Barrington Tea @ Grocery Outlet

I’m a moderate tea drinker and mostly a fan of Twinings English Breakfast Tea, which I buy at the supermarket when it’s on sale or at Santos Spice Products, where a 50-tea bag box is only $5 or so. But it’s not always possible to get it at either place, so when I found myself with no tea last week, I decided to give the Barrington Tea I found at Grocery Outlet a try. At about $1.50 for a 20-tea bag box, I figured I wasn’t gambling much. And to my surprise, I ended up liking this tea quite a bit.
I usually like plain black tea mixes – like English breakfast, though I’ll have the occasional cup of Earl Grey. I drink my tea with milk and sugar.
Only “Pure Ceylon Black Tea” is listed as an ingredient on the Barrigton English Breakfast tea box, but I could swear the tea has some sort of flavoring in it. I can taste hints of mint and something else which makes the tea taste particularly sweet. It’s not as robust as the Twinings, but it stands well to milk and sugar, a bag is strong enough for two mugs and it doesn’t seem to over-brew very fast (I don’t usually remove the tea bag while I’m drinking the tea). In all, I’m quite happy with this tea and I’ll probably go and, given the price, I’ll probably go and pick up a few more boxes of it to keep in case Grocery Outlet stops carrying it. The tea expiration date is 11/12, so it should be good for quite a while.
A final thing that I like about this tea is that the bags come in plain paper covers. Twinings’ come in sealed waxed/metallic paper bags, which I don’t think I can recycle/compost.
Finally, I haven’t found much about the Barrington Tea company online – which makes me assume it’s quite new. According to its website, their corporate offices are in Palo Alto. The tea comes from Sri Lanka.
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Update
I just got a box of their Ceylon tea and I’ve enjoyed it very much as well. It’s a robust black tea, with some hint of flavoring but not as strongly as in the English Breakfast. It’s very nice with milk & sugar. I’d buy it again, though now I’m curious about trying the Trader Joe’s tea, which is even cheaper.
I’ve also tried the Earl Gray tea and this one has disappointed me. It’s very weak and it doesn’t really have a different spicing than the other teas – it’s just weaker. I won’t be buying it again.