Award season for Hollywood may have just begun, but the glitz & glamour pale in comparison to the highlight of our calendar - The Great Taste Awards.
Run by the Guild of Fine Foods, the Great Taste Awards are see thousands of products blind tasted by a panel of experts to find the best of the best. We're pleased as punch to announce that this year we won a grand total of 23 awards, including the coveted three stars for our honeybush & rooibos!
Let's take a look at the winners and some of the things the judges had to say.
3 Star Awards | Extraordinarily tasty - around 1.5% of products are awarded a 3-star each year!
"The dry ingredients have a fresh and wholesome aroma with just a hint of distinctive cedarwood notes from the rooibos. Brewed at the longer duration, the resultant liquor is rich, clear and bright deep amber colour. The liquor aroma is a delight, with the sweet promise of the honeybush mingling with the woody rooibos. This is a superb blend of prime quality individual ingredients and is quite exquisite, fully warranting the highest award"
2 Star Awards | Above & Beyond Delicious
- everyday brew - "A great quality blend, with a malty character and plenty of flavour"
- single estate breakfast tea - our Waitrose exclusive. "Good colour and strength, bright with useful briskness and quality. Takes the milk well."
- jasmine pearls - "Beautifully twisted jasmine ball produces a golden yellow liquor, sweet, with floral and perfumed jasmine notes, delicate."
- chamomile - "There's a beautiful golden clarity to this infusion, and an enciting, pure yet warming chamomile aroma. Sweet, gentle and rounded on the palate, with a slight lift on the finish - a rather lovely example."
- liquorice & peppermint - "This is certainly one for the liquorice lovers! The deep amber infusion melds powerful liquorice aromas with a hint of lifted mint, but gives little clue to the dramatic sweetness experienced from first sip to long finish. Happily the sweetness is balanced by coolness augmented by the mint and prevents the experience cloying."
- fennel & liquorice - "A great herbal infusion, simple, naturally sweet and makes you feel good... An example to be followed by those who use flavourings or too many ingredients"
- lemon & ginger - "Brilliant balance of citrus and ginger that is both refreshing and stimulating. Really excellent."
1 Star Awards | Delivers Fantastic Flavour
- green tea with mint - "The flavours combine excellently, with a slight sharpness from the tea component and balancing sweetness from the peppermint. This is a refreshing infusion without additional sweetness and a superb infusion with."
- popcorn - "Delicate green tea character, lightly sweet, not overtly brassica-noted. The toasted rice gives a pleasing, balanced savoury note. A good blend, would be a delightful accompaniment to many oriental rice-based dishes"
- mao feng green tea - "Bright and fresh with a wonderful natural sweetness"
- peppermint - "Quality material gives a very good flavour. Lovely."
- chocolate & mint - "This is special. The expectation is of bitterness from the chocolate, but this is not there, making this truly enjoyable with a detectable content of both flavours"
- cleanse - "We enjoyed the interplay of sweet, lifted liquorice, warm and spicy ginger and creamy coconut."
- calm - "While some would have favoured the clarity and simplicty of plain chamomile, here it's clearly softened and palatising with potentially strident valerian, and the slight citrus lift from the lemon balm completes the picture. A clever, soothing blend."
- trim - "Nice peach aromas on the nose and when you taste peach is the overriding flavour with the others nicely lingering in the background. It has a pleasant sweetness to it that is not overbearing"
- spiced winter red tea - "A nice dark liquor that is perfect for a rooibos base. Cloves and rooibos are nicely balanced on the nose"
- earl grey strong - "Bright and shiny in the cup, with delicate bergamot character and a hint of herbaceousness. A sound and satisfying tea base, takes milk well, retaining light and refreshing Earl Grey character"
- darjeeling earl grey - "A pleasing tea base, low in bitterness and with light astringency, a good balance drunk black."
- chilli chai - "Lovely burnt orange shade in the cup. Clove, star anise and cinnamon on the nose. A pleasant flavour and very drinkable."
- lychee & rose cold brew - "The balance between the main components is very well handled, creating an interesting and unusual flavour combination"
- lemongrass - "Punchy citrus aroma, and certainly doesn't hold back on flavour. There's no mistaking the lemongrass, and the judges appreciated the underlying sweetness"
- yerba mate - "We don't know a lot about mate but this is an excellent introduction. Indeed it is smoky but also retains something green, too. And it gives you a natrual kick? We really enjoyed discovering this and will make it again."
