Joy Tea is part of a range of Pukka teas and a general wellbeing fad for providing emotional sustenance through herbal teas, usually with a self-care undertone. While taste and smell are always evocative, I’d hesitate to agree that herbal tea could meet my emotional needs in the same way that a stiff black coffee can turf me out of bed in the mornings. As Nina Stibbe says, ‘Coffee is not a drink… it’s not a drink like tea is a drink. Coffee is a drug. It’s just like having a cigarette or pill…’* Look, I enjoy herbal tea, really I do, but to suggest that at least the supermarket-level retail version has any psychoactive properties seems to be stretching it a bit.
Image: https://www.pukkaherbs.com/uk/en/products/joy-tea
I picked up this particular variety while shopping for the final ingredients for Christmas dinner at a huge Tesco Extra, one of life’s less joyful experiences. My other half was hell bent on finding some ready-made stewed red cabbage, and I wasn’t sure that red cabbage was actually a proper part of Christmas dinner, so I started to flag quite quickly after seeking it out in the vegetable section, the ready meal section and eventually the freezer section. The endless patience required for the red cabbage quest plus the need to choose between a massive number of essentially the same beans meant we were starting to get fractious when we got to the tea aisle, so the choice of wellness option seemed obvious, as did grabbing something fast and fighting our way to the checkout as quickly as we could.
Once brewed, Joy Tea is a golden caramel colour and smells somewhere between dusty potpourri and the orange creams neither of us like in a box of chocolates. But the flavour is a lot more exciting. Many herbal teas tend to be a bit bland, flavour wise, or they smell of bath oil and taste of nothing. This one tastes like high-end neroli perfume smells – both floral and fruity, both fresh and warm – with a thickness that makes it feel quite substantial. Joy is still a bit of a stretch, but this tea genuinely brings some sunny cheer into a cold afternoon, and it’s warming enough for a blustery day. I just wish it would stop reminding me of shopping for red cabbage.
Some other thoughts 