Flavour: Strawberry & Mint

Ingredients: Hibiscus, dried apples, peppermint (15%), strawberry flavouring, dried strawberries (2%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £5

Bags Per Box: 15

Our Review: The overriding smell is…elderberries…even though there aren’t any in the blend. Maybe it’s the flavouring? We also get some mint, but…no strawberry at all. The taste is basically hibiscus mixed with mint – again, no strawberry. There’s also a hit of feet (flavouring) and something that’s gone off…like it’s sat in a cupboard a long time. It’s not an ‘avoid’ but it’s also not pleasant. Some people might like it…but we thought it was pretty yuck. There’s just no need for artificial flavouring, guys – when will people learn!?

Best time of year to drink this: Summer

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon

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Flavour: Summer

Ingredients: Apple (45%), hibiscus (27%), rosehip (10%), beetroot, sweet blackberry leaves, strawberry pieces (2%), blackberries, raspberries, flavouring (strawberry, raspberry, blackberry), safflower petals

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £11 for 125g

Review: Looking at those ingredients…you know what to expect. It smells sweet and fruity, and a bit beetrooty. The first sip is like your totally average hibiscus tea, with a hint of beetroot…and then you swallow it and all the flavour just disappears. The overriding tasting note is water, no matter how long you brew it. It’s pointless, especially for that price tag.

Best time of year to drink this: Summer, they claim, but why bother?

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon?

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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: Papaya Lime

Ingredients: Apple (52.5%), carrot, hibiscus, papaya (8%), sweet blackberry leaves, chicory root, natural flavouring, natural lime flavouring (1.5%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: This. Smells. Awful – like rancid feet. The taste is surprisingly okay, though. In fact, it is significantly better than the aroma. It’s like lime squeezed on papaya – sharp, a bit tart, and somewhat sweet. The main issue is there’s that lingering citric acid dehydrating feeling from the flavouring, which makes the drinking experience unpleasant…not to mention the fact that you have to smell it each time you bring the cup up to your mouth. There may be people out there who enjoy this, but we won’t be buying it again.

Best time of year to drink this: Probably summer

Best time of day to drink this: Maybe afternoon

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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: 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: Spellbound Cider

Ingredients: Ginger, apple, white hibiscus, pineapple bits (pineapple, sugar), roasted chicory, natural and artificial flavouring, cinnamon, orange peel, sweet blackberry leaves, allspice, black pepper

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: The smell is bleeeeech! It’s so stringent – a horrid orange with an artificial something, and some pineapple sweetness. And it tastes as good as it smells. You do get used to it, but that flavouring ruins everything and leaves an oily feeling in your mouth. Fighting to be tasted is a trace of cinnamon and apple with a slight kick from the black pepper. It’s very sweet (sugar), there’s a hint of tropical fruit…and then it’s just yuck all the way. It could be really interesting, maybe even nice, if not for that artificial flavouring. It’s not an ‘avoid’ exactly, but we definitely won’t be buying it. It had potential and they just spoiled it with chemicals. Not for us, thanks!

Best time of year to drink this: Um…really, no idea. Autumn, probably.

Best time of day to drink this: Evening?

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Flavour: Mulberry Ripple

Ingredients: Apple bits (apple, acidifier: E334), mulberries (8.5%), raspberries, natural and artificial flavouring, orange blossoms, rose petals, marigold petals, bamboo leaves, jasmine blossoms

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: This one smells soooooo good – sweet and fruity, like mulberry with raspberry ripple (exactly like the name promises). The flavour is initially overwhelmingly sweet, but then tart and, unless you brew it and brew it, quite watery. But it’s pleasant. We wondered if it would be nice cold, and the answer was no – keep it hot. Make it strong, too, because the taste is so subtle and it needs to be drawn out more. Then, it’s lovely. We’re just puzzled over what the bamboo leaves add to the flavour….

Best time of year to drink this: It’s intended for Christmas-time

Best time of day to drink this: Evening, after dinner

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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: Amalfi Lavender Limoncello

Ingredients: Green tea, apple, sweet blackberry leaves, beetroot, lavender, lemongrass, silver lime flowers, natural flavouring, lemon peel, marigold flower petals

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: See website for subscription options

Bags Per Box: See website for subscription options

Review: This smells really lemony! Just like sherbet. It tastes like it too – it’s that fake lemon flavour you always get from lemongrass…and absolutely nothing else. Beetroot? Where!? We dare anyone to tell us they can identify that when drinking this blend. It’s just cleaning product. It’s a fancy ingredients list in fancy packaging with a completely un-fancy taste for a high price tag. It’s an AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: Never!

Best time of day to drink this: Never

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