Tetley Pure Green Tea

Boy oh boy. While visiting my friend, I was horrified to find this holy abomination still lurking in their cupboard, a relic from a year ago when I first told them to stop buying it (which they did). As you can see from the photo, I have deliberately included the brewing instructions from the side of the box, because this is where the crime begins.

Tetley officially recommends adding BOILING WATER to their green tea. They also suggest adding honey or sugar to make it palatable, which tells you everything about their confidence in the tea's actual flavour. I suppose they deserve a single point for understanding that milk is a definite no, but that is where the charity ends.

Following their instructions to the letter produces the sad, murky brew pictured here. The aroma is immediately off-putting, with not a single hint of the fresh, grassy scent you look for in a green tea. The taste is, as you can imagine, utterly vile. It is a bitter, astringent liquid that can only be described as hot waste water.

Without any exaggeration, this is the worst green tea I have ever tasted. I know it's a cheap teabag filled with the lowest quality 'green' flavoured dirt imaginable, but this is a national brand. You would expect some minimum standard. Instead, you get this disgusting product. An easy one star. Avoid at all costs.

However, there's a real damage being done by Tetley here:

The problem with this Tetley product isn't just that it's a disgusting drink. The real issue is the colossal damage it does to the reputation of green tea as a whole in the UK. It actively makes our national tea culture worse.

Consider matcha. Thanks to the cafe latte trend and the "superfood" boom, matcha has a foothold. The average person might not know what usucha is, but they see 'matcha' and think of a vibrant, trendy, and potentially tasty drink. It has a positive, if superficial, brand identity.

Green tea never had that luck. It was introduced to the masses not through a cool new format, but in a cheap box from a black tea giant that clearly neither knows nor cares how to handle the leaf. For millions of people, their first and only exposure to "green tea" was this bitter, soupy mess made from scorched dust.

This product acts as a gateway away from the category, convincing countless people that they hate all green tea based on one terrible experience. It poisons the well for the shops, enthusiasts, and producers who are trying to share genuine, beautiful teas. Tetley is actively sabotaging an entire category for millions of potential tea drinkers.