Category Archives: tea

In the fru-fru section of your local grocery store a new product lurks. Right next to the dense wall of Odwallas and Naked Fruit Juices is “GT’s Enlightened Organice Raw Kombucha”. This tea-colored bottle piqued my interest — raw tea? Curious… I brought it home and took a sip. Blech! It tastes like beer! No tea taste at all!!! Upon navigating over to the wikipeda page for kombucha, I see that beer is exactly what it is — well, sort of. It’s a “tea-based beverage” in which yeast and bacteria have been allowed to ferment. The resulting concoction even has a very low dose of alcohol in it. The raw part of the title is because the yeast and bacteria are living and there are cultures floating around inside the beverage. A close-up photo shows some of the delightful colonies floating at the top of my kombucha:

Apparently during the Qin Dynasty in China this stuff was known as the tea of the gods and revered for giving drinkers magical powers to live forever. Today, the beverage is pimped as a health drink because of the resulting brew of beneficial bacteria and the compounds they produce during fermentation: Acetic acid, Butyric acid, B-vitamins, Gluconic acid, Lactic acid, Malic acid, Oxalic acid, Usnic acid and alcohol.

My experience of drinking this unexpectedly alcholoic tea beverage was similar to the free bag of Lapsang Souchong I recently received from Twinings. Perhaps I’ll get another bottle of this stuff and give it a try again in the future. But for now, I think I can guess why I’ve never seen this in the grocery store until now!

Author’s update: the stuff was gone from my local Safeways after about 3 weeks.

A couple of months ago, Twining was advertising free tea samples of their new tea mixes. It was simple — I just went to their website, chose three flavors and they mailed them to me about a month later. Here’s what I chose:

In case the text in the picture is too small: Prince of Wales Tea, Lapsang Souchong Tea and English Afternoon Tea.

In the old days (1700s-1800s) “Souchong tea” referred to the older tea leaves closer to the trunk of the tea bush (Camellia sinensis). “Orange Pekoe” referred to the newer tea leaves near the tip of the branches which were thought to give better flavor. I had never seen Souchong tea explicitly labeled and offered as such so I figured now was my opportunity to see what a bag of supposedly lower quality tea leaves tasted like! Here’s my photo of the brew:

Then I took a taste…. Ok, to say that I felt like I was drinking the tea version of cigarette ash would be about right! Hack, hack, cough, cough… Unexpectedly smoky tasting. Looking at the back of the packaging, the text reads, “The unique flavour of Lapsang Souchong is produced by laying the leaves out on bamboo trays and allowing smoke from pinewood to permeate through them. Twinings Lapsang Souchong is an adventurous tea with a unique smoked flavour and a dark rich colour.”

Adventurous indeed! I guess it’s safe to say I’m not into smoked tea. I’m guessing this tea is marketed more towards people who smoke other forms of leaves (such as tobacco, of course). In fact, when I googled it I see that Lapsang Souchong is an expensive tea from the Wuyi region in Fujian, China. It seems to be prized as a “man’s tea”.

After the Lapsang Souchong, the remaining two teas were like drinking liquid ambrosia! They tasted so much better. The English Afternoon Tea was a lighter-bodied, traditional-tasting tea with a tiny hint of fruitiness. By contrast, the Prince of Wales tea had a slightly fruitier taste and a lesser traditional tea taste. But the difference seemed slight to me — I enjoyed both of them.

When I was growing up this used to be my Dad’s favorite tea (my Dad is from Scotland). My Mom would stock the cupboard with various fruit teas but my Dad refused to drink what he considered to be “hot fruit juice”. I guess as an adult I’m pretty much the same way, although my Dad has since developed a prediliction for iced mango tea.

Anyways, Tetley’s British Blend Tea is the same as their “regular” tea except there’s more tea per bag for a stronger cuppa. I never realized that the regular tea, the so-called “classic” tea is actually a weaker “Americanized” version of what the Brits drink. Or at least that’s what I’m inferring from the packaging.

I also vaguely recall what a big deal it was in 2000 when Tetley’s, then a British company, was bought out by Tata, an Indian tea conglomerate. They’ve done very well with the brand in the intervening years. Hopefully Cadbury will see the same success under Kraft’s reigns.

The tea itself is standard stuff. I usually use 2 bags of tea per cup so I got a surprise when I tried that with the British blend the first time. Whoa, this is strong stuff!!!! It’s what made me read the contents more closely.

In short, the tea is tasty and if you like your tea on the strong side then this brand is for you!