Brand:

Flavour: Inner Strength

Ingredients: Rooibos (83%), maca root (7%), cinnamon (5%), natural honey flavouring with other natural flavourings (2%), natural flavouring, chai spice flavouring (1%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free (but maca is still an energy booster!)

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: Around £4

Bags Per Box: 18

Review: It smells like creamy rooibos…and maybe a little fruity…with a hint of spice. It tastes…gross! Unsurprisingly, it’s completely artificial. That’s what you get when most of the ingredients are flavouring with flavouring with other flavouring. Perhaps it’s named ‘Inner Strength’ because that’s what you need to get through a cup of it…? Definitely an AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: Never

Best time of day to drink this: Never

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Flavour: Apricot Jam Tart

Ingredients: Apple, apricot (20%), carob, rosehip peels, white hibiscus, rooibos, natural flavouring, sweet blackberry leaves, mullein flowers

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: You can probably guess what we thought of this one, but we’ll write up the review anyway. For whatever reason, while it’s hot, the aroma of this blend can only be described as ‘apricot feet’. If you let it go cold, though, it transforms into something sweet and pleasant. The flavour is also sweet…and, sadly, really artificial, despite the ingredients list claiming the flavouring is ‘natural’. And although we should be tasting fruit and herbs, there’s almost no flavour other than flavouring…which isn’t even really apricot. It’s really yuck…especially when drunk hot. The fakeness lingers. We have no idea where all the other ingredients are in the mix. We could almost get the carob, but that was about it. And when we let it settle and cool, it was just bland. We have no idea why anyone would want this one, especially such a large box. It takes ages to get through these T2 cubes, so if you don’t like the blend…well, you really won’t like it by the time you hit the bottom of the box. This is an AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: Please, just don’t

Best time of day to drink this: Never

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Flavour: Butter Ale

Ingredients: Black tea, apple pieces, cocoa nibs, rosehips, butterscotch flavour, marigold flowers

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.99 for 50g

Review: Another from their Witchcraft & Wizardry collection, this time inspired by Harry Potter. The ingredients lists sounds amazing until you hit that butterscotch flavour. Then you think, No no no no NO! And that’s about how the drinking experience goes. The smell is horrible, like burnt sugar, and very fake. The taste is not as strong but incredibly artificial, with an awful, lingering aftertaste. We couldn’t taste the cocoa at all, just generic sweet and bitter simultaneously…and long-burnt caramel. Ginger managed to ‘suffer through’ the rest of the cup but Tulsi couldn’t have any more. This is an AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: Never

Best time of day to drink this: Never

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Flavour: Coconut Cream

Ingredients: Apple, cocoa husk, carob fruit, white hibiscus, sweet blackberry leaves, coconut (6%), caramel pieces, flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £8 for 100g

Review: We went into this expecting to hate it…and we weren’t disappointed. They’ve taken the generic fruit tea mix of apple, hibiscus and sweet blackberry leaves…and thrown in caramel, coconut and artificial flavouring…as if any of that goes together. It sounds disgusting, and it is disgusting. Tulsi described the smell as ‘a teenage boy’s unwashed socks’. The flavour wasn’t much better. Perhaps impressively, it manages to be worse than Sainsbury’s similar variety…which we recently declared the worst blend we’d ever tried. It’s just so sweet and overpoweringly artificial, with a strong aftertaste reminiscent of the filling in a Bounty bar…but so much grosser. We just can’t understand why anyone would pay £8 to drink this for weeks on end. For us, this was a definite AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: NEVER

Best time of day to drink this: NEVER

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Flavour: Cocoa & Coconut Rooibos

Ingredients: Rooibos (50%), cocoa shell (33%), coconut flakes (10%), sweet cinnamon (cassia), flavouring (4%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £3.50

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: Coconut never goes down well in tea. Can we all just agree on that? So – the aroma of this one is so coconutty, but in a savoury way, like a Thai dish but not natural. On tasting it, we quickly declared it the worst we’d ever tried. The most tragic thing was that we both felt the need to taste it again, to work out what to say in this review…but that necessitated drinking more of it. It’s just so overpowered by flavouring, and the taste of sugared desiccated coconut…left in a cupboard for too long. There’s a musty, gone-off vibe. We shared it around our office to get further opinions and the general consensus was that it was awful – in fact, someone said it tasted like ‘vomit’. Then, unbelievably, one person said, ‘I like it – I’d give it a strong 7.’ So it’s obviously a marmite tea…but for us, it’s an AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: NEVER

