I have a terrible impulsive of buying tea everywhere I go, even when I haven’t had good experiences with the particular merchant in question. This weekend, I found myself gaping at a whole wall of tea at the Edgewater Trader Joe’s and perhaps it was just the luxury of standing in a TJ’s without being shoved into walls by Manhattanite yuppies that pushed me over the edge of rational decision-making, but I ended up buying 2 packs of Trader Joe’s tea, even though my two previous TJ tea experiences have been bad, bordering on terrible. Ahh, why do I not learn from history @_@;;.

I love Trader Joe’s. In my book, Trader Joe’s can do no harm. Almost. Almost. It’s a travesty really that it’s their tea that forces me to put the caveat in there (especially considering the wholly wonderful job they do in all the other liquids department!).

Here’s the 4 particular types I’ve tried, over the course of the past couple months. They cost about $3.50ish in Manhattan and $2.50ish pretty much everywhere else.

Blueberry green tea - A nice hint of blueberry in the scent, but there’s just simply something stale about the green tea itself. Food flavouring is nice and all, but the green tea still has to be decent quality, no point in brewing a cup just to smell. My own fault for buying flavoured green tea quite honestly, but the box cover was so tempting. Will not buy again.

Sencha (Japanese green tea) - I had high hopes here; I’m very fond of the aroma of common Japanese green teas, and besides, I’m going traditional here, no fancy synthetic flavourings to get in the way. But this tea brews far too light! I think its even a physical problem with the way the teabag is structured — the matcha doesn’t manage to seep out properly, and you end up with the faintest aroma and an even fainter tea. I mean, there are times for when you would enjoy a lighter tea, but overbrewing this stuff still results in a fat heavy teabag that somehow imbues the surrounding water with very little flavour. Will not buy again.

Ruby red chai spiced rooibos - OK, I was asking for it again here. Spiced chai rooibos?! I got curious, and then the cat gagged. It’s all super-organic and super-fair trade, and etc, but its so awfuuul tasting. You can’t taste the chai part, nor can you taste the rooibos part. And could spiced rooibos be any good to begin with? It comes with cloves, ginger, allspice, cardamom, nutmeg and cinnamon… but how many of those spices actually come from the geographical area that rooibos is endemic to anyways? Maybe the cloves, but that’s literally about it. A quick google search shows that other people hate this stuff too, so its not just my innate distrust of “fusion” food. At the same time though, a similar chai rooibos has good ratings on Amazon, so maybe I should withhold the “geographical confluence” theory until I try that. But this particular spiced rooibos? Will not buy again!

Blackberry fruit infusion - Another one of those teas I was sold on based on innovative box design. Yes, I know, I’m fairly dumb. But aaaahh, it was so bad. Bitter, bitter, bitter. The box remarked about how blackberries were once used for dyes, and after brewing that tea, well, no shit they were, this tea comes out an insane purple-black that you better have some bleach lying around in case you spill. Fruit “infusions” (aka, fruit teas that don’t actually have real tea in them) generally suffer from the bitter and tasteless problem, but often they smell good to semi-make up for it. In this case, it didn’t even accomplish that. Will not buy again.

End game result is that Trader Joe’s comes up with interesting ideas and packaging for their tea, but as a friend’s grandmother once eloquently remarked, “you can’t polish a turd”. The quality of the base tea they use in their packaged teas is horrendous enough that no amount of flavourings and box designs will make for repeat buyers.

Why TJ’s?! Why?!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 10:52 pm and is filed under Review, Tea.