Bloom Teas – Absolute Peppermint
Heath & Heather – Organic Peppermint
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I’m quite rude about herbal “teas” on this website, but in fact, there are certain tisanes that I do always keep about the place. One such is peppermint tea. Say what you like about herbal infusions (that they’re not tea, for one thing), the pesky blighters do have some demonstrable measurable health benefits.
I’m not advocating some snake oil peddling woo nonsense like ditching chemotherapy for aloe vera, or whatever claptrap Gwyneth Paltrow is spouting this morning. I am, I assure you, a big fan of conventional Western medicine. But, say you have indigestion after, I don’t know, devouring a whole bar of Ritter Sport White Chocolate Hazelnut in about 30 seconds (to pick an example at random) then a cup of dried peppermint leaves steeped in boiling water will generally sort you right out.
The above, as you may have guessed, is not actually a hypothetical example, but is the exact position I found myself in, shortly before writing this review. I discovered that I had three different brands of peppermint tea bags in the cupboard so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do a side-by-side comparison. I numbered the cups and everything.
In the pre-immersion sniff test, Bloom came out well ahead. Bloom’s peppermint tea actually smells like peppermint, whereas Heath and Heather’s had a more dried-mint-that’s-been-sitting-on-your-spice-rack-for-five years vibe and Twinings didn’t smell of anything at all. Also, Bloom’s dried peppermint leaves are a lot greener than the other two. And by ‘greener’, I mean, well, green. Heath and Heather and Twinings both apparently favour a more brownish hue.
Once hot water had been applied and a suitable brewing period observed, the differences between the three tea bags were not quite so marked. Peppermint tea, as a rule, tastes like cabbage water, and this was certainly true for all three of these. In Bloom’s case, it tasted like some cabbage water that had had some polo mints stirred in. Heath and Heather have somehow managed to imbue their product with the delicate aroma of neglected fridge vegetable drawer.
I’m not sure how Bloom managed to produce a much mintier tea than the others. I checked the ingredients and it definitely didn’t list ground-up polo mints. All three of these tisanes have the same ingredients: 100% dried peppermint leaves. Maybe it’s all in the drying. I imagine there’s more than one way to dry a herb – freeze drying, air drying, hanging the stuff in little bunches from the ceiling beam of your witch’s cottage, etc. Maybe Bloom have some advanced scientific lock-in-the-flavour method of doing this.
The scores given here are entirely based on flavour rather than performance. After three cups of mint tea, the symptoms of my indigestion were gone so no complaints from me there.
I just don’t find drinking the stuff to be a pleasant experience. I know that there are people out there who drink peppermint tea for fun. I’ve met some of them. Quite frankly, I think you’re all a bit odd.
Today’s featured books are Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, Herbs in Magic & Alchemy by C L Zalewski and Plant Medicine by Charlotte Mitchell. There’s kind of a theme going on.
