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Isilay Aktas

Isilay Aktas

Tea Sommelier and Enthusiast & Founder of Not Just A Cuppa (www.notjustacuppa.com)

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Why I stopped drinking blended tea

3 min readDec 7, 2020

I grew up with drinking tea, predominantly black tea but also several herbal teas and tisanes that are very common where I come from, Turkey. The herbal teas usually go well during the winter months and mainly to ease mild symptoms of flu. But I’ve never seen a tea blend until I was well into adolescence and I was fascinated.

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A good looking tea blend by freestocks

I cannot recall when I first bought a tea blend incorporating a type of tea (camellia sinensis), dried fruits, herbal teas, spices and whatnot but I know that it became a habit later on. I found the scents enchanting, and the taste always with a certain level of sweetness. Fancy names and handsome prices also made these blends attractive for me, however, about two years ago, I stopped buying and consuming them and here is why.

1- Artificial agents: Most tea blends use artificial scents and flavours that are produced in laboratories without any nutritional value. This was a shock to me as even most packaging of blended teas do not or cannot claim it, having ‘healthy’ properties is associated with these teas.

2- Quality ingredients: Let’s assume that you will make sangria, would you make it with your best wine or you use a cheap one instead? The latter of course, otherwise it would be such a waste! This is to say, it is likely to encounter low-to-medium quality ingredients in blends and it may not be easy to spot…

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Isilay Aktas
Isilay Aktas

Written by Isilay Aktas

Tea Sommelier and Enthusiast & Founder of Not Just A Cuppa (www.notjustacuppa.com)