Bentley's

Don’t have a lot of details this was made for me at work, thanks @nknotte7801, so I know it was hot with no additives. The tea had a pomegranate note to its fragrance, the tea itself was astringent though, not terrible considering pomegranates are not sweet, but not great.

… there’s almost no flavor… I taste milk… and it’s brown but I don’t think this tea is tea
It’s more like colored water that smells like vanilla

woah gross!
totally and completely gross… I’m gonna go try this again… maybe I screwed up some how… but right now it tastes like oranges and butter
brewed the next cup without honey and instead used plain sugar… better.
It still tastes gross though.

What can I say, it’s black. That’s it. Nothing remarkable here.

Oh, I will say that it’s clean tasting, not bitter when oversteeped (oops), no astringency.

I’m confused. It kind of tastes like a mild chai. Smells like vanilla, but doesn’t really taste like it. I even tried it with some sugar, and then it tasted like a mild sweet chai. And by mild, I mean weak.

Hmm, I don’t know what I was expecting from this tea. But what I got was not great. I think what added to the disappointment was that I was coming off of a great pu-erh, so I was on a tea high, then this bummed it all out.

This is very pleasant for a bagged tea and doesn’t get sour like some fruit bagged teas I’ve tried. That’s pretty awesome actually. The mango flavor is subtle but present and lightly sweet. If you want an adventurous flavor slap in this face this isn’t it. But it does taste like a real mango and the mango flavor doesn’t degrade as the tea gets cold so good job Bentley’s.

As for the green tea base… it’s got a little astringent kick… the mellowness of the green tea comes through and the flavor is rich and buttery which goes nice with the mango but at the end there is a little tiny annoying kick. Kinda like lipton bagged green but no where near as bad and it didn’t show up until the tea began to cool down. So not such a big deal just drink this one hot and enjoy it.
But would I buy it again… eh… prolly not

I went into this thinking that this MIGHT be something more; that the nice packaging would overcome the disgusting fannings that were put into these god forsaken bags. There are about 10 teas in the package that I got, all of which I wish to review for the benefit of tea drinkers’ kind (if that makes any sense).

So onto this tea review. Let me just say, that the majority of teas that contain “spice” in them I hate. This includes almost any kind of chai as well…. And I’ll tell you why. There’s ALWAYS a grainy taste on the back of my throat which brings me to the edge of coughing. This tea is no different. In fact, there’s BARELY any other flavor I can taste other than stale caramel. Just wretched. The box art is quite nice however, which makes up for it…. I guess.

I made the rest of this today as iced. Why? I’ve been getting rid of a lot of baggeds, to make room for my looses! And I didn’t like this one, but I hate to just throw it out. Okay, but the real story is that I got my shipment of Hawaiian Oolong today from Samovar and my nephew is here, drinking all of my tea. But he just drinks it to drink it, he could care less about the taste. He wanted to try the Hawaiian, but I didn’t feel like opening that for him. New teas I like to have on a quiet day at a quiet time, so I can relax and focus on the tea. So I diverted his attention with the Key Lime and it seems to have worked. He drank almost the whole pitcher, while I stealthily hid my Hawaiian in a safe spot.

This one is decupboarded and not wasted after all!

Oh yeah, iced still not great. Actually loses more lime taste iced! Isn’t that weird?

I was waiting to try this one from the Christmas sampler pack. Sounded good, but no. It smells and tastes like I mixed my black tea with flat Sprite. The aroma is nice, reminds me of pie :-), but the taste is almost non-existent.

Earl Grey in green tea? Never had it before, I was intrigued!
Chinese green tea, very strong bergamot. I love the scent, and the taste is very zingy-citrus, something gingery, and a hint of floral. Earl Grey is one of my favorites, but I usually have it black. Loving this Earl Grey Green combo because I feel I can taste the bergamot for itself, the green tea doesn’t overpower. It’s more like bergamot with tea, not tea with bergamot.
This one is yum!

A good black tea, good quality leaves, but I tasted nearly no bergamot at all. That’s usually a good thing but it might as well have been an English Breakfast tea.

Second flavor my son and I wanted to try out of the sampler pack. This one had a strong blueberry scent, he could smell it when I brought it into the room! And the taste is light, not too sweet, but sweet enough. The aftertaste was interesting, very strong blueberry finish, like I ate a blueberry. I think this one is a keeper, and we’re going to try it cold as well.

This I’s a teabag. I’t smells like peppermint mainly. This tea has chinese black tea indian tea peppermint and carmel flavor. I steeped for a couple of minutes or so. I’t tastes like a decent black tea with some peppermint and abit of a twang guessing toward the carmel flavor. This I’s decent though wish there was more actual carmel taste though.

Tasted a little like Jasmine flavored Soap avoid if possible.

I have two large tins in my kitchen in which I stuff various samples of stuff that are too small to be put in proper tin or I don’t otherwise know what to do with. Consequently the contents of these tins are frequently forgotten about. I had a rummage through them because that Stockholm blend thing that Luthien had was inspiring me and I wanted one of those ‘big’ blends with lots of stuff in it instead of these simpler things that I normally go for for a change. I found some lemon grass, honeysuckle flowers and some red rosebuds that I didn’t even know I had! Also a sample from previously mentioned local shop that I’m not sure why I got in the first place. It doesn’t really look like something that I would expect to like all that much… Anyway, this one is a teabag that I got through a trade at some point.

It has a number of things against it. 1) It’s bagged. 2) It’s ancient. 3) It’s been stored in a plastic ziplock bag. 4) in a tin containing other stuff too and consequently reeks of rooibos.

Obviously I’m not getting my hopes up here, but I’ve only got this one bag and I might as well get rid of it.

(I just realised now there’s a typo when I added the tea. ‘Manog’ tea, indeed. snicker I’ll fix it as soon as I’m done with the post.)

It smells a little bit of mango, still. It also smells like sugar and something sort of lemon-y. And of chamomile, weirdly enough. Quite a lot of chamomile actually. I wonder if, during the trade, tea bags might have been accidentally switched around so what I’ve actually just made is a cup of chamomile tisane. Well, there’s only one way to find out.

Nope, it’s not chamomile in disguise. There’s a little bit of astringency (yay learning this!) and that’s about it. It has very little flavour of any sort of in although it does actually vaguely remind me of chamomile. The reason I can say though that it isn’t actually real chamomile in disguise is that chamomile, even really ancient chamomile of dubious quality, in my experience doesn’t really fade in flavour the way this stuff obviously have. The dominant taste of the whole cup here is hot water.

I’m a bit wary of rating it because I would like to believe that in a better stored non-ancient bag it would have been better, but I have to go with what I’ve actually got.

Rather ordinary Earl Grey teabags, black tea with bergamot, two bags steeped in the pot provides a warm and drinkable cuppa.

another from a colleague. a very good cup of green tea!