Tea Sparrow Tea Subscription Box review: All-natural and delightful

If you like flavored teas and interesting tea blends but you don't like artificial flavorings, Tea Sparrow has the tea subscription box for you. It allows you to try four different teas each month.

Carefully curated

Tea Sparrow Tea Subscription Box review: Features

Tea Sparrow's founder grew up drinking tea but discovered he was allergic to certain artificial flavorings and preservatives. He learned about loose leaf teas where he could see all of the ingredients and began creating his own blends to share with the world. Tea Sparrow, based in Vancouver, lets you sample their teas anywhere in the world via a tea subscription box plan.

Each Tea Sparrow Tea Subscription Box contains four envelopes of curated loose leaf tea: one black, one green, one rooibos, and one herbal tea. Each month's box contains different tea blends. If you prefer, you can get an all-herbal variety.

Brewing instructions are printed on the interior of the shipping box, as well as on each envelope. While most tea companies suggest brewing one teaspoon of tea in six to eight ounces of water, Tea Sparrow suggests three teaspoons (one tablespoon) in 10-12 ounces of water, which is quite a bit stronger. The teas are loose, and no infuser comes in the box, so you'll need to purchase one if you don't have one already.

Each of the four envelopes contains 0.6 ounces of tea. The entire box can make up to about 35 cups of tea. However, if you make it as strong as suggested in the brewing instructions as I did, you can expect to make less than that.

Here are the teas I sampled in the July tea subscription box:

• Organic Bed of Roses: Black tea, rose petals, and rose flavor (all organic.) A delicious tea with a definite but not overpowering rose taste. I didn't think I liked rose as a flavor but I like this a lot. It's also great iced.
• Organic Japanese Hojicha: Organic Japanese Hojicha leaves (green tea.) It's supposed to have notes of caramel and smoke. I always struggle to taste "notes" but this is a smoother, better-than-most green tea.
• Organic Pink Grapefruit: Apples, rosehips, hibiscus, citrus peels, pineapple bits, papaya, cornflower petals, and natural flavoring. This is juicy and delicious! It tastes like a mix of grapefruit and pineapple. It's amazing iced, too.
• Organic Sunset: Rooibos, calendula petals, almond liquid, and natural vanilla liquid (all organic.) This is a great version of rooibos herbal tea; the almond (especially) and vanilla are both very present and combine deliciously.

All of these teas were very good, and the Organic Pink Grapefruit stood out as one of my all-time favorite teas. These are only my opinions, of course, and your tastes may vary.

Each month's tea subscription box ships out on the 17th of the month. You'll need to get your order in by the 15th to get the month's current box. Subscriptions automatically renew, and you can cancel anytime.

Unique flavors

Tea Sparrow Tea Subscription Box review: What I like

I drink a lot of flavored teas, and I guess I never really thought about whether the flavors were natural or artificial. Now I'm going to look before I buy teas. Each of the flavored teas I tried from Tea Sparrow was delicious, and I appreciated being pushed out of my comfort zone a little bit. Sure, I love rose-scented hand lotion, but I really wasn't sure if I'd like to ingest roses. It turns out I really would, and the rose-flavored black tea was quite tasty. The herbal grapefruit tea was so special that I "forgot" to offer any to my family members.

Gone too fast

Tea Sparrow Tea Subscription Box review: What I don't like

Tea Sparrow states that you can get 35 cups of tea out of each tea subscription box, between the four envelopes. But I brewed the teas strong, following Tea Sparrow's brewing instructions to the letter. I didn't count the exact number, but I think 35 cups is a stretch. My estimate is more like 20-25, but of course, you can stretch it out by brewing slightly weaker tea or double your tea by re-infusing your tea leaves.

Naturally delicious

Tea Sparrow Tea Subscription Box review: Bottom line

You don't need artificial flavors to have tea that tastes interesting, distinctive, and adventurous. Tea Sparrow's Tea Subscription Box contains four envelopes of loose leaf tea that contain only natural flavorings. You'll get one herbal, one rooibos (which is a kind of herbal), one green, and one black tea in each month's box. If you prefer not to have caffeine, you can choose an all-herbal tea subscription box. You may be able to brew up to 35 cups from each box, but if you brew the teas as strong as suggested, you might use up the tea sooner.

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