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Flavour: Vermont Maple Ginger

Ingredients: Ginger, cinnamon, natural maple flavour with other natural flavours, luo han guo (monk fruit) and vermont maple sugar

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £2-3

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: Purchased by Ginger on a trip to Canada, we expected this to be awful. However, on brewing it, Tulsi took a sniff and said, ‘This might…not be terrible.’  It smells strongly of maple…but with something oddly savoury mixed in there…a hint of fruit…and then cinnamon. That sounds weird, we know. The point is – we were pleasantly surprised by this blend. On the first sip, you mainly get ginger and cinnamon. Then, as it goes down, you get a hint of maple syrup, but nothing overwhelmingly sweet. It doesn’t taste fake. In fact, it’s quite a pleasant dessert tea to have after a meal, and soothing in the evening. Not our absolutely favourite flavour out there, but Celestial Seasonings have definitely proven that you can do weird sweet treat flavours like this and make them good.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: After dinner / evenings

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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: 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: Dragon’s Breath

Ingredients: To be confirmed

Caffeine Factor: To be confirmed

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.99 for 50g

Review: A bit of an odd one because we were given this as a free sample but there were no further details on the packaging and it was never listed on their online sales page. There seems to be no record of it on the Internet, but we’re reviewing it anyway! It smells a bit medicinal and like Red Hots sweets…so it might contain the American variety of cinnamon. We also suspect it might have kola nuts. It tastes like Red Hots, too, but subtler than expected. It didn’t excite us, but we also didn’t dislike it. It probably doesn’t matter because you can’t actually buy it! But it wasn’t our favourite.

Best time of year to drink this: Ummm…you can’t buy it, anyway, so….

Best time of day to drink this: It was probably intended for the morning or 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: 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: Lazy Lemongrass

Ingredients: Lemongrass (90%), cinnamon (8%), cornflower (2%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: 100% organic

Price Range: £2.50

Bags Per Box: 16

Review: So, the thing is…we don’t really like lemongrass. Setting that aside, this is still not the best lemongrass tea you could buy. It smells like water. As Ginger Tea put it, ‘I have never known a lemongrass tea that smelled less of cleaning product.’ The taste, too, is so weak. Like water, again, but vaguely lemony, with a tiny kick from the cinnamon. It’s a decent enough lemony tea with no artificial aftertaste. But it’s just so weak that we don’t see the point. And why even bother with the 2% cornflower??

Best time of year to drink this: Ummm…summer?

Best time of day to drink this: After meals, maybe?

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Flavour: Dark Chai

Ingredients: Black tea, spice flavouring (11%), ginger (10%), cinnamon (8%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: Around £4

Bags Per Box: 40

Review: First of all…spice flavouring?? Why not just use real spices? The result of going the artificial route is that almost all you can smell or taste is clove. After just one sip, we couldn’t feel our mouths. It’s medicinal, almost…but also strangely watery, with a hint of black tea at the end. It’s not terrible…but there are definitely better chai options on the market.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn / winter

Best time of day to drink this: Morning / afternoon – not at night

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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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