Stash's Green Tea versus Tazo's Green Tips

v.

Shortly after getting back into my tea hobby in 2006, I came across the claim that Tazo's China Green Tips was the most excellent tea (some websites differed or whether this meant tastiest, healthiest or both). I had a lot of trouble finding it around here, though. Most of the Tazo "green" selection was either decaffinated or flavored. Instead, I picked up Stash's Premium Green and drank that.

Well, I eventually found a couple of stores that sold the Tazo and picked up a box. It was about twice as much as the Stash, but that's ok because it was such the better tea, right? Wrong. It suprised me to find that the tastes were so very similar. Not quite the same, mind you, but definitely in the same basic zone. I figured I would take the two and go down a bit by bit comparison, to see which one really came out on top.

The end result? I am going to award it to Stash, and here is why. The flavor, the primary factor, slightly falls under Tazo's point, and Tazo pretty clearly wins base tea and aroma, but it is $2 more for the same amount of tea. What's more, you are paying near $5 for 1.4oz of the Tazo, when you can get Numi's Maofeng for roughly the same price (even from the Numi website, cheaper still if you get it through a place like Amazon.com that sales it at wholesale-esque prices), and you will get fuller cuts of tea with a better taste. Of course, if you need specifically bagged tea, and don't mind the extra dollar or two, then Tazo it is. The only places I have found it regularly around here are Target and Starbucks, though, so keep that in mind. Stash's tea is pretty much everywhere I have seen tea sold.

My other complaint against Tazo is that it is one of the worst companies as far as pushing tea as a mystic culture down one's throat, which seems kind of ironic how it is a subsidiary of Starbucks and is firmly rooted in the late 90's United States. At least Stash tends to be upfront about its origins and seems to respect its place as mid-quality tea with a decent number of choices. Tazo's marketing choice as some sort of newfound soul of tea is just about the most annoying thing I have seen outside of the overabundance of tea-as-health trends.