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Flavour: Ginger Beer

Ingredients: Rooibos, ginger, lime leaves, lemon peel, calendula petals, natural flavours

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7 for 50g

Review: An instant favourite! It smells and tastes just like it promises…but without all the sugar, fizz and calories! We couldn’t really pick up any individual ingredient – everything just blends so perfectly, with a ginger kick at the end, creating a warming, comforting drink to have in the evening – especially if you’re feeling a little warn out or run down. Tulsi started gifting this to family at Christmas, too, and everyone has fallen instantly in love with it – aa definite must-have.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn / winter

Best time of day to drink this: Evening

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Flavour: Celebration Gin Twist

Ingredients: Ginger cubes (sugar, ginger, citric acid), apple pieces, ginger pieces, juniper berries, acidifed apple pieces (apple, citric acid), cucumber slices, freeze-dried lemon peel, lemongrass, flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7 for 20 bags

Review: Cucumber slices, in a tea? Yes! And you can really see them! Just as the name promises, it smells and tastes just like non-alcoholic gin. It’s cucumbery and fresh, and even a little fiery, perhaps intended to be like quinine. It’s gin-like but milder – pleasant when had hot, but we can also imagine it being nice cold on a summer afternoon. Best of all, it stands out as different from many of the usual tea blends on the market.

Best time of year to drink this: Summer

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon

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Flavour: Raspberry & Lemon

Ingredients: Hibiscus, rosehips, blackberry leaves, natural lemon flavouring with other natural flavourings (8%), natural raspberry flavouring with other natural flavourings (7%), rose petals (5%0, lemon peel (5%), liquorice root, natural flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: Around £2-3

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: It smells like cleaning products…and it tastes cleaning producty, too. We had to fight to taste any raspberry. The box says there’s ‘a hint of rose petals’ but we found the rose before any fruit, unless you count the horrible citric acid feeling in our throats. Ginger asked, ‘Could it be nicer cold?’ Tulsi said, ‘It’d just be cold cleaning products.’ After a while, Ginger asked, ‘Why am I still drinking this??’

Best time of year to drink this: Summer, if you must

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoons, if you must

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Flavour: Moringa Passion Fruit

Ingredients: Apple bits, raisins, carrots, beetroot, candied pineapple, candied papaya, natural flavouring, moringa leaves (2%), lemon peel

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £10

Tin Size: 125g

Our Review: Hmmm…. It smells acidic…with maybe some papaya, and a background hint of beetroot. The mix is not appealing. The flavour, then, is your average fruit tea, as if it has hibiscus, even though it’s not in there. Then it changes. We get a bit of an earthy undertone…and watery vegetables. It’s okay, but it doesn’t really blend well. It’s just…odd. Who ever thought candied fruit would go well with beetroot and carrots?? (The Tea People, obviously, but you know….) So it’s not terrible, but we wouldn’t personally buy such a big tin of such a blend.

Best time of year to drink this: No idea, really – it’s an odd one

Best time of day to drink this: Again, no real idea

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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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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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Flavour: Feisty Turmeric Guru

Ingredients: Ginger, turmeric, lemongrass, liquorice, lemon peel, clove, natural lemon flavour, natural ginger flavour

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: All organic except the flavouring

Price Range: £4

Bags Per Box: 15

Review: Lemongrass again…so, it smells like cleaning products, this time mixed with the savoury aroma of turmeric. It’s a drink that makes you think of dinner time. Unfortunately, the flavour leaves much to be desired. Even if you leave the bag in for a long time, the taste never really develops. It’s incredibly watery, with a hint of turmeric. There’s a slight fiery kick, but it’s very brief, and then nothing. It’s not awful. It’s just pointless, especially for the price.

Best time of year to drink this: Whenever

Best time of day to drink this: Whenever

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Flavour: Detox

Ingredients: Fennel (20%), lemon peel (16%), lemongrass, burdock root (10%), ginger (10%), spearmint, natural lemon flavour with other natural flavours (7%), rooibos (1%), natural lemongrass flavour, verbena, selenium (1%), natural basil flavour with other natural flavours

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £3

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: If you’re like us, you’re probably looking at that ingredients list and thinking that’s a lot of ‘natural flavours’. Yes, this means oils and other essences from the plant used. However, in this case, we don’t see the point. Natural basil flavour?? Why not just stick dried basil directly into the blend? And what purpose does the 1% addition of rooibos serve? We also highly doubt that 1% selenium is going to do anyone any good compared to taking a selenium supplement or eating selenium-rich nuts. This is just something to stick on the box to make the tea sound like it has extra health benefits, to make you buy it.

As you can tell, we don’t like this – at all. It smells disgusting, like lemony kitchen cleaner. Tulsi’s son said, ‘No no no no no – if you drink that tea, you are wrong.’ It tastes just as bad as it smells: foul. It’s painfully sour with that artificial-tasting edge to it that lemongrass and verbena always gives a tea, despite it being a natural plant – and there are just too many other flavours in there, competing for attention, none of them balancing each other out. Being total nerds with day jobs in the financial services industry, we couldn’t help but look at all those ingredients and declare this tea over-diversified. Even in the tea world, you really do need a more concentrated portfolio than this.

We’re marking this one an AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: Never

Best time of day to drink this: Never

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Brand:

Flavour: Earl of Dorset

Ingredients: Orange blossom, orange peel, chicory root, lemon peel, liquorice root, elderflower, flavours (bergamot, orange, elderflower)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £2.50

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: So, Dorset Tea were clearly trying to play off the classic Earl Grey blend, but without the black tea. They’ve replaced it with chicory root, and we just don’t think this works – especially because they’ve thrown liquorice into the mix. When was liquorice ever part of Earl Grey?

The smell is like old, soggy grass, with an undercurrent of orange peel. The taste is orange and chicory…and chicory…and chicory…and then liquorice. Too much chicory is bitter, and liquorice is sweet. The two don’t mix or offset each other; they just contrast sharply, so that you get one flavour assault after another.

Maybe this tea is better if you don’t brew it quite so long, but we think it’s an odd combination of ingredients either way. We’re not saying avoid…but it’s definitely not for us.

Best time of year to drink this: Any time

Best time of day to drink this: Morning

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Brand:

Flavour: Zingy Lemon & Ginger

Ingredients: Apple pieces, ginger (1.5%), lemongrass (10%), natural flavourings, rosehip, sweet blackberry leaf, citric acid, chicory root, lemon peel (1%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £2.20

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: The smell of this is very hard to define. It’s sort of like lemon sweets – maybe lemon sherbets or lemon drizzle cake – with just a hint of ginger.

The taste is confusing. First, you’re hit with sweet apple. Then there’s a hint of lemon. Then, in the back of the throat, you get bitter chicory root. Finally, as you reach the bottom of the cup, it becomes undrinkably sweet and artificial berry flavouring lingers in your mouth.

There will be people out there who like it, but it wasn’t for us. It’s hard to know which palate this tea is aiming for. You can’t really relax into it because it’s doing too many different things that don’t blend together into one experience. And for something that calls itself Zingy Lemon & Ginger, it’s rather unforgivable that only 11.5% of the blend is actually lemon and ginger.

Best time of year to drink this: Summer

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon

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