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This year’s NYC Coffee & Tea Festival was a bit disappointing, though I still managed to spend more than I did last year. The old venue was nicer – more centrally located and with fewer temperature control issues. They were giving out free (empty) totes this year but ran out before I even got there. In general, there were a lot fewer freebies than in previous years. When they’re charging $25 per ticket just to get in without a gift bag, one hopes for some perks. I used a discount code, but that was still $15 for the privilege of spending more money. I did sample a whole bunch of teas in the process. Some were better than others. I took notes. Now I’m going to share them with you :-) Prepare to have your dashboards flooded, folks!

Ajiri Tea does truly admirable work. They employ locals in the area where their teas are produced to make the labels for their boxes and donate profits to pay school fees for orphans. I like supporting socially useful companies, so I always make a point of buying something from Ajiri when I see them exhibiting. This year I tried several of their teas before settling on the mango-flavored black.

I sampled the lemon-flavored tea first. Apparently it’s award-winning. I liked it. The lemon flavor was very natural tasting, neither too sweet nor too tart, but more lemongrass than lemon. This was a very smooth blend. However, the lemoniness kind of drowned out the usually hearty base tea. Tasty, but not my top choice out of their offerings.