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I’ve tried a few mint teas in my time, but I’ve yet to find one I really like. I’ve found them all sort of lacklustre and one-dimensional. This is the biggest exception so far, perhaps because it’s a blend of both Peppermint and Spearmint. Perhaps that’s what I’ve been looking for all along.

Let’s just say for starters that I don’t think this tea quite lives up to its “Mint Humbug” name. It lacks the vanilla for that, and the sweetness that would give. It certainly smells like a Mint Humbug, though, and it’s a stellar mint tea.

In the cup, this tea brews to a medium olive green/brown colour. It smells strongly of mint (as you might expect!), but almost as if you’re smelling mint leaves fresh from the plant, rather than the stale afterthought I’ve often found in mint tea. To taste, you get a strong hit of cooling menthol, and then a lovely sweet finish from the spearmint.

Put simply, this is divine. I may try replicating an actual mint humbug by blending with some vanilla, or maybe adding a pod to the cup as I brew it, but that’s for a later date. For now, I’m just content to enjoy this tea — my favourite mint to date!

I’ve had a lot of interviews recently, and so I’ve been drinking this tea often to help calm my nerves. I’m drinking it today because I start a new job tomorrow, and I’ve already got butterflies!

I think it’s the scent that helps to calm me most of all — sweet and hay-like, with a mead-ish depth from the honey. Summer in the countryside.

This tea brews to a glorious bright yellow — sunshine in a cup! It’s naturally sweet, although the honey flavouring cuts through the apple-like flavour of the chamomile a little, giving it a slightly more generic “sweet” taste. The smell of the dry buds led me to expect a little more honey flavour, but I suppose you can’t have everything. I say this with most herbal teas, but I think next time I might try adding a little real honey in order to achieve the taste I was wanting.

Chamomile was something I was a little bit afraid of before I started experimenting with whole leaf/bud teas. A lot of the supermarket varieties have a bitter aftertaste that I dislike intensely. This tea has made me reconsider, though. It’s naturally sweet, and very relaxing. A perfect bedtime or nerve-settling tea, and the only way I know of actually drinking a summer day!

I wonder if this kind of tea will always let me down. Every time I open a bag of fruit tea, I’m overwhelmed by the scent. Berry Blues is no exception — I can smell fresh blueberries, maybe a slight twang of apple. It’s mouthwatering. Put it near water, though, and it all disappears.

It’s not that this tea is bad. It’s naturally sweet, and has a wonderful tartness that’s not too OTT. It just doesn’t taste of Blueberries in the way I was expecting it to. I’m tempted to blame the hibiscus for overpowering the blueberries, but it might just be that I’m expecting too much. Perhaps no blueberry tea is ever going to taste as divine as it smells. I think I might try brewing this with cooler water and a little honey next time, and see what that does for the flavour.

In the cup, this tea takes on a deep berry red/pink colour, and smells generically fruity. The chunks of fruit are generously sized and easily identifiable. It’s pleasant enough to drink, but the scent had built me up to expect something I wasn’t going to get. Blueberries. Badly.

This is a good, robust, everyday tea. It doesn’t have the kind of flavour that’s going to knock your socks off, but it’s always there when you need something normal and reassuring. I usually drink this at work on a morning, when I need to wake up, and it makes an excellent start to the day.

I do prefer this whole leaf variety to the usual bagged fare you get from Twinings. The leaves are large and glossy-looking when brewed, the liquor is a deep reddish-brown, and it has the classic strong black “tea” smell. I think this would make an ideal introduction to whole leaf tea. Solid and dependable — the perfect English Breakfast!

I have to say, I’m not over-keen on this tea. I bought it thinking it sounded like a fabulous combination, but in actuality I found it a bit of a let down. Thinking of Liquorice Allsorts put me in mind of a sweet, coconutty taste, with a strong kick of dark, molasses-like liquorice. That’s not what I got from this tea. Instead, it was Earl Grey with a kind of bitter, smoky overtone. Not at all what I imagined.

The Earl Grey base in this tea is the best thing about it. It’s strong, robust, and nicely flavoured with bergamot. It’s a shame the flavouring ruins it — I had imagined the combination could be very complementary.

Still, never mind. My tea journey continues.

This is a tea I love, and never want to be without. My adoration of white tea came as quite a surprise, initially. I didn’t actually realise I liked it until I was introduced to whole leaf tea, having only had a dreadful shredded teabag variety previously.

This is such a light, smooth, creamy tea. You have to admit that, in the packet, it just looks odd. There are leaves, twigs, and the furry white buds, and the dominant colours are white, grey, and black. It looks very much like sweepings from a forest floor. But oh, the taste!

I don’t find this tea strongly floral, whatever its name might suggest. There is a floral element to the smell once brewed — it’s rather like sitting in a garden on a spring day. To taste, it’s very delicate and light, with a slight honey-like sweetness. I imagine it to be rather like drinking nectar.

In the cup, this tea has a much darker colour than I was expecting. There’s absolutely no hint of bitterness or astringency, however. I haven’t yet experimented with multiple infusions, so it will be interesting to see how this affects the taste.

So far, drinking this tea has been a heavenly experience, and one I will definetly repeat.

This is my second acquaintance with this tea, and I’m beginning to rather like it. I bought this as a sample with my last Adagio order, having only previously tried Mighty Leaf’s Organic Darjeeling Estate.

I find this a pleasant, light, refreshing tea. It doesn’t have as strong a muscatel flavour as I’d like, so my search needs to continue in that regard, but I am enjoying it. My steep time so far has been about three minutes, which I think I might extend a little next time. I’m interested to see what that does for the flavour.

In the cup, this tea has an earthy, nutty, slightly metallic aroma. This translates a little into the flavour of the tea, which tastes slightly musty and mossy. It reminds me a lot of a forest after a rain shower! The dry leaves smell slightly bitter, but, thankfully, this does not translate to the tea. In colour, they’re a mixture of green and brown-black, so I can see where some of the flavours in this tea that I associate more with green tea come from. My overall impression is of a smooth, delicate tea — perfect for a summer evening!

I have to admit that, at first, I didn’t like this tea. It’s grown on me, though. I still don’t know whether I’m honestly getting gingersnaps when I drink it, but my initial reaction of dislike has changed to one of appreciation.

I find this a very warming tea. Ginger isn’t the dominant flavour, as I perhaps expected, but you can definetly feel the heat from the spice at the back of your throat as you drink it. It’s not overpoweringly spicy from the off, either — rather, the flavour develops with each successive sip. As it cools, I find the peach flavour comes through more, which is actually quite pleasant. I wasn’t sold on the ginger-peach combination at first. As I said, though, I’ve found this to be a grower.

This is a “whole-leaf” tea, and the bag contains a generous amount of identifiable Hibiscus, Rosehip, Apple, Orange Peel, Peach, and Ginger pieces. The reason I wasn’t keen on this tea to begin with was because it is relatively tart, with a noticably sour aftertaste. I suspect these flavours emnate from the Hibiscus and the Rosehip, and I’m beginning to see what they contribute to the overall flavour.

In the cup, this tea produces a medium red-orange liquor. It smells more of the aforementioned peach that it does of ginger, but you can detect a spicyness in the background.

Overall, this tea provides more or less what it says it will. I’ve never come across peach flavoured gingersnap biscuit before, but if there was such a thing, I imagine it would taste approximately like this tea.