The Good: Tastes fine, Nothing detrimental in the nutrition department, Caffeinated
The Bad: A LOT of superfluous papers and strings, Is not dominated by anything remotely minty in the taste department.
The Basics: A very good, but not great tea, Twinings Premium Black Tea Pure Mint scuds my hope of a worthwhile caffeinated mint tea by not being minty enough.
In case you do not keep up on my many tea reviews, I have long been searching for a great mint tea that contains caffeine. While I enjoy teas like Celestial Seasonings Mint Magic (reviewed here!) and Bigelow’s Mint Medley (reviewed here!), I have yet to find a mint tea that I could completely rave about because I love caffeine! So, when my wife ordered some Twinings Premium Pure Mint Black Tea, I had high hopes. Here was a caffeinated mint tea! Finally!
Unfortunately, having tried it now, I am sad to say my search for a great caffeinated mint tea continues.
Basics
Pure Mint Black Tea is a black tea from Twinings of London. Black tea is made from mature tea leaves that are dried on the tea plant. Twinings recently released its Pure Mint tea and it is still finding its way to the marketplace (I know some of my local stores do not yet carry it).
Pure Mint comes in Twinings' standard tea bags, which are individually paper wrapped and have a five inch string. The string is attached to a paper tab that must be torn out of the paper wrapper and the other end attaches to the tea bag via a staple. A box of Pure Mint tea comes with 20 individual paper-wrapped tea bags. After years of drinking only Celestial Seasonings' tea, this seems remarkably wasteful now to have so much waste as far as paper, string and staples.
Ease Of Preparation
As a black tea, Pure 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 of Pure Mint at about half strength. I tend to make my tea using a 32 oz. steeping tea pot and that works well, though in this method, the second brewing is about 1/2 strength.
To prepare Pure Mint tea, bring a pot of water to a boil and pour it over the tea bags. For Pure Mint, roaring boil is just fine! This tea takes only three to five minutes to steep according to the directions. In my experience, it gets no stronger after five minutes, which was a little bit of a letdown.
Taste
The Twinings Pure Mint Black Tea smells lightly of mint. In fact, the aroma that comes from the Pure Mint tea is not strong enough to open up the nostrils. This is not a distinctive menthol scent, so those who love mint may not be eager for it by its scent alone.
Tasting the tea, consumers are likely to be equally disappointed. The Pure Mint may be a premium mint tea, but it is not overly minty. In fact, when served piping hot, the Pure Mint tea is dominated by the black tea flavor. The mint flavors of peppermint and spearmint – which are present in the bouquet – are sublimated until the aftertaste in this tea.
As the tea cools, the mint flavor actually diminishes some. That surprised me because my experience with mint teas before this one was that menthol flavoring increased as the tea cooled. That was, alas, not the case with this tea. With a little bit of sugar, the peppermint flavor comes out a little better. But, for the most part, this is a solidly tea-flavored tea.
Nutrition
The ingredients in this tea are quite simple: Black Tea, Peppermint Leaves and Spearmint Leaves. There are no other ingredients or flavors, nothing 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 caffeine, but how it relates to other beverages remains a mystery; Twinings does not put a scale on their boxes of tea. This tea is rather caffeinated, though and it will wake the drinker up.
Storage/Clean-up
Pure Mint tea is very easy to clean up after, provided one does not get it on fabric. The tea bags may be disposed in the garbage, or composted if you have a good garden and/or compost pile. If composting, though, one must remove the paper tag, staple and string, which is just a tedious extra step. The tea itself will stain a mug a faint brown if it is left there for days on end, but otherwise may be cleaned up easily by rinsing out the vessel. Like most mint teas, the longer the menthol flavor stays in the mug, the more likely it is to taint the mug with the mint flavor, which is ironic considering how weak the mint flavor is in this tea!
Pure Mint is a rather dark tea and as a result, it will stain any light 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
Twinings Premium Pure Mint Black Tea is a very average tea with a hint of mint. Those who love their mint will want a more minty tea than this. For those who just want an aftertaste of mint . . . well, there are less expensive options than this one.
For other Twinings teas reviewed by me, please check out:
Earl Grey
Irish Breakfast
Revive Blackcurrant, Ginseng and Tahitian Vanilla
5/10
For other tea reviews, please visit my index page for a complete list!
© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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