The Commune - Our Humongous Tea Collection

Just recently Rachel, of Brightest Star Of All, and I got to talking about our "tea collections". Yesterday she wrote a blog post about her teas and now here is the tea cabinet in my commune. In my commune, we drink a LOT of tea! So we have a lot of tea! It is rather a ridiculous amount of tea, is it not? Wonder how long it takes for three people to drink this much tea? 

About one third of the tea in this cabinet is black, one third is green and one third is red, white, herbal or just plain weird. As you must realize I can´t write about all the tea in this cabinet so I´ve selected a few teas that I have  either bought myself or that I like very much. We all mostly buy loose tea from various tea shops so I generally don´t know what brand they are, if they even have a brand...

Hare is a selection of black tea. The on on the left is called Fina Augustina and is a creamy coconut and fruit blend. The bottom one is a blend with chocolate and piri piri. I really like this one because I love really spicy tea! The last of these three is a wonderfully weird blend with flower petals and pieces of salmiak. That´s a kind of tea that you can probably only find in the salmiak obsessed Finland!

Here is a selection of green teas. The top one is a Japanese rice tea. Bottom left is a minty one and bottom right a green chai. I´m not particularily fond of green tea anymore, but the rice tea is tasty, the green chai is wonderfully spicy and the minty one is very refreshing!

These teas are a bit stranger. The left one is a green and black blend with ginger and other spices. The top one is a herbal spice blend with fennel, anise, cumin and nettles and the bottom one is a white tea with, believe it or not, dried spirulina algae and exotic fruits.

Here are some more rather strange ones. At the top is a classic yogi blend of spices like clove, cinnamon, cardamom and ginger. The right one is a herbal blend with rose hips, chamomille, lemon grass, orange peel and so on... Now, the bottom one is the really strange one! It is lapacho, a south american bark tea that is supposedly good for you... but it doesn´t taste very nice, and it certainly looks weird!

And finally some tea bags from my favorite brands. Pukka and Yogi Tea are brands that make herbal spice blends. They are ridiculously expensive, but also so delicious!! 

Pukka Three Ginger is a blend of ginger, galangal and tumeric. Pukka Green Chai has a green tea base with ginger, cardamom, star anise, cinnamon and licorice root. Pukka After Dinner contains fennel, anise, chicory and cardamom. 

Other Pukka favorites are: Revitalise and Licorice & Cinnamon.

Yogi Tea Classic is a powerful cinnamon blend with cardamom, ginger and clove. Yogi Tea Throat Comfort is a licorice root tea with lots of other spices.

Other Yogi Tea favorites are: Licorice Egyptian Spice, Sweet Chai and Sweet Chili Mexican Spice.

And last but not least my poor little pack of English Toffee Dessert Tea from Celestial Seasonings that is, o horror of horrors, discontinued *black cloud of depression*! Three bags left, after that I´ll miss it forever... Among the discontinued teas I also found Canadian Vanilla Maple and Vanilla Hazelnut Dessert Tea. :¨( All three of my Celestial Seasonings favorites discontinued. *Sigh* I´m out of luck! I´d love to try Honey Vanilla Chai or Nutcracker Sweet though, but I dont think they can replace the delicious descontinued teas... 

So there is my tea collection! What kinds of tea do you like? What is you favorite tea? Do you prefer loose tea or tea bags? Or are you one of Those That Drink Coffee (Heathens!)?