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: La Fudgy

Ingredients: Black tea, caramel bits (condensed skimmed milk, sugar, glucose syrup, butter fat, humectant sorbitol syrup, emulsifier: mono and diglycerides of fatty acids), roasted chicory root, pumpkin bits, natural and artificial flavouring (condensed milk, toffee, caramel, maple syrup, rum pot)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: The name promises fudge, and the aroma fits the bill. That isn’t necessarily a good thing! It smells so sweet, and the more we sniffed it, the less we wanted to drink it. For all that, it doesn’t really taste like fudge. It’s not that strong, more like standard black tea but with a very artificial aftertaste. So much has gone int it, but it kinda just tastes of flavouring. We can imagine some people liking it as a dessert drink – like a sweet black tea – but it wasn’t for us. We didn’t hate it…but we didn’t like it either, and although we managed to finish the cup, we won’t be buying it.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn and winter, maybe?

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon, after lunch in place of dessert…but not after dinner, when the caffeine may keep you up at night.

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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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Flavour: Sun Salutation

Ingredients: Cinnamon (26%), roasted chicory (21%), cardamom (16%), barley malt, orange peel (8%), liquorice, black pepper, orange oil, lime

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: 100%

Price Range: £2-3

Bags Per Box: 17

Review: This was an instant favourite. We’ve had a hard time finding it in physical shops, so the last time Tulsi visited Glastonbury (where she first found this one), she bought 6 boxes. You can easily order it online, as well.

It tastes just like it smells – smooth, warming and wakeful. Although the aroma is largely chicory with a hint of orange, you can’t pull out any one ingredient on its own, when you taste it. They’re perfectly balanced to create a drink that’s lightly spicy, richly earthy, and not too sweet. It’s refreshing but somehow hits the same spot as coffee, likely due to the chicory and barley malt. It’s a great one for the morning, or after meals, or in the evening when you want to wind down. We could drink this all day and never get tired of it – one of the best in Yogi’s whole range.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Anytime

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Flavour: Echinacea

Ingredients: Cinnamon, echinacea (14%), ginger, fennel, rooibos (10%), roasted chicory, carob, cardamom (4%), basil, burdock root, turmeric root, black pepper, astragalus, vanilla beans

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: 100%

Price Range: £2-3

Bags Per Box: 17

Review: A most confusingly delicious blend! Bewilderingly, it smells like apple, although there is no apple in the ingredients list – not just apple, but warm, hearty things, with a mildly spicy edge and a hint of sweetness.

The taste is most identifiably rooibos, despite this only forming 10% of the blend. There is then the flavour of spiced apple – again, we can’t tell you why. Perhaps it’s the carob. Whatever it is, the overall effect is warming, sweet, smokey and flavoursome. It’s a great one to have in the evening and quickly became one of Tulsi’s husband’s favourites on the shelf. We doubt you’ll be able to pick out any one ingredient as you drink it – or work out why it’s named Ecihinacea – but it’s a good bet that you’ll love it.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn

Best time of day to drink this: Evening

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Flavour: Honey Vanilla Chamomile

Ingredients: Chamomile, orange peel, natural honey flavour with other natural flavourings, liquorice, roasted chicory and lemongrass

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £2-3

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: As you might guess from the title of this review…we don’t like this one. Honey flavouring and ‘vanilla’ never really go down well with us. No matter how ‘natural’ it might be, it still comes out tasting sickly and somehow artificial.

And that’s exactly what we found with this blend. Even just the smell is like fake sweeteners. It is thoroughly unappetising. There’s hardly more than a hint of chamomile under all that flavouring, and the vanilla is non-existent.

The flavour is similar. It has an overly sickly sweet taste (no doubt a mix of flavouring an liquorice) that is utterly disgusting. You can’t taste the chamomile much, although you do get a citrusy undercurrent from the lemongrass (which always tastes artificial even though it’s a real plant)…it’s just that fake, nasty sweetness gumming up your throat.

Why would you ruin chamomile like this?? We couldn’t finish one cup between us and we will definitely not be buying more.

Best time of year to drink this: Never

Best time of day to drink this: Never

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Flavour: Roastaroma

Ingredients: Roasted barley, roasted chicory, roasted carob, cinnamon, allspice and Chinese star anise

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £2-3

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: This blend boasts of being a caffeine-free substitute for your morning coffee. As with many coffee alternatives, it’s based on chicory – and barley, which you can really smell. It’s a bit like Ovaltine. Interestingly, once it cools down enough to drink, it suddenly smells like instant coffee.

