Lydia H Send Message

A favourite tea that I do my best to refrain from drinking till December. It’s lovely and orange-y, quite floral but then the body of it is sweet and spicy with a warmth at the end. The orange flavour is quite intense upfront but fades away in a satisfying way. Just lovely!

I’m not usually a fan of rooibos tea. I find sometimes the leaves can be really overpowering and dominate any other flavour that’s apparently in the tea and then the tea itself just starts to taste like soap after a while.

But my friend and I were making Christmas cookies, and she suggested a tea from her advent calendar, and this was the one we picked because it was sometime in December. The pumpkin spice gave this tea a really nice body, and more spice than I was expecting so it had a nice mouthfeel. It was slightly herbal from the valerian and did actually taste like orange, so, there you go. A rooibos tea I didn’t totally hate.

This is one of my spouse’s favourite tea of all time. They love it so much that we buy it in bulk, essentially. It is a very sweet, very spicy and very strongly-flavoured spiced orange tea. So if you’ve ever been disappointed by a Christmas / Noel type tea and didn’t think it would be orange-y enough, this one might be an option. It is so saturated in orange oil that the leaves have this shiny, wet appearance and it smells so heavily of orange.

It is incredibly sweet and spicy, and so if you don’t like sweet tea, this is not the tea for you. I find it almost too intense, but every once and a while, I crave a cup.

I first tried this tea at a cafe called Steeps, and it quickly became one of my favourite teas of all time. I immediately bought a tin of it and then drank it with great enthusiasm. When I went back to purchase more, it had been discontinued. I was really sad! I searched high and low for it but couldn’t find it. Fast forward to several years later and I finally found it, and I recognised it because of its toffee pieces.

I ordered about 200mg because oh my god! One of my lost favourites has finally come home. And … when I tried it, I have to say I was pretty disappointed. It is nice, totally serviceable, but the creaminess and the layers of the toffee flavour seem lost to me. It seems to lose its flavour as I drink, and by the end it just tastes like hot water. It still smells good! But the taste is disappointing.

So perhaps I should beware the power of nostalgia when buying long lost teas, lol.

I love this tea! It’s sort of a dupe for one of my favourite teas of all time – Pleine Lune by Mariage Frères – of course, it has nowhere near the same number of layers, but it has a similar enough feel. It’s creamy, sweet and then has enough body to support the almond flavour. It’s not thin or watery at all and there’s enough of the actual spice that you can see it in the blend. It has a lovely quality to it. This is what I remembered Acquired Taste Tea’s Toffee blend for, but it turns out it was Vanilla Almond all along.

This is a full-bodied black tea. The leaves are a lovely length, but I wouldn’t steep this for too long as I suspect it might become totally undrinkable. It’s earthy, malty and a little smoky. It’s got quite a few layers to it and I enjoy drinking it black as I think you can taste the subtleties best then. I would consider repurchasing it, but it’s one of the brand’s more expensive teas, so probably not.

My mother-in-law is the type of person who will save vintage tea sets, antique martini shakers and ancient appliances. Looking for some tea for breakfast at her house, I found this tea. I took a photo of it because the copy on the tea bag was incredible. I brewed it and was certain that it would be stale because I was certain it was old – but it was lovely. It was full-bodied, dark and a little smokey, not as malty as I usually like for a breakfast tea but totally drinkable.

I picked this up as a stocking stuffer for myself and others at Christmas. I thought it wouldn’t be the most fragrant tea ever, but Twinings makes solid black teas, so I shouldn’t be disappointed.

But I was. This tea was so bland. It is so flavourless. It is so forgettable. All of the flavour notes? I could barely taste anything other than some faint orange flavour. It is not worth the price and there are plenty of other orange/spice/cinnamon teas that are far superior and cheaper.

I kept this in the cupboard for years, for my mother-in-law. It’s a pretty solid tea! It tastes like black currant and has a base of orange pekoe, so it doesn’t just taste like Generic Black Tea. The one thing that I will say that is frustrating is that the taste / freshness seems to fade really quickly. This is not a problem for my mother-in-law as she likes her tea barely steeped, but it is sad when that flavour fades.

My mother-in-law loves this tea. It’s like the (1) tea she does actually drink. This tea is so elusive, though! I find it really hard to find on supermarket shelves and so I’ve tried a lot of similar Blackcurrant teas, but this one is probably the best. It’s the finest tasting, has a really smooth finish and a very delicate taste with nice body.