English Tea Shop

I was teased yesterday about more tea coming into the house when there’s so much in the cabinet already. Decided it was time to maybe finish off some of the teas that have been hanging out in the “new to me” tin to see if they are keepers or ones to give away.
I’m fairly certain this was in my stocking last year. I’m a big fan of gingerbread so I tried to go into this with low expectations. Sometimes the names of the teas don’t match up to the actual flavors. I taste apple and ginger but weakly. A longer steep might have brought out more of the flavors. I steeped for about 4 minutes and should have let it sit for a bit longer but I was impatient. Overall, not a bad tea but as a Gingerbread lover, I wanted more spices and snap.

I tried a sachet of this (from Easter 2023 when I bought myself a gift set of 12 different herbals to try) and I love the little pyramid box it comes in.

I cold brewed this three times and it brewed three strong cups.

650 mL cold water for 2 hours + ice – a strong cup that is dark orange and fragrant. I smell honey notes and I can smell rooibos more than honeybush. It tastes slightly minerally (as rooibos does) with lightly dried grass and sticks, but also a honey floral note. The more I pay attention to the flavours, the more I can make out distinctive fruits. I get some acai, but even more I get cherry, orange, and red fruits. The hibiscus is mild but actually adds a fruity note and a nice bit of acidity.

650 mL with ice this time for ~45 minutes – a lighter steep but still 70% of the flavour of the previous cup. I drank it fast because it’s so hot out and I am very thirsty doing yard work

650 mL for about 6 hours in the fridge – another heavy steep. I get even more cherry and pomegranate but no acai. I think I get some plum notes and maybe apricot or peach. Much less hibiscus now but the fruity flavour is a bit more generic.

This was in a my Christmas stocking this past December in festive holiday packaging. I remember thinking Ghostly Green was an odd name to add into a Christmas based tea collection but hooray for a tea I’ve not had before.
There is a strong mint flavor with a hint of floral in the back. There’s a bit of creaminess to it as the tea cools.

not too bitter! I’m quite surprised I liked this, as English Breakfast tends to be too much for me

Happy New Year!
Starting off the day with a mug of Festive Spice. This year my Christmas stocking was filled with tea instead of candy. Not a bad thing at all in my opinion.
This is not a bad black tea. It does seem to have some astringency to it and I would probably add a bit of sweetener or milk to it in the future. The pepper is a nice zing to it but I don’t taste any of the other spices involved.

Not overwhelming, warm with a fresh backdrop

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Days 18 & 25

Oh yes, I am indeed rating an advent tea today! Haha. I’m finally almost done with my English Tea Shop advent. It was a thoughtful gift to receive, but I wasn’t impressed with the tea itself. This one was unobjectionable but underwhelming. There’s black tea and rooibos, which intrigues me. I guess I do get a bit of a medicinal rooibos as it cools, but otherwise it’s mostly a dusty black tea with a bit of creaminess and some clove. It does not remind me of an Irish holiday in any sense of the phrase. :D

This has been the only tea I’ve had rooibos in it that I actually liked. The flavors were well balanced. I hate that it’s only available in an advent calendar. It defies marketing logic to make something with only a single tea bag and customers can’t find the tea afterwards. I hope they wise up and sell this tea on its own.

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Day 15

I accidentally over-steeped this one while puttering this evening, so I’ll abstain from rating it! It smelled really nice, with sweet berry notes, but there’s a bitter, metallic edge to it that I assume is because I over-steeped it. Or maybe that’s what garcinia fruit tastes like?!

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Days 12 & 22

I am woefully behind on my notes for this calendar, but it’s partially because they keep repeating teas!

Day 12 was the first time for this one, though. I’ve got a nostalgic love for any kind of Candy Cane Lane-inspired tea, so I was pleased to see this one. Unsurprisingly, the ingredient list is chock full of random garbage that does not need to be there, but apparently that’s English Tea Shop’s MO.