This is a substantial drink, round, full and savoury. The taste is quite bitter, like coffee (that’s likely the chicory root). It’s also heavy and hits you in the face like coffee. But unlike coffee, it’s a bit fruity, with a hint of sweetness from the star anise and cinnamon, and even the suggestion of chocolate (probably due to the carob). The flavour passes through several different phases with each sip, making you pause and think, working out what you’re tasting.

This was a bit of a surprising one that we really enjoyed. It’s a good one to help you slow down and experience the moment, making it an ideal accompaniment to breakfast, or even a nice one to soothe and ease you off to bed at night.

Best time of year to drink this: All year round

Best time of day to drink this: Breakfast, or in that last hour before bed

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Flavour: Lemon Zinger

Ingredients: Hibiscus, rosehips, roasted chicory, orange peel, lemongrass, lemon peel and whole dried lemons, natural lemon flavour with other natural flavours and citric acid

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £2-3

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: As with so many lemon-flavoured blends, this one smells a bit medicinal, or like cleaning products. It’s a bit off-putting.

With such a strong scent, you’d expect strong flavour, but actually…it tastes like nothing. There’s a hit of citric acid and…that’s it, despite such a long ingredients list. It’s definitely zingy, but it’s lemonless (totally a word).

We think this is an utterly pointless flavour. We only carried on drinking it to try to figure out what to say about it, but there was nothing but that acid, and after a while, we really didn’t like the physical feeling of drinking that.

We can’t imagine this being very nice iced, either. There are far better lemon options on the market.

Best time of year to drink this: Summer, in theory – but we wouldn’t bother

Best time of day to drink this: Daytime

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Flavour: Mint Magic

Ingredients: Spearmint, peppermint, roasted chicory, cinnamon and orange peel

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £2-3

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: This is a really exciting one. We’ve tried so many standard mint teas, but this one brings something new to the mix.

It smells like Extra mint gum. It’s quite a pleasant aroma that instantly opens up your nose, with a spicy hint from the cinnamon. it’s fresh and warm at the same time.

The taste is surprisingly more cinnamon than mint, although the spearmint is there in the background (likely enhanced by the peppermint). It wakes you up while being soothing at the same time. It’s also slightly sweet, but not in the too-sweet way that liquorice can be. You can’t really taste the orange peel or chicory independently, but they definitely add depth to the blend.

There is a plethora of mint teas on the market and this makes a fantastic variant on the staple. It’s a great one to have in the morning (to give you a little wake-up kick) or in the evening (to help you wind down after a long day), any time of year. It should also be good if you feel a bit unwell or have a cold, and it’s a good digestive after a meal – highly recommended!

Best time of year to drink this: All year round

Best time of day to drink this: Any time of day

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Flavour: Cinnamon Apple Spice

Ingredients: Cinnamon, hibiscus, chamomile, natural cinnamon and apple flavours with other natural flavours, roasted chicory, orange peel and roasted carob

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £2-3

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: This is a bit of a strange one. Celestial Seasonings are an American company currently based on Colorado. We’re based in the UK, although Tulsi lived in Arizona, once upon a time. As soon as Tulsi smelled it, she identified this brew as Red Hots in a cup. It tastes like them, too. In other words: sweeties / candies (depending on your form of English).

We investigated this and discovered there are two different plants that get referred to as cinnamon: cassia and ceylon, both species of the same plant family. Cassia is a reddish-brown colour and the most common form of cinnamon sold in the US, while ceylon is brown and more commonly used in Europe. (Fun fact: ceylon is the form chefs regard as ‘real’ cinnamon.) We believe this tea must use cassia rather than ceylon. The result is a much stronger, sweeter flavour than we’re used to from other cinnamon blends. Just like Red Hots (if you’ve ever had them), it’s fiery in the throat – and not particularly pleasant, if you’re no longer used to it (as Tulsi discovered).

We brewed this for different times, to see if perhaps we had just left the bag in too long. We found that if you under-brew, there is no flavour at all, but if you brew longer, the flavour is overwhelming (and, for us, unbearable). You can’t taste anything else in the ingredients list. It’s named Cinnamon Apple Spice, yet there’s no apple at all. It’s strangely medicinal, as well – and really sweet – and the flavouring, although quoted as ‘natural’, makes it taste rather artificial. Worst of all, when you finish the cup, you feel dehydrated.

In our opinion, this is an avoid – but we recognise that Americans, more used to cassia, might disagree. Still, if you’re looking for apple, look elsewhere.

Best time of year to drink this: Winter, if it’s your thing

Best time of day to drink this: After a meal, in place of dessert – it’s just sooooo sweet!

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