Best time of day to drink this: NEVER

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Flavour: Frosted Fruitcake

Ingredients: Rooibos, cinnamon, apple, ginger, natural and artificial flavouring, dates, fig, orange peel, sultanas, chicory root, liquorice root, star anise, red currants, cloves, white pepper, marigold blossoms, vanilla, rose petals, rhubarb pieces

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: Yeeech! All those ingredients, and all we can smell is ‘artificial’. There’s no fruit aroma, no spice…nothing, really, but ‘flavouring’. The flavour is no better. There’s a hint of fruit (sultanas, mainly), drowned in artificial vileness. Tulsi couldn’t even think of a way to put it into words, other than ‘undrinkable’. Ginger wasn’t quite as put off by it but still didn’t see the point, when there was almost nothing there to taste. We both agreed it was dehydrating. We’re marking this one an AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: It’s intended for Christmas-time…but no

Best time of day to drink this: Just don’t!

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Flavour: Golden Pear

Ingredients: Dried apple pieces, dried pear, rose blossoms, vanilla pieces, natural flavours

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £10

Tin Size: 125g

Our Review: Right. So. It smells like slightly fermented fruit, and you can see chunks of it in the bag inside the tin. The flavour sinks to the bottom of the cup, so you have to stir the drink constantly to keep things consistent. Then when it hits you…yuck. It’s a combination of almost tasting like nothing…and then ew. It leaves a citric acid feeling in the mouth, so it’s sweet and acidic at the same time…and generally horrible. We don’t know how this passed the taste test, or how the flavouring can be marked as natural, because it really doesn’t taste like it. This was an instant AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: Never

Best time of day to drink this: Never

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Flavour: Sleep Breezy

Ingredients: Lemongrass, chamomile (15%), rosehip, apple pieces, flavouring, blackberry leaves

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £4

Bags Per Box: 12

Review: We were worried about the peach smell, especially when there’s no peach in the ingredients list. It must be the flavouring. It was very strong and we were dreading drinking it. We had good reason. It’s not very exciting – it’s just bleh. The flavouring ruins whatever else it might be, because it is so artificial, and it lingers disgustingly in your throat for ages afterward. Chamomile and rooibos also don’t mix well together. It’s incredibly sweet. With each sip, the experience gets worse. It’s a definite AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: Never

Best time of day to drink this: Never

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Brand:

Flavour: You’re Golden

Ingredients: Black tea (70%), ginger (10%), cinnamon (7%), clove buds (6%), orange peel (3%), lemongrass, flavouring, orange flowers

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £4

Bags Per Box: 12

Review: It’s a very weird aroma…a combination of scents that don’t really go together. It’s sweet, and a little like cleaning fluid. Generally, it doesn’t smell edible. The taste is very subtle ginger mixed with intense bitterness…and nothing else. We just didn’t like it. And that bitterness, and probably the artificial flavouring, just lingers in your mouth and strips it dry, making you desperate for plain water. We’d rather drink normal black tea. We’re marking this an AVOID.

As an aside, the ingredients list on the box ends with, ‘No B.S.’ But there’s artificial flavouring in that list…and that’s definitely B.S.

Best time of year to drink this: Never

Best time of day to drink this: Never

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Brand:

Flavour: Future Is Pink

Ingredients: Black tea (91%), lemon peel, lemongrass, rose petals 92%), flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £4

Bags Per Box: 12

Review: This one is all wrong. It smells intensely rosy, a bit like Turkish Delight due to the rose petals and lemon (and flavouring). The flavour is weird. We weren’t sure if those ingredients really beong together. The box claims it’s a rosy variation on Earl Grey, so why no bergamot? Why lemongrass? It doesn’t remotely resemble Earl Grey. It’s quite bitter, despite not brewing it for long, and overpoweringly floral – like cheap, fake perfume. It also strips your mouth dry and leaves you desperate for a drink. It was an awful experience and we are marking it AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: Never

Best time of day to drink this: Never

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