Whole leaf, in a pyramid bag
Room enough in the bag for the leaf to unfurl, and a brew that never turns harsh on you
Chamomile carries Night Calm, lavender sits behind it, and caffeine does not come into the evening at all. The earlier hours belong to Day Balance, where citrus peel and lemongrass lie over a base of green tea.
168 reviews, averaging 4.7 out of 5.
The short version
TeaVela is a pair of whole leaf infusions in pyramid bags. A pack holds 28 of them and reseals between cups. Drink one a day and the pack runs a month, which is roughly the point at which tea left standing begins to lose its aroma anyway.
The thinking behind it is unremarkable: the working hours get one blend, the last of the evening gets the other. Sweet mint, citrus peel and lemongrass sit over the green tea that forms Day Balance. Flowers alone make up Night Calm, and caffeine plays no part in it. Neither is medicine, neither is a supplement. Both are food, and nothing more complicated than that.
Cup by cup
Nothing is promised here that the leaf cannot deliver. What follows is what ends up in the cup, with the mechanism behind it.
Roughly 30 mg of caffeine sits in each Day Balance cup, under half of what an espresso delivers. It does not travel alone. L-theanine comes with it out of the leaf, and that amino acid holds back the rate at which caffeine crosses into the blood. So the lift builds slowly and fades slowly, over three or four hours, rather than peaking early and leaving the rest of the morning flat.
Tea cultures with little else in common have both landed on peppermint and lemongrass at the close of a meal, and they have done so for centuries. Hot, the infusion sits comfortably while digestion is at its busiest. It also occupies the slot that a pudding or a third coffee would otherwise have taken.
Bedtime is not pushed back by Night Calm, since no caffeine is in it, whereas a black or green tea taken after seven will do exactly that. Britain reaches for two plants above all others at this hour, and both are in the bag: chamomile forming the base, lavender scenting it. Filling the kettle turns into the small ritual that closes the day off, and it is the repeating of that ritual which helps you unwind.
Half a litre goes into the day from two cups of 250 ml, with nothing in either of them to count. Plain water is a harder habit to keep up than most of us like to admit. A cup that tastes of something tends to get finished.
The pair
Four minutes apiece, and compositions that pull in opposite directions. One is bright and citrus led, the other floral and soft, and the same shelf takes them both.
Citrus peel over a green tea base, lemongrass alongside, sweet mint kept to a suggestion. The cup runs clear and golden and finishes sharp. None of the tannic bite that a standing green tea develops finds its way in. This is what goes on while there is work to be done.
Rose petals and a touch of peppermint over lavender and a chamomile base. Caffeine appears in none of the four. Pale rose in the cup, the infusion drinks soft and floral, faintly honeyed at the finish. Pour it at ten and think no more about it.
What the bag holds
Six plants go into the two blends, and every one of them has a job. None was chosen for how well it reads on a label.
Caffeine enters the collection here and nowhere else, at somewhere near 30 mg to the cup. The leaf holds L-theanine too. That amino acid is the reason tea lifts you evenly where coffee lifts you sharply.
That clean citrus note reaching you before the first sip is this one. South East Asia has steeped it after meals for generations. Here it lengthens the green tea and adds no weight in doing so.
Menthol, and the cool finish it leaves behind. Both blends take some: forward and bright in the morning, pulled well back after dark so that the palate is not woken up again.
No evening flower is drunk more widely across Britain, and it forms the base here. Soft and faintly honeyed on its own, chamomile is the reason a long steep comes out round instead of sharp.
A handful of flowering tops scents the whole cup. Night Calm announces itself by this aroma alone, from the far side of the kitchen, well before anything has been tasted.
Colour is half their work: that pale rose tint comes from them. The other half is a floral roundness which settles the chamomile down. Treat them as the finish rather than the substance.
The principal plants only, by way of illustration. Complete ingredients and allergen wording are printed on the label of every pack.
Brewing it
Scales are not needed, nor capsules, nor anything switched on at the wall. A bag, water off the kettle, four minutes of patience, and there the cup is.
Whole leaves and whole flowers need space to open out, and the pyramid shape gives them exactly that, where a flat pressed bag cannot. Hence a long steep that stays soft here instead of going bitter.
One bag in the cup
One pyramid bag to a cup. Day Balance from waking onwards, Night Calm once the evening has properly begun.
250 ml at 90°C
Let the kettle rest half a minute after it clicks. Water held just under the boil keeps aroma in the leaf rather than scalding it out.
Four to six minutes
Lift the bag at four and the cup stays light. Leave it to six and it fills out. Bitterness arrives at neither end, so the clock can be ignored.
However you take it
Hot as a rule. Cooled, it takes ice well through the summer. Honey and lemon are both welcome, and neither is required.
A few things worth knowing before the kettle goes on.
TeaVela is a plant infusion and nothing beyond one: food, not medicine, and not a supplement either. Green tea puts caffeine into Day Balance, so anyone kept awake by it should leave the later cup alone. Where pregnancy and breastfeeding are concerned, the NHS sets the daily ceiling at 200 mg of caffeine, counting everything drunk over the day. Pregnancy, breastfeeding, prescribed medicines and any long term condition are all reasons to speak with a GP or a pharmacist before either blend becomes a fixture. Known allergies mean reading the label first, the daisy family in particular, chamomile being a member of it. Keep the pack sealed and dry, out of the light, nowhere near a heat source, somewhere young children cannot get at it.
