Recent Harney Order

New Tea from Harney

My first tea purchase from Harney arrived back around March 15th.  It was an experiment – I was frustrated with not being able to get good tea (I hate teas laden with 60% or more extraneous stuff) locally and I railed at the costs of those laden teas if you wanted to try something different for a change.  Twelve dollars for what equates to a week and a bit of tea – no thank you.   So after doing a basic cost comparison, my husband talked me into placing the order and seeing how it went.

Here we are in the last week of July and I still have tea left (yes, there are times when I don’t drink tea – last week it was over 100F with humidex here and tea was not on the menu).   Four months of tea drinking goodness out of a bag of tea worth $24 – roughly twenty cents a day compared to the $6 a day for a chai tea latte (or $720 over four months).  With savings like that, I jumped ahead when I saw I was down to what I figured was a month’s tea and reordered.

Harney had a free shipping offer for orders over $50 (which doesn’t apply to Canada) to have the tea sent here to Canada cost me $15 in shipping last time.  This would be a problem except I live on the border and there’s a UPS parcel depot.  Harney’s preferred mode of shipping is UPS so it’s perfect.  My last order ended up costing me $54 with shipping so paying that much and getting more tea? BONUS!  Now to figure out what to order because a) I’m picky and b) who wants to buy a lot of tea you don’t like?

Fortunately, I had two things working in my favour.  When I told Sheridan that I was ordering from Harney asked if I’d pick up a tin for her and we’d do a switch when I saw her in September.  Also, I rather liked the Vanilla tea that I tried the last time.  I’m not always in the mood for vanilla tea but that one was nice as a morning tea.   I also started bringing my Paris blend to work because well, it’s hard to drink crappy tea when you’re spoiled at home so I decided to get a tin for work.  Perfect all the tea I want right? Nope, still not $50 worth.   So I ventured through their extensive black tea page and I see Lapsang Souchang – ooooo, yes, that.  It’s an incredibly popular tea in western tradition and I rather like it when I can find it.  Okay, let’s give that one a go.  I figured if I don’t like it, I can mix it with other teas like that expensive chai tea I got for my birthday.  Hmm, what to do next – let’s try two more samples.  In the last two years, I’ve bought Darjeeling tea from the now defunct Teaopia, Teavana, David’s Tea and I hated them all which is a shame because I’ll drink Twinnings Darjeeling like it’s water.  Add a sample of it to the cart and … Earl Grey Supreme?  What makes it Supreme?  We’ll find out.

My tea arrived yesterday and to my delight I have a few new samples (one is a repeat of the Hot Cinnamon Spice that I tried last time and they gave me a sample of Paris which made me laugh given the amount of it in my order).  I have a sample of chamomile, mint verbena, and an organic Bangkok.  Yesterday I drank the Lapsang Souchang, today, I’m drinking Darjeeling – reviews will follow either later today or tomorrow.