Thea's English Tea

by Thea's Standard English T

Review: Thea’s English Standard Tea

Posted: Apr 27, 2016 at 3:17 PM (Last Updated: Apr 27, 2016 at 3:17 PM)
Thea’s English Standard Tea

Covers Products: Black Rose, Green Honey, Red Mango, Wonderberry

The advent of brands like Honest Tea has changed the conversation around the RTD tea category to address the origins of the tea used inside the product. Still, the rich heritage of English tea has, at least in the past decade, been somewhat overlooked.Enter Thea’s English Standard Tea, which, as the name suggests, is focused on bringing that story back to life.

For this review, we were provided with samples of four flavors: Green Honey, Wonderberry, Black Rose, and Red Mango. None of these really qualify as classic English style teas, so, while we like the idea, something still felt  slightly amiss between the message and the flavors that we tasted.

These all-natural products are a tasty take on zero calorie tea, and they don’t, for the most part, suffer from the lack of sweetness. For us, the highlights were Green Honey and Black Rose. Green Honey, which is a blend of green tea, honeysuckle, marigold, elderflower, honey essence, and citric acid, has a very light and clean flavor that’s the most gulpable of the bunch. We could see ourselves picking this one up again and again. Black Rose, which combines black tea with rose extract, hibiscus, and rosemary, has the full bodied flavor of black tea and a nice floral flavor to help smooth it out.

The other two varieties, Red Mango and Wonderberry, which are both fruit flavored, were slightly less appealing, mostly because they used fruit flavors that lacked their natural sweetness. They are certainly enjoyable products, but we don’t know if we’d come back to Thea’s simply for these flavors. Lastly, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that they are potentially missing out by not having an organic formulation.

Rather than go for the standard round glass bottle that’s used by most iced tea brands, they’ve chosen a French square bottle. This is currently something that’s only used by raw juice brands, which are probably the most premium priced non-alcoholic beverages out there. And premium is exactly the vibe that we get when looking at this product.  It feels heavy in your hand and leaves a memorable impression.

As for the label, it’s simple and clean, but it has readability issues. Specifically, the orientation of the vertical text and the script font on “English” makes you spend way too much time trying to read a word that isn’t even in the logo. Making “Thea’s” stand out more would be a great way to improve it.  

Putting all of this together, we feel as though Thea’s has come out of the gate with a product line that has potential. There’s a slight disconnect between the English tea culture side of the brand and what you actually drink, but it’s easy to overlook this once you try the product. All in all, they’ve done a great job of pairing memorable packaging with enjoyable flavor and that will probably be enough for the brand to get some traction.

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