia has a long tea history, and Kusmi exemplify it. The quality is reflected in the high price tag. Still, it’s not as expensive as some other loose leaf teas out there – and it’s well-worth the cost.

A lot of chai blends overpower you with spice or substitute real spice with artificial flavouring. Although this one does list ‘flavouring’ on the box, it comes at the very end of the list and must be less than 2% of the brew. We couldn’t taste anything artificial. The spices blend together nicely. Although there is a strong taste of cloves, the overall flavour is well-balanced, and the black tea base isn’t too strong, making this one of our favourite chai offerings on the market.

We love the Kusmi Tea range. Tulsi’s husband picked up a selection on a visit to France, and they are all delicious and come in such beautiful packaging. Thankfully, you can also order online, without needing to book a holiday just for tea….

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Morning or afternoon

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Brand:

Flavour: Thé Arôme Vanille

Ingredients: Black tea, vanilla

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: 100%

Price Range: £11.75 for a box of 14 (although the picture shows a 25-bag box, which costs considerably more!)

Our Review: WHY does this cost so much!?  It’s not some fancy Chinese import tea.  It’s just a normal box of black tea imported from France.  You may as well buy PG Tips or Yorkshire Tea – it would certainly taste and smell better.

Shockingly, this one contains real vanilla.  We say ‘shockingly’ because this is one of the most artificial-smelling blends we’ve tried – and the taste is essentially black tea with a very faint hint of artificial vanilla flavouring.

There is no point to this blend.  Who in their right mind buys and keeps it on the market?  A quick online search will show that other tea-lovers agree.  We would never have tried it ourselves if it hadn’t mysteriously found its way into the cupboard at our office and therefore been free to taste.  No doubt some unsuspecting  tea-drinker bought a box and thought to pawn it off on colleagues because they couldn’t bear another sip themselves.

AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: Never, no point

Best time of day to drink this: Never, no point

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