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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: Mu Tea

Ingredients: Mu tea blend (orange peel, liquorice root, peony root, cinnamon, ginger, peach kernels, rehmannia root, ginseng, cloves, moutan bark, coptis rhizome)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £4.50 for 20 bags

Review: We were very excited about this one, being a traditional blend in China. We were especially excited at seeing less common ingredients in that list, like peony root. The aroma was promisingly unusual – a little bitter, with a hint of spice. Sadly, the flavour was a little nondescript. There are likely different ways of blending these ingredients together. In this batch, the liquorice stood out the most, making it overly sweet – but with an edge of bitterness as it went down the throat, likely from all those roots and rhizomes. Overall, for us, it ‘tastes like it’s good for you’ and it’s a little boring. No doubt Chinese tea masters could point us in the direction of a much more impressive variety of the same blend – let us know in the comments if you’ve ever tried any!

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Morning / afternoon (it has ginseng and will wake you right up)

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Flavour: Cinnamon Spiced Cacao

Ingredients: Cacao shells (56%), cinnamon (20%), liquorice root, ginger, natural flavouring, black pepper, cloves and cardamon

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: All organic except the natural flavouring

Price Range: £5 for 15 bags

Review: The aroma is just what you’d expect – chocolatey with a hint of spice. The flavour is lovely – chocolatey, again, but not too sweet. It’s a little like Yogi Choco Chili, or Hotel Chocolat’s old Ginger & Cocoa blend (but way cheaper and…not completely off the market!). Absolutely delicious – like hot cocoa but without the calories. Soothing and warming, and you’ve finished it before you know it. A definite must have!

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Evening / bedtime

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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: 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: Spice It Up

Ingredients: Black tea (70%), cinnamon (10%), clove buds (10%), ginger (9%), safflower, flavourings

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £4

Bags Per Box: 12

Review: You can distinctly smell the tea and the chai, but without being overpowered by spices. The taste is quite nice…if you love black tea…because that’s mostly what you get. But there is a really subtle chai flavour, without being sweet. It’s like having black tea with a mild edge, which we’re sure someone will like, because some chai brews are intense. We enjoyed this one.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Morning or afternoon

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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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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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