Antioxidant Tea

265/365

Another from the Varieteas box, and the second inclusion from Your Tea. This company seem to have based their range on the health-related properties or desired outcomes of particular blends, and they’re (highly) priced accordingly. This is their antioxidant blend, and is a black tea with china root, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, goji berries, eucommia bark, reiishi mushroom, knotweed, adlay, cinnamon, and rose. They claim that it supports wellbeing, aids and calms digestion, and improves sleep. Having only the one bag, I’m not going to be able to comment on any of these claims. What I do know is that it contains a lot of ingredients I’ve not come across before, so some research is in order! That’s a task for later, though, since at the moment I’m supposed to be working.

It’s an interesting one, in flavour terms. It’s quite brothy and earthy, and reminds me most specifically of mushroom soup. A clear one, though – not creamy! As with their Sleep Tea, the black base is super light, barely coming up golden brown. The flavour reminds me a lot of a sheng I drank fairly recently, and I do wonder whether the base is more pu’erh than black tea; that would make sense in terms of it being a digestive aid, and would explain the flavour and apparent lightness. One of the things that annoys me about Your Tea is how amazingly non-specific they are about the actual tea in their blends. They’re very precise about the other ingredients, including both the common and scientific names for each, but the tea is basically just tea. I can’t even say it’s style over substance, because it’s pretty clear that they care about what they’re doing – I’m absolutely certain that their interest and expertise is primarily in the herbs they use, though, and that the tea isn’t much more than a helpful carrier.

Anyway, earthy, mushroom, forest floor is what I get from this. I wouldn’t drink it for its own sake, and certainly not at £20 a box. I get what they’re trying to do, I think, but I’m not sure I particularly appreciate it.