Flavour: Christmas Breakfast

Ingredients: Black tea, ginger, cinnamon, natural and artificial flavouring, vanilla, nutmeg

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: It smells deliciously spicy, but not too strong. The flavour is similar. It’s like a mellow chai – because chai can be quite intense. This blend achieves the perfect balance of spice and sweetness. The vanilla is subtle, making the blend softer. It doesn’t taste artificial, despite there being flavouring in the ingredients list. Overall, it’s warming, soothing and pleasant, and it’s such a shame that this isn’t available throughout the whole year!

Best time of year to drink this: Anytime

Best time of day to drink this: Anytime

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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: 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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Flavour: Go Go Goa

Ingredients: Black tea, cinnamon, cardamom seeds, ginger, orange peel, pink pepper, vanilla, natural and artificial flavouring

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: 100%

Price Range: £7.50

Cups Per Box: 40 (approx.)

Review: It smells just like ginger nuts biscuits. It tastes like them, too, but it’s also slightly savoury – malty, like Spekuloos biscuits, but not as sweet. You can’t pick out any one ingredient. They blend well together, making a gentle, pleasant drink that we think would make a nice after-meal treat. It’s delicious and we highly recommend it.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn / winter

Best time of day to drink this: Afternoon – don’t have it too late in the day because, although you can’t really taste the black tea, it’s in there

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Flavour: Pu’erh Vanilla Mint

Ingredients: Organic Pu’erh tea, organic vanilla, organic peppermint, organic cinnamon, organic liquorice root

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: See above

Price Range: Around £7 for 100g

Review: This is a very hard one to review because it’s a hard one to describe.

The smell is gorgeous, bright in that way you get with spearmint, even though there’s no spearmint in the blend. Whatever peppermint they use, it’s an ultra-fresh variety that awakens all your senses.

The flavour is strong on mint, as well…but then it gets a little confusing. We were hoping for something like Twinings Buttermint, but this is completely different. We couldn’t really taste the vanilla…or the liquorice. It isn’t sweet, like we expected. It’s more like bright, fresh mint infused with that heavy, earthy taste of pu’erh tea…and then some bitterness that we couldn’t explain. The flavours didn’t quite mix, for us.

It definitely wasn’t awful, but it was a bit odd. We can imagine people liking it, but it wasn’t really our cup of tea.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn and winter

Best time of day to drink this: Morning or afternoon

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Flavour: Vanilla Chai

Ingredients: Black tea (65%), liquorice, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, natural flavouring, pepper, vanilla (1%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: Unknown

Price Range: £2.20

Bags Per Box: 20

Review: It smells HORRID, like too-sweet super-fake flavouring…and then black tea.

Thankfully, it tastes better than it smells. It’s your basic spiced black tea blend, but with that aftertaste all tea flavouring has. It’s a bit sweet and might be better taken with milk. It might appeal to some black tea drinkers who use a LOT of sugar and are looking to cut back on calories. We greatly prefer more natural, less sweet variations on this blend, though.

Best time of year to drink this: Autumn

Best time of day to drink this: After lunch or dinner, as a substitute dessert

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Flavour: Thé Arôme Vanille

Ingredients: Black tea, vanilla

Caffeine Factor: Caffeinated

Organic Ingredients: 100%

Price Range: £11.75 for a box of 14 (although the picture shows a 25-bag box, which costs considerably more!)

Our Review: WHY does this cost so much!?  It’s not some fancy Chinese import tea.  It’s just a normal box of black tea imported from France.  You may as well buy PG Tips or Yorkshire Tea – it would certainly taste and smell better.

Shockingly, this one contains real vanilla.  We say ‘shockingly’ because this is one of the most artificial-smelling blends we’ve tried – and the taste is essentially black tea with a very faint hint of artificial vanilla flavouring.