Anyway, yep, this was a wholly inoffensive minty green tea. No flavors really stand out, and it could do with more of a creamy vanilla flavor to evoke a candy cane/peppermint candy, but it’s fine. Not a best in show when it comes to this flavor profile, but entirely drinkable.

Edit: This one showed up again on day 22, and I’m getting more of the creamy vanilla flavor today. Upping my rating accordingly!

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Day 10

#1: If I were a Spice Girl, this is 100% the name I’d use!
#2: …why is there a second Halloween-sounding blend in this advent? We already had Ghostly Green!
#3: ………why are there so many teas in this calendar that are just iterations of the same ingredients?! I can’t tell this one apart from the other three or four similarly flavored blends. It’s also just a muddled mess. I don’t understand the point.

Last tea of the advent calendar! Woohoo!

This is described on the box as ‘organic rooibos herbal tea with ginger, cocoa, star anise and mace’, but honestly all I taste is the rooibos. There’s maybe a slight hint of cocoa melding with the woody rooibos, and a bit of a spicy kick at the end though I can’t actually taste the ginger. I think I detect a very slight whisper of star anise if I go searching for it, but really that’s just because I’m looking, and that goes for all of the flavours I’ve mentioned. I think if somebody gave me this and told me it was a straight-up rooibos, I would believe them.

It’s a shame to end the calendar on such a womp womp , but to be honest it pretty much summarises my overall experience with it. Aside from the Chai Charge which was a rooibos and garlic mess, nothing has been too offensive, but nothing has stood out either. In a way, this ‘rooibos with a hundred additives that results in a cup that tastes like a plain rooibos’ is a fitting way for the advent to fizzle out.

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Days 7 & 11

I’m a big fan of Halloween/winter holiday/Christmas crossovers (Spookmas!), but even I don’t understand why this one is in a “festive” advent calendar. Is it referencing the ghosts from A Christmas Carol?! Maybe. As Nattie pointed out when this one came up in her advent, the palate and name are eerily (heh) similar to 52Teas’ Graveyard Mist. The latter quickly became one of my favorite teas when I tried it earlier this year, so I was curious how this one would match up.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t hold a [flickering, drippy] candle to Graveyard Mist. I’m actually getting only a tiny amount of mintiness. I can maaaaybe smell a little cinnamon if I concentrate really hard, but there is no rose or ginger at all. Why are they even in there?! Even the green base is flavorless. And I’m pretty sure it’s not covid talking, because I have been smelling and tasting other things all day long.

Edit: OK, now that it has cooled down a LOT, I’m getting a more noticeable creamy mint flavor. But still not much.

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Day 8

I’ve gotten really behind on this calendar because there are a series of teas that repeat really close together — this one, for example, first showed up on day 6, and now I’m getting it again on day 8.

I’ll leave my rating the same… still underwhelmed.

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Days 6 & 8

Huh. For a blend with SO. MANY. INGREDIENTS, I’m just… not getting much flavor. It smells gently spiced and pleasant enough, but it doesn’t taste like much of anything! There’s maaaybe a little fruitiness from the pomegranate or the lemongrass, but… that’s pretty much it. It actually reads as grape to me more than anything else. The spices are entirely missing, and even the green base is not doing much of anything. Meh.

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Days 5 & 13

Heavy on the lemongrass, with a bit of tang from the hibiscus, and a slightly musty floral note, probably from the chamomile. Not sure what’s tropical about it or what the peppermint is doing! I feel like a lot of these English Tea Shop advent blends are just a mish-mash of ingredients, most of which get lost in the mix.

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Day 4

Well, well, well. Having just sipped a tisane that purported to be apple-flavored but was almost entirely hibiscus, I now turn my attention to a tisane that purports to be peach-flavored but lists hibiscus as the first ingredient!

So there is no real peach in the ingredient list, just the opaque “natural flavourings.” Yet peach is definitely the dominant scent pre-brewing. Those natural flavourings are powerful indeed!

