Brand:

Flavour: Peppermint Leaves

Ingredients: Peppermint leaves

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £3.95

Bags Per Box: 15

Our Review: As the name suggests, this is peppermint leaves, and nothing more. That said, there are many varieties of peppermint, and this is a strong, heavy one with a smoky taste. It’s good and full-bodied…but maybe not in everyone’s price range.

To give some context, Tesco’s Finest Peppermint Leaves gives us the same number of bags for £2-3, compared to around £4 for Teapigs. We can’t help but ask what makes Teapigs worth the extra £1-2. The answer is: nothing. You’re paying a premium for the brand name – but the Tesco equivalent is pretty much the same (nicer, in our opinion) with a lower price tag. Happily complementing this is Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Double Mint, which mixes it up with spearmint (delicious) – again, 15 bags, for just £2.50.

So, there’s nothing wrong with the Teapigs brew. It’s an excellent digestive drink, soothing and relaxing, and it seems to be of high quality. We just don’t know why you’d spend the money when you can get the same quality for less.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Anytime, but particularly after meals, to aid digestion

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Brand:

Flavour: Lemon and Ginger

Ingredients: Ginger, lemongrass, lemon peel, liquorice root

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £3.95

Bags Per Box: 15

Our Review: We were undecided on this one.

The smell is like really sweet lemon sherbet. Or cleaning products – Cif lemon, to be precise. It’s not especially appealing.

At first, the flavour is a little like this, too. It’s cleaning products, with a faint taste of ginger as it settles in your throat. The liquorice seems to follow you wherever you go; the sweetness just won’t leave your mouth. However, after you’ve had a bit more, the ginger starts to build and heat up, somewhat balancing out the liquorice.

It’s not our favourite, but we think some people out there may like this one. However, you really have to love it to justify spending £4 on just 15 bags, and we didn’t.

Best time of year to drink this: Any time of year

Best time of day to drink this: After meals, as a dessert substitute

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Brand:

Flavour: Fennel & Liquorice

Ingredients: Fennel (80%), liquorice root (20%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £3.95

Bags Per Box: 15

Our Review: Fennel tastes somewhat like liquorice (albeit a bit more ‘planty’), so this isn’t much of a ‘blend’. Instead, it’s like taking fennel tea and ruining it.

It is extremely sweet – not quite as intense as their Liquorice & Peppermint blend, but definitely headed there. We have no idea why but the smell is like cheap, fake maple syrup, and long after you’ve drunk it, a similar aftertaste lingers in your mouth. It’s like fake toffee, or squeezy-bottle artificially flavoured maple syrup – the kind you’d put on cheap Mr Whippy ice cream. It’s just bizarre.

Maybe that’s your thing – but it’s not ours. We aren’t big liquorice fans anyway, but these combinations are just too much. They’re infusions for people with a sugar addiction, trying to be healthy about it. That’s not our idea of what tea is meant to be. It’s not relaxing; it’s a sure way to make your teeth ache.

Best time of year to drink this: Any time, if you have insane sweet cravings

Best time of day to drink this: After lunch, if you’re desperate for dessert and trying to avoid calories

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Brand:

Flavour: Liquorice & Peppermint

Ingredients: Liquorice root and pure peppermint leaves

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £3.95

Bags Per Box: 15

Our Review: One word: yuuuuuuuck.

Yes, it’s great for digestion, and it’s cleansing, and if you suffer from low blood pressure the liquorice in this will help (avoid if you’re pregnant or have high blood pressure). But the taste…. It is breathtakingly sweet. It’s like being walloped in the face with an enormous bag of sugar. Not even sugar, but aspartame – it’s artificial tasting, despite being real ingredients.

And there isn’t really anything else to it. There’s an initial taste of…something (you don’t have time to work out what it is), and then BAM! Just sweetness, without any discernible flavour.  It strips all the moisture from your mouth and that lingering sweetness just stays with you…and stays…and stays. Ginger said she was considering eating a chocolate to get rid of the sweetness – that’s how intense it is.

This was too disgusting for us to get through more than a few sips (Tulsi’s husband didn’t make it past one). These are not ingredients that mix well together unless you have unnaturally strong sweet cravings. The word ‘sickly’ doesn’t cover it. This is definitely one to avoid.

What’s bizarre is that a quick check online brought up a shop selling a box of 50 of these for – get this – £47, on sale from £78! Who…? Why!?

Best time of year to drink this: Any time, if you have insane sweet cravings

Best time of day to drink this: After lunch, if you’re desperate for dessert and trying to avoid calories

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Brand:

Flavour: Yerba Mate

Ingredients: Yerba Mate

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £3.95

Bags Per Box: 15

Our Review: Yerba mate isn’t a blend but a leaf, known for many beneficial health properties, including antioxidants and potentially lowering cholesterol and protecting against heart disease.

In terms of taste, you either love it or you don’t. To us, it smells like tobacco and fills your nose similarly to walking past a cigarette smoker. It’s grainy and powdery and we couldn’t drink more than two sips of it. However, Tulsi’s husband loved it, finished the whole cup and described it as ‘refreshing’. So, people will be divided on this one.

