Beauty Renewal

I really, really dislike saying that a tea is terrible…but this tea is terrible :( So much so that I don’t think I can bring myself to try it again to see if I’m wrong.

The second I opened the tin, I was pretty sure I was going to have a tough time with this. Dry, it smells like old herbs that have been sitting around for way too long; musty and unpleasant. I thought that maybe it’s one of those cases where something good for you doesn’t seem so good (like Buckley’s).

It wasn’t any better steeped. At that point, it smelled like old grass; kinda like when you walk through a forest and come across a patch of rotting plant matter. I was scared to take a sip.

It has a medicinal quality to it. It certainly smells worse than it tastes, but not by much. I couldn’t tell you what ingredients are so problematic for me: white tea, gingko leaves, burdock root, tulsi leaves, elderflowers, papaya leaves, bamboo leaves, echinacea leaves, dandelion leaves, chamomile, sarsaparilla root and marigold petals. All I can tell you is that I couldn’t take more than a few sips while it was hot and one more sip when cooled to confirm I didn’t like it before it went down the drain.

The other Wellness blends got better ratings. Maybe this just isn’t my cup of tea (ha, ha). I feel bad because this tin was a birthday gift from a very good friend, but there’s no way I’ll finish it.

The only other person on the site to try this tea gave it a pretty dire review so I was understandably a bit trepidatious about drinking it. However I didn’t find it to be that bad at all – it might have helped that I steeped this tea like a white tea rather than a herbal tea, even though the actual proportion of tea leaves in the mix is pretty small. The flavour is distinctly herbal but it’s accompanied by a slight sweetness that makes me think of freshly mowed hay.

It hasn’t made me gorgeous yet unfortunately, but maybe it’s a cumulative thing. ;)