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Flavour: Deckchair Dreaming

Ingredients: Chamomile (30%), apple pieces, rosehip, linden blossom, hibiscus, valerian (5%), orange peel, natural flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7 for 50g

Review: Just as the blend promises, it smells mainly of chamomile and valerian, with citrusy notes. The taste is as you’d expect, too – slightly sweet chamomile, balanced out by orange peel and general tartness. The overall blend is pleasant and soothing, a lovely brew for autumn evenings. We also really like that you can see whole chamomile flowers in each bag. A highly recommended night time tea.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn, especially

Best time of day to drink this: Evening / night

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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: Strawberry & Elderflower

Ingredients: Hibiscus, orange leaves, elderflowers (10%), natural strawberry flavouring with other natural flavours (9%), juniper berries (8%), rosehips, orange peel, natural flavouring, liquorice

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: Around £2-3

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: It smells like hard strawberry sweets, e.g. fruit pastilles / Haribo strawberries. One of us quipped that it’s ‘berry sweet’ – groan. The flavour is very similar to the smell, but with a subtle hint of elderflower cordial. There’s also an interesting earthy flavour, likely from the juniper berries. That might all sound like a vile combination, but it’s quite pleasant. We can imagine it iced in the summer, with fresh mint leaves, although it works as a hot dessert tea, too. And despite all the ‘flavours’, it tastes completely natural. We would happily buy this again…though it should be noted that we apparently had it the wrong way. The box says you have to drink it in a ‘glass mug’!

Best time of year to drink this: Summer, especially

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoons, or after a meal

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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: 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: 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: Fruity Vervain Delight

Ingredients: Lemongrass (27%), candied mango bits, moringa leaves (9%), verbena, chamomile, orange peel, natural flavouring, fig slices and sunflower blossoms

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £10

Tin Size: 125g

Our Review: This is another one that smells like lemon-scented kitchen cleaner. The flavour is thankfully milder, although we didn’t get any of the fig, mango or flowers promised in the ingredients list. It’s just lemony, and then sweet at the end. That said, it’s quite nice, and the other stuff thrown into the mix takes some of the edge off that lemongrass taste, which we normally find too strong. Just don’t buy this thinking you’ll taste much more than citrus. It’s more like a softer lemon drink than most on the market. We can imagine it being very nice iced, on a hot summer afternoon.

Best time of year to drink this: Summer

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon

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Flavour: Divine Elixir

Ingredients: China white tea, darjeeling green tea, China green tea (fog tea, lung ching, jasmine, jade pearls), candied pineapple bits, candied mango, natural flavouring, orange peel, candied papaya, strawberry bits, red currants, apricot and sour cherry

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £10

Tin Size: 125g

Our Review: Wow – all that…and no flavour! It smells pretty and sweet, like a garden in full bloom, with a touch of fruit. The taste is bland and watery, with a slight bitterness from the tea…and then there isn’t a whole lot more. We left it to brew for a looong time and couldn’t get more out of it. It’s not awful, but we don’t see the point of this.

Best time of year to drink this: Summer?

Best time of day to drink this: Who really knows?

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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: 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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