The Good: Great aroma, Wonderful concept, Tastes good.
The Bad: No fruit or mint flavor, Surprisingly weak
The Basics: Despite having a great name, Orange Ginger Mint is an unimpressive tea not worth buying.
I can always tell an obviously trendy tea brand by where I find it to buy. Republic Of Tea is a trendy brand. I know that without any shadow of a doubt because I found my Orange Ginger Mint for sale at Panera Bread and while I love Panera, their choice of Republic Of Tea is a poor one. I write that because when I tried the brand's Earl Grey outing, Earl Greyer, it left me with an underwhelmed taste in my mouth. I was exceptionally excited to try the Orange Ginger Mint, but found that to be depressingly weak as well.
Orange Ginger Mint is an herbal tea that falls drastically short of being impressive by virtue of not tasting at all like orange or mint. While the ginger flavor is appropriately biting and real, it fades quickly and the watery taste this tea leaves in one's mouth is disappointing.
Basics
Orange Ginger Mint Tea is an herbal tea from Republic Of Tea. That means there are no actual tea leaves in Orange Ginger Mint tea. Orange Ginger Mint comes in Republic Of Tea's standard stringless tea bags. The tea bags are round, loose and come in a canister without any problematic wrappings or strings. The basic canister of Orange Ginger Mint tea comes with 36 tea bags.
Ease Of Preparation
As an herbal tea, Orange Ginger Mint is ridiculously easy to prepare. A single tea bag will make the standard 8 oz. coffee mug worth of tea and could be reused and make a second cup with surprisingly little loss of flavor. Still, the second cup often comes out about 1/2 to 5/8 as strong as the first, provided the first steeping was not over the recommended time. I tend to make my tea using a 32 oz. steeping tea pot and that works well and given how watery the basic tea is, I've avoided reusing the bags unless I have to.
To prepare Orange Ginger Mint tea, bring a pot of water to a boil and pour it over the tea bags. This tea takes only three to five minutes to steep according to the directions. In my experience, it gets no stronger after five minutes and as a rather strong tea, it does not truly need to be stronger than it naturally is.
Taste
Orange Ginger Mint tea, sounds like it would be an awesome tea. The flavor, by objective standards, ought to include the fruit flavor of oranges, a biting flavor of ginger and a cool mint taste. The tea smells like ginger and ricewater, so the consumer is adequately prepared for a robust tea experience.
Orange Ginger Mint unfortunately falls flat. I originally was prepared to rate this as an "average" tea because of the robust ginger flavor of the tea. However, the more I drank of it, the less punch the ginger flavor had and the undertone of a watery flavor ultimately became the dominant flavor. In all of the mugs and pots I have had of this tea, I have never tasted either the orange flavor or the mint taste. I love mint, I would recognize it and my palate can pick it out. It's not here to be tasted!
With a teaspoon of sugar, Orange Ginger Mint has less of the ginger bite, but the watery aftertaste is also accented. Cold, Orange Ginger Mint is just bitter like ginger and that flavor it good, but not incredible.
Nutrition
The ingredients to this tea, make it sound like it ought to be incredible with the dominant ingredients being ginger root, spearmint and orange peel. There is nothing in the tea that cannot be pronounced.
In terms of nutrition, this tea is devoid of it. One 8 oz. mug of this tea provides nothing of nutritional value to the drinker. There are no calories (save what one adds from sugar, which I recommend), no fat, sodium, or protein. There is no caffeine as the ingredients are devoid of it.
Storage/Clean-up
Orange Ginger Mint tea is very easy to clean up after, even if one gets it on fabric. The tea bags may be disposed in the garbage, or composted if you have a good garden and/or compost pile. The tea itself will not stain a mug and it may be cleaned up easily by rinsing out the drinking vessel.
Orange Ginger Mint is a rather light tea and as a result, it will only stain the lightest fabrics it comes in contact with. As a result, it is highly recommended that one not let it linger on anything they wish to protect and not have stained. It may be cleaned off if the spill is caught quickly, but if it lingers, it is not at all easy to wash out of clothes, linens or other fabrics.
Overall
Orange Ginger Mint is a disappointingly tea that does not live up to the flavor potential of its name.
For other beverages, please check out my reviews of:
Duff Energy Drink
Celestial Seasonings Zingers To Go Peach Delight
3/10
For more food, please check out my index page!
© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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