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Flavour: Redbush Caramel Velvet

Ingredients: Redbush, caramel flavouring (2.5%), safflowers (1%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: Around £6

Bags Per Box: 15

Review: It smells like rooibos with artificial vanilla. The flavour is also strong on the rooibos, a little creamy, and very sweet…and very fake. For that reason, it’s not for us. However, we can imagine some people liking it. The main issue is the price. It’s so expensive for something that is ultimately a very generic tea with artificial flavouring. It’s not terrible, but we don’t see why anyone would bother. It’s also a total mystery why the safflowers are in this blend or what they’re meant to add to the taste.

Best time of year to drink this: …autumn?

Best time of day to drink this: After lunch or dinner

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Flavour: Autumn

Ingredients: Rooibos (28%), cocoa husk, ginger root (15%), apple pomace (12%), cinnamon pieces (10%), citric acid, flavouring (macadamia, brittle, roasted almond, cheesecake, hazelnut), sunflower petals, safflower petals

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £11 for 125g

Review: Unsurprisingly, this smells and tastes really fake. It goes through two phases. First you get the natural ingredients, and they’re quite pleasant. Then you get the flavouring, and it just lingers. It’s this indistinguishable sweet flavour that hangs around for a party and dehydrates you. Why why why throw in all that flavouring? Especially for that price tag! Cut all that out and this could have been really nice. Someone will probably like it, but for us, it’s a no.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn, they say

Best time of day to drink this: After a meal – it’s definitely a dessert drink

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Flavour: Summer

Ingredients: Apple (45%), hibiscus (27%), rosehip (10%), beetroot, sweet blackberry leaves, strawberry pieces (2%), blackberries, raspberries, flavouring (strawberry, raspberry, blackberry), safflower petals

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £11 for 125g

Review: Looking at those ingredients…you know what to expect. It smells sweet and fruity, and a bit beetrooty. The first sip is like your totally average hibiscus tea, with a hint of beetroot…and then you swallow it and all the flavour just disappears. The overriding tasting note is water, no matter how long you brew it. It’s pointless, especially for that price tag.

Best time of year to drink this: Summer, they claim, but why bother?

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon?

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Flavour: Earthstar

Ingredients: Rooibos, cacao beans, orange pieces, lemongrass, cornflower petals, calendula petals, safflower petals, natural flavours

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £6.75 for 60g

Review: Mmmm…so refreshing! Lightly chocolatey, with the cleansing, bright flavour of citrus. A perfect balance of ingrdients, where every sip soothes and brings a smile to your face. Even just hovering over the cup and smelling it makes your day feel a little better – it’s like a completely natural Terry’s chocolate orange. Simply gorgeous and highly recommended. We’re marking this a must-have tea.

If you 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: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Anytime – could perk you up in the morning, re-energise in the late afternoon, or soothe in the evening

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Flavour: Base

Ingredients: Black tea, pomegranate, cherry stems, moringa, cacao beans, cranberry, cornflower and safflower petals

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £6.75 for 60g

Review: Another interesting one from this company. It smells like a black forest gateau, chocolatey and fruity. It tastes like so much more, though. It journeys through a variety of flavours, almost citrusy at first, with black tea at the end. It’s a little tart, but with a smooth chocolatey aftertaste. Complex and gorgeous, it’s very hard to describe – but we highly recommend it as a rounded, warming drink to start your day.

If you 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: Spring / summer

Best time of day to drink this: Morning / afternoon

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Brand:

Flavour: Choco Mint Rooibos

Ingredients: Rooibos, peppermint leaves, carob and cacao bean pieces, calendula and safflower petals, and natural flavours

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £10

Tin Size: 125g

Our Review: We sooooo wanted to love this…but they’ve spoiled a great idea by throwing in those flowers. It smells a lot like T2’s Red Choc Mint (one of our absolute favourites), but with quite a chocolatey after-whiff! Strangely, you can’t really taste that. The flavour is bitter (probably from the calendula) and heavy on the mint (as if they’ve used the essential oil)…with some chocolate as an afterthought. They tried too hard to be different by throwing in extras that we don’t think need to be there. They ruin the delicate balance of the main ingredients, and at that price tag, we wouldn’t bother with this one. It’s not bad…but there are better variations on this idea.

Best time of year to drink this: Summer?

Best time of day to drink this: Morning or afternoon

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Flavour: Spiced Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients: Apple bits (apple, acidifier, citric acid), pumpkin bits (10%), carrot bits, candied papaya bits (papaya, sugar), ginger bits, flavouring, turmeric, pumpkin seeds (3.5%), bean peels, cinnamon sticks, safflower blossoms

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £10

Tin Size: 125g

Our Review: Bean peels…??? Crazy! The smell is savoury, like a curry plant rather than tea or even fruit…although there is a hint of citrusy sweetness buried deep, deep, deep underneath. The taste is very pumpkin-like, and strong on spice. So it definitely does what it says on the tin. But…is that a good thing?? It is so unusual, and not really the kind of thing you’d want to drink. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they ditched the fruit. It doesn’t quite mix with the pumpkin. The taste is so strong that it slaps you in the face. It’s sharp and tinged with artificial flavours. It’s very rich and indulgent and not something you could drink every day. We ended up throwing it away (but keeping the beautiful tin!), because we could find no one who wanted to drink it. That said…it’s so odd that someone out there might actually enjoy it in a way that we didn’t. So it’s not an avoid…but you have to be prepared for it.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon

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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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Brand:

Flavour: Wild at Heart

Ingredients: Hibiscus, apple pieces, rosehip, blackberry leaves, blackcurrant leaves, flavouring, strawberry pieces (1%), pink pepper (1%), safflower

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £4

Bags Per Box: 12

Review: Looking at the ingredients, we immediately decided this was another one of those fruity teas that are all more or less the same. It smells very strongly of strawberry, which is nice but likely down to the flavouring more than the 1% strawberry pieces. The flavour is very strong, too, and hard to pin down. After a while, we decided it was artificial rose…and strawberry Jolly Rancher sweets. It’s not awful, but it’s quite tart. We can imagine someone liking it, but we prefer other variations of this same sort of blend.

Best time of year to drink this: Spring or summer

Best time of day to drink this: After a meal – it’s quite sweet

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Flavour: Raspberry Lickylegs

Ingredients: Liquorice root, apple, chamomile, eucalyptus leaves, raspberries, raspberry leaves, flavouring, rose petals, cranberries, safflower petals

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: 100%

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: We’ll preface this by saying we expected to hate it – but it didn’t turn out that way.

The smell is planty, but also overly sweet and artificial – disgusting, even – and you get a strange sense of ‘medicine’ from the inclusion of the eucalyptus. Thankfully, the actual flavour isn’t so bad. It’s quite sweet, but not as strong as we expected from a tea that lists liquorice as its main ingredient. As for the rest: we’re not sure why there are so many ingredients when you can hardly taste most of them. The main problem is that there’s a horrible aftertaste that really hangs around. This is no doubt due to the ‘flavouring’ (not even ‘natural’) listed in the ingredients. That aside…it’s alright. It’s a fairly generic fruity tea (surprisingly lacking hibiscus), with liquorice as a sweetener. It’s not for us, but we can imagine someone out there enjoying it.

We’d certainly pick it over Just Hibiscus or Foot Tea.

Best time of year to drink this: Summer

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon

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