There is no point to this blend.  Who in their right mind buys and keeps it on the market?  A quick online search will show that other tea-lovers agree.  We would never have tried it ourselves if it hadn’t mysteriously found its way into the cupboard at our office and therefore been free to taste.  No doubt some unsuspecting  tea-drinker bought a box and thought to pawn it off on colleagues because they couldn’t bear another sip themselves.

AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: Never, no point

Best time of day to drink this: Never, no point

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Ingredients: Apple, rosehip shells, pineapple cubes, orange peel, vanilla flavouring, vanilla pieces

Caffeine Factor: Unknown

Organic Ingredients: 100%

Price Range: £1-2

Bags Per Box: 15

Our Review: You don’t really expect this one to be good, do you? Look at the name! To start, it smells like vanilla flavouring – sickly sweet and fake, not something you want to drink at all.

And it tastes like something the English Tea Shop would produce! Very sweet, like cheap ice cream or frozen mousse – raspberry ripple – or creamy orange ice cream, the really fake kind you get from an ice cream van. Nothing about it tastes like pineapple (or ‘pinapple’ as it said on the official website, when we looked it up).

They dress it up in fancy pyramid bags to make it look more up-market than it is, and then sell it in Holland & Barrett like it’s a luxury. Don’t be fooled. This is definitely one to AVOID.

Best time of year to drink this: NEVER

Best time of day to drink this: NEVER

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Flavour: Harmonise

Ingredients: Chamomile flower (25%), shatavari root (Indian asparagus), hibiscus flower, rose flower (10%), licorice root, vanilla pod (5%)

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: 100%

Price Range: £2-3

Bags Per Box: 20

Pukka Say: Balancing for women

Our Review: As expected with any ‘women’s tea’, the smell of this one is like the perfume section of a department store – but with chamomile thrown into the mix.

The taste, however, is more chamomile with a floral edge.  It’s a bit like Pukka Love, but more perfumed.  We’re not sure you can taste the other ingredients, like shatavari root – and if you, like us, don’t really know anything about shatavari root, it’s a traditional Indian remedy used to address hormonal imbalance in women.

Indian asparagus aside, this one is so similar to Love that we think you’ll either drink one or the other, but definitely won’t buy both at the same time.  To help you decide, Love has a more diverse flavour, while Harmonise is sweeter, with a rosy aftertaste.  It probably comes down to your personal taste.  For us, it’s Love all the way, but you might disagree.

Best time of year to drink this: Any time you feel a bit ‘imbalanced’

Best time of day to drink this: Following meals (it’s sweet enough to replace dessert)

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Flavour: Choco Mint

Ingredients: Cocoa shells, liquorice, peppermint, anise, fat-reduced cocoa powder, cinnamon, black pepper, carob, cardamom, ginger, peppermint oil, vanilla extract, barley malt, cloves, vanilla beans

Caffeine Factor: Caffeine-free

Organic Ingredients: 100%

Price Range: £2-3 (worth the money!)

Bags Per Box: 17

Review: This is one of our absolute favourite blends, especially from a standard off-the-shelf brand.  As soon as you brew it, you can smell the cocoa, dark and inviting.  A moment later, you’re hit with the refreshing smell of peppermint, sure to pick you up no matter what sort of day you’re having.

And the taste…!  It’s just amazing.  You can’t actually pick out all the individual ingredients (black pepper!?), but the combination is divine.  It’s fresh, with just the right hint of sweetness; the liquorice doesn’t overpower the rest of the blend.  It makes for a satisfying post-meal drink, in place of puddings – like After-8 mints, but subtler and with nothing artificial.

It’s the perfect morning wake-up drink, a delicious digestive aid in the afternoon or after dinner, and a relaxing moment of happiness just before bed – like Hotel Chocolat’s Peppermint Cocoa, but way cheaper.  But be warned: we each bought several boxes and they disappeared before we knew it.  Family and friends kept drinking it behind our backs!

This is definitely a must-have tea.

Best time of year to drink this:  A definite all-year-rounder.

Best time of day to drink this: Any time of day.  There’s a strong risk of chain-drinking, with this one.

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