Brand:

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: Papaya Lime

Ingredients: Apple (52.5%), carrot, hibiscus, papaya (8%), sweet blackberry leaves, chicory root, natural flavouring, natural lime flavouring (1.5%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: This. Smells. Awful – like rancid feet. The taste is surprisingly okay, though. In fact, it is significantly better than the aroma. It’s like lime squeezed on papaya – sharp, a bit tart, and somewhat sweet. The main issue is there’s that lingering citric acid dehydrating feeling from the flavouring, which makes the drinking experience unpleasant…not to mention the fact that you have to smell it each time you bring the cup up to your mouth. There may be people out there who enjoy this, but we won’t be buying it again.

Best time of year to drink this: Probably summer

Best time of day to drink this: Maybe afternoon

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Flavour: Apricot Jam Tart

Ingredients: Apple, apricot (20%), carob, rosehip peels, white hibiscus, rooibos, natural flavouring, sweet blackberry leaves, mullein flowers

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: You can probably guess what we thought of this one, but we’ll write up the review anyway. For whatever reason, while it’s hot, the aroma of this blend can only be described as ‘apricot feet’. If you let it go cold, though, it transforms into something sweet and pleasant. The flavour is also sweet…and, sadly, really artificial, despite the ingredients list claiming the flavouring is ‘natural’. And although we should be tasting fruit and herbs, there’s almost no flavour other than flavouring…which isn’t even really apricot. It’s really yuck…especially when drunk hot. The fakeness lingers. We have no idea where all the other ingredients are in the mix. We could almost get the carob, but that was about it. And when we let it settle and cool, it was just bland. We have no idea why anyone would want this one, especially such a large box. It takes ages to get through these T2 cubes, so if you don’t like the blend…well, you really won’t like it by the time you hit the bottom of the box. This is an AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: Please, just don’t

Best time of day to drink this: Never

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Brand:

Flavour: Coconut Cream

Ingredients: Apple, cocoa husk, carob fruit, white hibiscus, sweet blackberry leaves, coconut (6%), caramel pieces, flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £8 for 100g

Review: We went into this expecting to hate it…and we weren’t disappointed. They’ve taken the generic fruit tea mix of apple, hibiscus and sweet blackberry leaves…and thrown in caramel, coconut and artificial flavouring…as if any of that goes together. It sounds disgusting, and it is disgusting. Tulsi described the smell as ‘a teenage boy’s unwashed socks’. The flavour wasn’t much better. Perhaps impressively, it manages to be worse than Sainsbury’s similar variety…which we recently declared the worst blend we’d ever tried. It’s just so sweet and overpoweringly artificial, with a strong aftertaste reminiscent of the filling in a Bounty bar…but so much grosser. We just can’t understand why anyone would pay £8 to drink this for weeks on end. For us, this was a definite AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: NEVER

Best time of day to drink this: NEVER

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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: Eggnog

Ingredients: Black tea, sweet blackberry leaves, natural and artificial flavouring, hazelnut brittle (sugar, hazelnuts), nutmeg

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: Interesting! It smells sweet and biscuity, due to the hazelnut brittle – and a bit like custard, for whatever reason. The taste is reminiscent of caramel cream, but with a bitter aftertaste due to the black tea. We had divided opinions on this one: Ginger loves it and Tulsi doesn’t. So it’s not going to be for everyone, but we think anyone who does like it will love it.

Best time of year to drink this: It’s intended for Christmas-time

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon, particularly after a meal

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Flavour: Hot Choc

Ingredients: Black tea, cocoa husks, cocoa nibs (16.5%), natural flavouring, sweet blackberry leaves, cocoa powder (5%), chocolate chips (2%), chocolate drops (cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar, cocoa, emulsifier E322, soy) (2%), mallow petals

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: That’s quite a strange combination – chocolate, tea…and flowers. It smells chocolatey and floral, two things that mix on Valentine’s Day but maybe not so much in a drink. It tastes a little like black tea, but with a strong planty flavour, possibly from the blackberry leaves. It’s pleasant enough, but you need to add so much of the infusion to get anything out of it. It’s a misleading name, too, because the overriding flavour is plants, but with an artificial chocolatey aftertaste. It’s not bad but we can’t see the point in spending so much on this one.

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Morning / afternoon

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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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Brand:

Flavour: The Black Lodge

Ingredients: Chinese Yunnan black tea, Spanish olive leaf, smoked Chinese black tea, dried banana, sweet blackberry leaf, Madagascan vanilla, flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: See website for subscription options

Bags Per Box: See website for subscription options

Review: WOW, is that an exciting looking ingredients list! …too bad it tastes vile!! The smell evoked exclamations like, ‘Oh my god…what??‘ After a while, we decided it smelled a little like ash – while the flavour was artificial grossness. You can’t taste most of the ingredients. They are just drowned out by chemicals. It’s artificial yuck and a bit of ash. Maybe it’s called The Black Lodge because the lodge burned down. It is horrible…dressed up in very pretty packaging. It’s an AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: Never!

Best time of day to drink this: Never

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Brand:

Flavour: Tropical Mango and Moringa

Ingredients: Apple, carrot, sweet blackberry leaves, moringa (6%), red rose petals (5%), green tea (5%), natural flavouring, mango pieces (2%), natural lemon flavouring with other natural flavours

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £3

Bags Per Box: 15

Review: This is an interesting one. It has a much stronger aroma than some other mango blends we’ve come across, but the flavour is milder. It contains real fruit pieces, not candied like other offerings on the market, and these are nicely balanced with the other ingredients. The sweetness is subtle, probably offset by the green tea – but it also keeps that tea from getting too bitter. We really like it and think it would be good to have iced on a hot summer afternoon. It’s also nice to have after a meal, in lieu of dessert.

Best time of year to drink this: Summer

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon

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