Why it tastes different
Shelves everywhere carry boxes offering calm and vitality out of the same carton, propped up with flavouring because the plants inside were milled to powder long before they got anywhere near you. TeaVela was assembled the other way round.
Whole leaf, never dust. Leaves and flowers unfurl inside the pyramid bag, visibly so, and the tasting bears out what the watching suggested. Six minutes in, the infusion is still soft. A dust of broken leaf would have gone bitter three minutes earlier.
Two blends, set against two hours. Caffeine in the one meant for the earlier part of the day, none whatsoever in the one meant for later. No vague middle ground was attempted: each composition answers the hour it belongs to, instead of half suiting all of them.
Plants, with nothing propping them up. Sugar, sweetener and synthetic flavouring are all absent. Whatever the mint, the chamomile and the lemongrass tasted of in a given year is what the cup tastes of, and one harvest shifts that about a little against the next.
A pack built to hold the aroma. Air and damp are kept off the bags by the zip seal. Bag twenty eight smells as strong as bag one did, which is never the case with a cardboard box opened a month ago.
From the kitchen table
Three things surface again and again: how it tastes, which hour each blend belongs to, and what the pair of them quietly displaced.
Fussy about green tea, I am, and a teabag version promised very little. Then the leaf genuinely opened out, the citrus came through clean, and there was no stewed edge waiting at the bottom of the cup.
Harriet P.Bristol, five months of it
Ending the evening is what Night Calm does in this house now. Kettle on, telly off, a cup each on the table, and the place settles a good deal quicker than it once did.
Duncan R.Glasgow, seven months in
Stuck on the phone, I forgot the bag for the better part of eight minutes. The cup was still perfectly good. Nothing else in my cupboard has ever behaved that way.
Priya S.Leeds, four months in
Coffee was more or less all I drank before four o'clock. Now a mid morning Day Balance carries me to lunch, and it leaves me clear headed instead of wired.
Malcolm W.Sheffield, three months in
Three weeks along, and opening the pack still lifts the lavender straight out at you. My old boxes had gone flat well before I ever reached the bottom of them.
Eleanor B.Norwich, six months along
Nothing to work out: one for the morning, the other for later. This is the first pack of tea I have ever reached the bottom of, rather than rediscovering it behind everything else a year on.
Rhys T.Cardiff, eight months and counting
Asked most often
Day Balance goes with the working hours. Green tea forms its base, with citrus peel, lemongrass and sweet mint laid over the top, and roughly 30 mg of caffeine to the cup, which suits everything from waking to the middle of the afternoon. Once evening is properly under way, Night Calm takes over: chamomile as the base, then lavender, rose petals and a little peppermint, none of which brings any caffeine with it.
One pyramid bag to the cup, then 250 ml poured on at about 90°C, the kettle having rested half a minute once it boiled. Light at four minutes, fuller at six. Take the bag out. Drink it as it comes, or stir in honey or a slice of lemon if that is how you take your tea.
Twenty eight pyramid bags fill each resealable pack, portioned individually. At a cup a day that comes to a month from one pack. Drinking both blends daily means keeping one of each in the cupboard to see the month out.
Day Balance alone, and only because green tea forms its base: about 30 mg to the cup, somewhere near half an espresso. Nothing in Night Calm produces caffeine, which is why a late brew carries no consequence.
It is. These are plant infusions meant for daily drinking, and one or two cups is the rhythm the collection was built around. As with anything caffeinated, keep an eye on the total across the day, coffee and other teas counted in.
Take advice before drinking it regularly. Through pregnancy and breastfeeding the NHS ceiling is 200 mg of caffeine daily, everything included, and that is the figure to weigh Day Balance against. Herbs can also interact with medicines already prescribed, which makes a GP or a pharmacist the right person to ask.
Nothing has. Sugar, sweetener and synthetic aroma are absent from both blends, and the flavour is whatever the infused plants give up. Harvests differ, so the aroma will not be identical every time. Add nothing yourself and the cup carries no calories.
Press the seal shut after each bag is taken out. Dry, out of direct light, nowhere near heat. Keep coffee and spices at a distance as well, since the bags will pick their smell up. A closed cupboard shelf does the job perfectly, and refrigerating it serves no purpose.
Two resealable packs. Twenty eight pyramid bags to each of them, a month of the ritual, and four minutes at the kettle at either end of the day.
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Before you brew it
TeaVela belongs among the teas and herbal infusions. A drink is all it is, neither a medicine nor a food supplement, and no infusion stands in for meals, for sleep or for exercise. Caffeine arrives with the green tea in Day Balance, so those sensitive to it are better off keeping that cup to earlier hours. For pregnancy and breastfeeding, 200 mg of caffeine is the daily figure the NHS gives, drinks of every kind counted in. Doubts, allergies, treatment already under way: a GP or a pharmacist comes first.
No synthetic flavouring
Nothing sweetened
Wholly plant