Steeped, the peach scent fades a bit, but the flavor remains. The hibiscus gives it a tart kick, but it’s not as overwhelming as I’d feared. The overall effect is something like a sour peach candy. Could be worse!

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Days 3 & 9

A very sparse note because I drank this tea while doing schoolwork for my grad program early this morning and the details have faded from my memory after a fairly eventful day. (Had to go get a walk-in PCR test because my partner just tested positive for covid, agghhh. Then had to take my cat to the vet for a curbside appointment because she scratched herself on the face and got a fairly nasty wound… but apparently it looks worse than it is! Plus, y’know, I was working all day.)

Anyway, I mostly remember this tea being more generically spice-y than strong on the star anise. It was kind of similar to the Festive Spice blend from yesterday, come to think of it. Wholly unremarkable!

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Days 2 & 21

This is a perfectly serviceable, spice-heavy, easy drinker! There’s a nice little hint of orange peel that gives it some zing, although I think it could use a heavier hand with that flavor. Everything else is pretty well-balanced; I’m getting cinnamon and clove, with a little heat from the black pepper. The black base is a bit drying and a little thin; I’d be OK with something more assertive.

I WAY over-steeped this one the first time, but it still tasted good! I left the tea bag in after the second steep because it was too weak even after 5-6 minutes.

Don’t ask me what a tea called ‘ghostly green’ is doing in a Christmas advent calendar, when it seems like it should belong with some Halloween theme, but whatever the reason I’ll take it because I actually like this! I came downstairs for lunch and found the kettle still warm, so being too lazy to re-boil it just to let it cool again, I used the water that was already in, and I’m pretty sure it was too cool. Maybe that was key, because although a light brew, this is tasty! It’s a creamy mint, a profile which I love, on a green base which I don’t, but the base isn’t very prominent and because of the cool steep there’s no astringency at all. It reminds me a bit of 52teas Graveyard Mist – a favourite of mine – only not as good. Also the name is kind of similar, huh? Hmm… I resteeped in boiling water and there’s still no astringency, and I’m happy to report it holds up well! The leaf is actually quite large, which might account for the lack of astringency, but I can see something mixed in with it that looks like pieces of cinnamon bark (I don’t have the ingredients handy to check), and whatever it is it’s not coming through at all. I suspect there might be a few redundant ingredients in the mix, if the previous blends are anything to go by. This is definitely one of my favourites from the calendar.

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Day 1

I’ve never tried anything from this brand, but my partner’s mom gifted me their advent calendar this year, so I guess I’ll be trying quite a few blends!

So this one is a rooibos-based chai that includes garlic among its many ingredients. I ended up letting it get far too cool before drinking it because I was trying to wrangle my very needy pets, so I’m probably not giving it a fair shake. But I’m mostly getting a weak rooibos flavor with only a smidge of other spices, followed by a mild garlic burn. It’s just kind of muddy overall. Not something I’d seek out again, but not overly offensive.

This was in the advent calendar two days running, and because I’m just drinking through it and ignoring the dates, that means I had it twice in one morning. I’m not complaining though, because I didn’t really fancy anything else, and I quite enjoyed it both times. As I was drinking my first mug, I noticed some astringency and wished I’d added a splash of milk. So when I saw it in the next slot of the calendar, I remedied that and made my second cup with milk. I enjoyed it both times, but I think the winner was with milk, as the black tea is quite robust and not a particularly nuanced one that loses anything with the addition of milk. There’s a gorgeous, sweet aroma coming from the steeping leaf that makes me think it’s going to be a dessert-type tea, but it doesn’t quite come through in the sip. It is a little more mellow than most ‘spice’ blends, and possibly has a touch of vanilla in there. The cinnamon is also quite forward, making it feel on the sweeter side of chai. Not one I would buy, but one I will happily sip on on this cold December morning.