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Flavour: Banana Bread Chai

Ingredients: Rosebuds, cinnamon, ginger, freeze-dried banana, cardamom, vanilla pieces, natural flavours

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7 for 50g

Review: It smells like…cinnamon! And tastes like…cinnamon! …and other stuff. You get that slight sweetness from the rooibos, and only a very faint hint of banana – which is a relief, because we really worried it might be disgusting. Instead, it’s a warming evening treat, ideal for the colder months in lieu of sweet treats after meals. Highly recommended!

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn / winter

Best time of day to drink this: Evenings

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Flavour: Spring

Ingredients: Green tea (75%), ginger root (5%), cardamom pods (5%), lemon myrtle, lemon verbena, flavouring (cardamom, ginger, lemon), marigold flowers

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £11 for 125g

Review: In the tin, this just smells horrible – cleaning products in the extreme. Once brewed, it’s much less offensive and simply smells of lemongrass. On tasting, however, all we got was green tea. Do not overbrew. Ginger literally flailed her arms on the first sip. The lemon and spices were non-existent. We can’t see the point of buying this when there are other, cheaper versions of the same thing – blends that actually succeed.

Best time of year to drink this: Spring

Best time of day to drink this: Morning

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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: Herbal Chai

Ingredients: Apple pieces, chamomile flowers, cinnamon, nettle leaves, ginger, star anise, cardamom, cloves, flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £8 for 100g

Review: It smells as expected – mainly of cloves. The taste is natural, despite the addition of flavouring. It’s your typical chai, but without the bitterness because there’s no black tea. It’s actually impressive that they manage to recreate that flavour without the tea. It’s very clove-y, but it doesn’t overpower and numb your mouth. The star anise makes it slightly sweet, so we would have this as a dessert tea. Very pleasant.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn / winter

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon / evening / after a meal

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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: Spinning Wheel

Ingredients: Rooibos, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, orange and natural vanilla flavours

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.99 for 50g

Review: From their Fairytale collection, this is essentially a Christmassy chai blend. The aroma is very strong – especially on the orange. It’s like cleaning products – Harpic, specifically. (Someone in our office said it smelled like ‘unhappiness’. Tulsi’s husband described it as ‘treacle’.) The flavour was better than we expected, although the cloves are intense, so your mouth is numb almost immediately. Maybe it’s meant to mimic the experience of touching the spinning wheel and falling unconscious?? It’s quite sweet, too. We really couldn’t taste anything but cloves and citrus. But it wasn’t bad, and it would certainly be good after a painful trip to the dentist. We can definitely see people liking it. Just…don’t brew it for the 7-10 minutes recommended on the bag…because wow.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn / winter

Best time of day to drink this: Evening

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Flavour: Mint & Fennel

Ingredients: Peppermint (41%), spearmint, ginger root, sweet cinnamon, fennel (9%), aniseed, liquorice root, cardamom (3%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: 100%

Price Range: £2

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: Despite the name, it smells overwhelmingly of liquorice, threatening to be intensely sweet. Thankfully, it doesn’t taste as strong. In fact, it hardly tastes of anything. It’s water, with a mild gingery kick…and that’s about it. We left the bag in for ages, but we never got any mint, and the fennel was swallowed up by other ingredients. It’s not bad, but we didn’t see the point. It certainly didn’t deliver what the name promises.

Best time of year to drink this: Summer?

Best time of day to drink this: After meals, for digestion

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Flavour: Baxter’s Chocolate Buns

Ingredients: Cinnamon, black tea, ginger, barley malt, currants, cocoa powder, chicory, chocolate drops (sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, cocoa powder, emulsifier: E322), natural flavouring, orange peel, cardamom, cloves, coriander, nutmeg

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: What a long ingredients list! It smells like chai, with heavy emphasis on the cardamom or cloves. The taste is more subtle, and we love it. Again, it’s like chai, but smooth and not overpowering. There’s a mellow hint of cocoa with a lovely cinnamon kick. There’s something grounding about this, and natural tasting. It’s a good one to sink into and drift off. It’s soothing and wintery, despite it being made for Easter. It reminds us a little of Hotel Chocolat’s Ginger & Cocoa blend. It’s unfortunate that neither of these seem to be on the market anymore…but maybe one day they’ll bring these back, because they are sublime!

Best time of year to drink this: Winter

Best time of day to drink this: Anytime you’d drink normal black tea

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Flavour: Go Go Goa

Ingredients: Black tea, cinnamon, cardamom seeds, ginger, orange peel, pink pepper, vanilla, natural and artificial flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: 100%

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: It smells just like ginger nuts biscuits. It tastes like them, too, but it’s also slightly savoury – malty, like Spekuloos biscuits, but not as sweet. You can’t pick out any one ingredient. They blend well together, making a gentle, pleasant drink that we think would make a nice after-meal treat. It’s delicious and we highly recommend it.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn / winter

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon – don’t have it too late in the day because, although you can’t really taste the black tea, it’s in there

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Flavour: Christmas Tea

Ingredients: Rooibos, cinnamon (13%), liquorice, coriander, honeybush (6%), orange peel, cloves, black pepper, anise, dried lemon juice, star anise (3%), cardamom, roasted chicory, lime, orange oil, cinnamon oil

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: 100%

Price Range: £3

Bags Per Box: 17

Review: This is gorgeous. We wish we could find it all year round! It smells like herbal chai, but milder, and with a slight fruity sweetness from the orange. The flavour is soothing and warming. It’s lightly sweet but with a warm spicy after-kicky-thing…and some refreshing orange. It’s a perfect, well-balanced blend that we would have every day, if we could. We hope it comes back next winter!

Best time of year to drink this: All year round (but obviously it’s marketed for the winter)

Best time of day to drink this: Evenings – perfect for unwinding after a long day

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