The Good: Nothing detrimental in the nutrition department, Caffeinated
The Bad: A LOT of superfluous papers and strings, Very dry flavor.
The Basics: A very average tea, Green Jasmine from Twinings is unpleasantly dry.
Green teas are, lately, a tough sell for me. So many of them do not carry a bold flavor that is in any way distinct. Twinings Green Jasmine tea is one of those. In fact, it is pretty bland and exceptionally dry, making it impossible to recommend.
Basics
Jasmine Tea is a green tea from Twinings of London. Green tea is made from young tea leaves that are still moist on the tea plant. Twinings has its Jasmine tea available year round and it is one of the brand's staple teas. Jasmine is what I call an adjective tea; the flavor is its own, the name does not hold it to any standard other than to represent what is generally accepted as that flavor.
Jasmine 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. A box of Jasmine 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 and string.
Ease Of Preparation
As a green tea, Jasmine 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 Jasmine with little loss of flavor. The second cup often comes out about as strong as the first (3/4 - 1/2 as strong), 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, though in this method, the second brewing is - at worst - about 1/2 strength.
To prepare Jasmine tea, bring a pot of water to a boil and pour it over the tea bags. For Jasmine, roaring boil is just fine! This tea takes only two to three minutes to steep according to the directions. In my experience, it gets no stronger after three minutes and it does not truly need to be stronger than it naturally is.
Taste
The Jasmine tea had almost no aroma. In fact, Jasmine as it steeped and steamed had a light green tea scent only marginally stronger than that of the standard green teabag.
As far as the flavor goes, the Jasmine tea is dry and slightly bitter, tasting only like green tea. The flavor is not distinctive beyond tasting like a strong green tea.
When the Jasmine tea gets cooler, it becomes more bitter and leaves a horrible, dry aftertaste in the mouth.
Nutrition
The ingredient to this tea is quite simple: Green Tea scented with jasmine flowers. 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.
Storage/Clean-up
Jasmine 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 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.
Jasmine is a rather light tea and as a result, it will stain any very 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.
Overall
Green Jasmine is a mediocre green tea that is too dry to get excited about or worth buying.
For other Twinings teas reviewed by me, please check out:
Herbal Revive Lemon & Ginger
Pumpkin Spice Chai
Pure Mint Premium Black Tea
4/10
For other tea reviews, please visit my food review index page for a complete list!
© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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