The Good: Great mint flavor, Nothing detrimental in the nutrition department, Good aroma
The Bad: Caffeine-free
The Basics: So close to perfect, it pains me to not be able to rate it higher, Mint Magic is great for those looking for a hot mint beverage!
I LOVE mint. I love mint flavoring, I adore chocolate mint (anyone thinking of giftgiving, you can't go wrong with chocolate mint anything for me!), and I thrive on a good mint tea. And Celestial Seasonings makes good mint teas. In fact, I've reviewed two of them: "Candy Cane Lane" (click here for that review!) and Peppermint. But it turns out there is a better mint flavored tea by Celestial Seasonings and that is Mint Magic! It's at least as good as Candy Cane Lane and it is available year-round!
In fact, one of the nice things about Mint Magic is that it tastes like the perfect blend of peppermint and spearmint (which oddly comes out tasting most like wintergreen). This tea combines the great tastes of mints with the environmentalism of Celestial Seasonings and if only it had caffeine, it might well be a perfect tea. I need my caffeine! Why can't anyone make a decent mint tea with caffeine?!
Basics
Mint Magic is a 100% Natural Herb Tea from Celestial Seasonings. As an Herb tea, the ingredients are naturally caffeine free as they never had caffeine in any of them. This is a plus for those looking out for their health as decaffeinating tea is often a process that is less healthy than using naturally caffeine free ingredients. I am still hunting down a mint tea that has caffeine but for the life of me, I can't seem to find the one recommended to me . . .
Mint Magic comes in Celestial Seasoning's standard stringless tea bags, which are paired together with easy to separate perforations that allow one to separate the tea bags. When I make pots of tea, I tend to use two bags and leave them connected. A box of Mint Magic herb tea comes with ten pairs (20 individual) of tea bags.
Ease Of Preparation
Despite being an herb tea, Mint Magic is prepared pretty much like a standard black tea. A single tea bag will make the standard 8 oz. coffee mug worth of tea, though it cannot be reused well to make a second cup of Mint Magic, as there is a significant loss of flavor. The second cup often comes out only about 1/2 or 3/8 as strong as the first, provided the first steeping was not over the recommended time. If the first steeping is longer than that, the second attempt to brew gets even weaker. I tend to make my tea using a 32 oz. steeping tea pot and that works well.
To prepare Mint Magic herb tea, bring a pot of water to a boil and pour it over the tea bags. Be sure the tea bags are in a cup, mug, or bowl before dumping the boiling water over them! This tea takes four to six minutes to steep according to the directions and in my experience, it needs the full six minutes to get up to strength. The mint flavor gets no stronger after seven minutes.
Taste
First, Mint Magic has an awesome aroma. This is the definition of menthol mint, with the scents of peppermint and spearmint blending perfectly to create an aroma that . . . is strangely like wintergreen. Go figure. This is an undeniably mint smell and this is a tea that is quite aromatic; there is no hiding you're drinking mint magic when it is hot.
Without anything added to it, Mint Magic is a delightfully potent mix of spearmint and peppermint flavors. Mint defines a mint taste and this is a perfect blend between the two most common mint flavorings. The taste is so strongly mint that it actually leaves the tongue just a little numb when drinking it hot. This might be caffeine free, but the biting and cool flavor of mint sure goes a long way toward waking one right up!
With a single teaspoon of sugar in the mug, this tea tastes just like bubble gum! It tastes like one took a stick of peppermint Trident and a stick of spearmint CareFree gum and stuck them in opposite sides of one's mouth. The taske is an explosion of mint and sweetness and it's a great combination!
Cold, the tea is good, though the flavor is more intriguing and minty. Indeed, without a temperature, Mint Magic has an increased menthol minty flavor that is good. It tends to benefit from sugar when cold to cut the almost bitter mint quality it has otherwise.
Nutrition
The ingredients to this tea, rather refreshingly, start with spearmint and peppermint, which is doubtless why that is the dominant flavor of the tea. There are a few other ingredients, which fill out the tea flavor subtly, but for the most part, it's all mint that makes this tea what it is!
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 and no caffeine. This is not a tea where caffeine in the tea will wake the drinker up, but the mint flavor just might!
Storage/Clean-up
Mint Magic Herb tea is very easy to clean up after - the tea bags may be disposed in the garbage, or composted if you have a good garden and/or compost pile. The tea itself might stain a mug if it is left there for days on end, but otherwise may be cleaned up easily by rinsing out the vessel. Of note is that this tea, like most mint teas, will leave an aftertaste in the mouth or in a cup, so if you clean out a mug by simply swishing water through it, odds are your next cup of whatever will have a hint of mint to it.
Overall
Mint Magic is the best mint tea I've yet found from Celestial Seasonings. It is bursting with flavor, has a richness to it that is unlike any other mint tea I've tried. If only it had caffeine . . .
For other Celestial Seasonings teas, please check out my reviews of:
Nutcracker Sweet
Golden Honey Darjeeling
Chocolate Caramel Enchantment
7.5/10
For other beverage and food reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!
© 2010, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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