Stick the kettle on... (Tetley Green Tea with Lemon)

Member Name: fizzywizzy

Product:	Tetley Green Tea with Lemon
Date:	14/08/07 (229 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good way to get benefits of green tea, refreshing

Disadvantages: Needs extra lemon for a better flavour

Having recently been impressed with Tetley’s Peppermint Punch, I decided to try another one of it’s alternatives to conventional tea, “Green tea and Lemon”. Like the Pepppermint Punch, these bags come in a small cardboard tube with a plastic lid and a foil layer inside to keep them fresh. My teabags cost 79 Pence for twenty-five bags (at Morrisons).

On the packaging, Tetley claim “We have combined a light delicate green tea with the zesty freshness of lemons, to create a blend that will make you sparkle.” Let’s give it a try….

Green tea is something of an acquired taste and one that I can’t claim to have fully acquired. I persevere because I believe it is good for me and I usually try to mask the slightly pungent natural taste of green tea by drinking one of the green tea with fruit mixes that are available now. Lemon is one flavour I hadn’t tried.

The dry teabag has only the slightest whiff of conventional tea but a killer punch of zesty lemon. In fact, I found this hit quite overpowering. I didn’t get even a hint of green tea aroma.

Pouring on the hot water released a more gentle lemon aroma and only a slight smell of green tea. The instructions say you should leave the bag to steep for one minute and this seems right for several reasons. First and most important, if you leave it longer the green tea flavour becomes stewed and very bitter. Also, the lemon aroma emerges quickly but the actual flavour does not develop if you leave the bag for less time. Finally, if you leave the bag in much longer than the recommended one minute, the colour darkens rapidly and takes on a most unappealing shade of sludge. Get the timing right and the colour will be a dark honey colour with a slight tinge of pale green. As with the Peppermint Punch there was a small amount of darker grainy residue at the bottom of the mug but also a slightly oily layer on the top when it caught the light.

The first flavour I tasted was the distinctive green tea. The lemon toned it down and made it fresh rather than pungent although the lemon was disappointingly quite weak. Then the aftertaste was lemon but slightly sweet and honeyed a little like a sherbet lemon sweet but not so overtly sugary. While the lemon was noticeable I don’t think that the flavour lived up the expectations I’d got from reading the blurb. I was definitely expecting something more “zingy” with a bit of vitality.

The second time I tried these teabags, I added a slice of fresh lemon and found that this really lifted the taste and made it much fresher and exciting. The green tea was still discernible but both flavours seemed to come to life with this simple addition. I did not find I needed to add sugar or honey to sweeten the tea as suggested on the packaging.

I will happily finish this tube of teabags and will probably buy these again. Of all the different green tea combinations I have tried I have found this one the most palatable. It may sound silly to carry on drinking green tea when I am not such a fan of the flavour but it does have several benefits that make me believe it is worthwhile. Green tea has been found to be high in antioxidants and of course, drunk in this way, it contains no fat. It also has the benefit that you can count the water consumed as part of your daily recommended intake. I would certainly recommend this brand of green tea for people who wish to enjoy the benefits of green tea but who do not enjoy the sometimes over-powering taste this tea can have.

Summary: A tea that's better if you add your own lemon