The main thing to consider is whether this is the right yerba mate to buy. This is loose leaf (albeit tidily bagged), and it seems to be pretty good quality – and we’ve found it online for just £3.95, which is pretty reasonable for what it is. So if this flavour is your thing, this is probably a good one to try.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Morning

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Flavour: Popcorn Tea

Ingredients: Green tea, toasted rice

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £4-5

Bags Per Box: 15

Our Review: This is quite an interesting one – not our personal favourite but certainly interesting. It has a savoury smell, as if it’s been cooked. You can definitely smell the rice, and then the tea after. It also strangely does smell like corn, despite it being rice – and like tahini, despite no sesame in the blend. It’s clearly something to do with the combination of rice and green tea.

Tasting it, it’s quite a silky green tea. It has a very nice texture. It’s sweetish and does taste mildly of popcorn, even though we’re not sure how. It’s not bitter the way green tea is when drunk straight. There’s a strong, smoky rice aftertaste, and…yes, it even tastes like sesame. No idea why!

It’s a pleasant enough blend. We’re just unsure it’s worth the price. But we’re sure there will be people out there who like this one, and it’s always refreshing to see someone try something new and have it actually work out.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Morning

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Flavour: Jasmine Pearls

Ingredients: Green tea infused in jasmine flowers

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £4-5

Bags Per Box: 15

Our Review: We’ve had jasmine-infused green tea before, from many different brands.  We’ve never come across one that smelled quite this floral.  The taste, too, was soapy – like you’d expect from lavender, not jasmine.  And underneath all that soap, all you can taste is bitterness.

This one doesn’t taste as much like jasmine-infused green tea as green tea with a strange floral hit.  The two flavours don’t really blend like they should – and for that price tag, you’re better off buying a cheaper brand like Pukka.  Their Serene Jasmine Green is lovely, and somehow tastes much more natural than the Teapigs offering.  Alternatively, just find yourself a nice, simple green tea – because this one doesn’t add much.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Morning

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Brand:

Flavour: Sweet Ginger

Ingredients: Ginger (50%), liquorice root, cinnamon (25%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unkown

Price Range: £4-5

Bags Per Box: 15

Our Review: Okay, come on, Teapigs.  Anyone can do the maths.  Surely, if there’s 50% ginger and 25% cinnamon, there must be 25% liquorice root…so why no percentage listed?  Is there some hidden ingredient you’re not sharing with us?  Is that why this blend is so disgusting?

It looks far darker than you’d expect from a ginger drink.  That should have been our first clue that this would taste nothing like ginger.  In fact, it sort of tastes like nothing at all…followed by sickly sweetness (liquorice), the barest hint of cinnamon, a very faint hint of warmth (ginger, we suppose)…followed by a lot of, ‘Ugh, I can’t get this taste out of my mouth – blech!’

It truly is vile.  If you want ginger, you don’t want all that sweetness; you want fire.  We can’t understand the inclusion of liquorice, at all.  Surely ginger and cinnamon would be enough.  This one was a fail.  That’s why we’re marking it AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: NEVER

Best time of day to drink this: NEVER

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Brand: 

Flavour: Apple & Cinnamon

Ingredients: Apple, cinnamon, apple pomice, roasted chicory root, citric acid, sweet blackberry leaves, natural flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £4-5

Bags Per Box: 15

Our Review: The smell is delightful, like apple crumble warming in the oven.  Sadly, the taste is really artificial (that’ll be the ‘flavouring’) and far too sweet.  It’s like drinking liquid cinnamon sweets, but with a hit of bitter chicory and…no apple.  It’s simply horrible in a way that immediately brought to mind Taylor’s Sweet Rhubarb, which was also not sweet at all but bitter and disgusting.

If you’re looking for a good apple-cinnamon blend, turn to Pukka instead.  Their Wild Apple & Cinnamon with Ginger infusion is delicious, and much cheaper.  Another good alternative is from Heath & Heather – or, if you’re willing to pay a bit more, T2 do a great Apple Crumble blend that we love.  In other words, get anything but this Teapigs blend!

AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: NEVER

Best time of day to drink this: NEVER

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Flavour: Chocolate & Mint

Ingredients: Cocoa husk, peppermint (34%), chocolate chips (sugar, cocoa, soya lecithin), natural cocoa flavouring, natural peppermint flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £4-5

Bags Per Box: 15

Our Review: There are a growing number of chocolate-mint blends on the market, these days, and this isn’t our favourite.  As expected, it has the After-8 mint smells, but with a hint of earthiness and a touch of what Three Tulsi’s mother-in-law described as ‘the scent of changing rooms at a swimming pool’.  Odd, yes, but we know what she means.

The taste is mostly peppermint tea, but a little smoky and very bitter.  There is also a highly unpleasant aftertaste that we can’t define (‘changing rooms at a swimming pool’, Three Tulsi’s mother-in-law chimed in again).  What’s missing?  The chocolate!  Somehow, despite throwing in ‘flavouring’, they failed to make the flavour they were aiming for – an artificial failure.

We offered it to Three Tulsi’s husband, who said, ‘It tastes like car sweets…oh wait…oh, is it meant to taste like After-8s?  No, I’m not keen.’

This is ridiculously overpriced for what it is – it’s not even natural.  If you’re looking for a good chocolate-mint infusion, go for Yogi Choco Mint – or, if you’re willing to pay a bit more, Hotel Chocolat’s offering is definitely worth the money – but Teapigs is NOT.  AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: NEVER

Best time of day to drink this: NEVER

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