The Best Teas at Trader Joe’s, Ranked

Coffee gets all the glory when it comes to caffeinated beverages, but a nice cup of tea can be life-changing or at least make mornings a bit more bearable. If you’re looking to get into tea or looking for your next favorite blend, Trader Joe’s tea aisle has some of the most unique, delicious brews on the market. Today, I’ll take you through the fifteen teas Trader Joe’s offers and rank them from worst to best. Let’s get this par-tea started!

15. Matcha Green Tea Latte Mix

The good part about this tea is that its powdered form allows for a quick, incredibly easy preparation. The bad part? Well, in my opinion, pretty much everything else.

For starters, I’m not a huge fan of matcha, so the fact that this Matcha Green Tea Latte Mix tastes like, well, matcha, automatically puts it towards the bottom of my list. Next, there’s the ingredients. Cane sugar, coconut oil, and maltodextrin are all listed before matcha is mentioned, so I assume those ingredients are featured more than the actual matcha.

Even though I’m not a huge fan of matcha flavor, I’d rather taste that than get a slap in the face with sugar, which is what each sip of this mix tastes like. I love a sweet drink, but this one is approaching cloying territory. If you love matcha, this might be higher on your list, but it was a miss for me.

14. Organic Nilgiri Black Tea

The Organic Nilgiri Black Tea has a lot going on in the flavor department. It’s a black tea that has vanilla, stone fruit, honey, and floral notes. These flavors bring in the perfect amount of sweetness without being overpowering and pair well with a spoonful of honey mixed in.

For me, this Trader Joe’s tea is a little bit too floral, though. The floral notes are overpowering to my tastebuds and drown out the vanilla and fruit flavors. It has a slight perfumey taste to it, which, to be fair, is expected in anything with floral notes, but it’s just a bit too much for my taste.

13. Matcha Green Tea

As I mentioned before, matcha isn’t my jam, but the Matcha Green Tea is significantly better than the Matcha Green Tea Latte Mix.

This tea comes canned, so there is zero steep time required here. The ingredients are much simpler than in the match latte powder we talked about before, which is a major plus. Most of the drink is just water, matcha powder, and green tea.

It’s unsweetened, so it has that grassy, bitter matcha taste upfront, but it’s a great option if you’re a matcha lover.

12. Decaffeinated Black Tea

There’s nothing wrong with this tea, but it’s pretty forgettable. It’s made with African black tea leaves, so the flavor of this brew is earthy, bold, and a bit astringent.

I would only reach out for these tea bags if I was out of everything else. I would drink and enjoy it, but it’s nothing to write home about. It reminds me of the tea that’s sometimes offered for free in a hotel lobby. I think this Trader Joe’s tea would be best enjoyed with some cream and sugar to balance out any extra bitterness.

11. Matcha Green Tea Powder

Out of all Trader Joe’s matcha teas, this is by far the best. It’s simple and to the point. The ingredient list includes only one ingredient, which is matcha green tea powder.

All you have to do is mix one packet of powder with hot water (or cold water if you prefer an iced matcha) and stir until it’s fully dissolved. The green tea powder tastes high quality with a sweet, rich taste that I haven’t found in most other matcha drinks.

10. Organic Assam Black Tea

This Trader Joe’s tea is toasty, earthy, and just a little bit spicy. Their Organic Assam Black Tea comes from the assamica variety of tea plants that are grown in northeastern India.

This blend is perfect for those who prefer a tea to a coffee in the morning. It has that same robust, full-bodied feel that a cup of coffee has, making it a great way to start the day. There’s a warm, slightly spicy flavor to it as well, which gives that cozy, comforting flavor you crave when you first wake up.

9. Organic Earl Grey Tea

Trader Joe’s Organic Earl Grey Tea is a black tea with Italian Bergamot orange oil. The two ingredients together make for Earl Grey’s famously bold, citrusy flavor profile.

Black tea can get a little bitter, and the orange oil brightens all that up and brings in an invigorating zesty note to each sip. If you enjoy a fruity tea, this is a great one to try. The orange is super fragrant, so it’s front and center, but you’ll still be able to taste that bold, slightly astringent black tea flavor.

8. Cold Brew Iced Tea Black Tea + Lemon

When I hear “cold brew,” I think of coffee. But even though coffee is the most common beverage to be made in a cold brew method, it can refer to any drink brewed using room temperature or cold water. Case in point: Trader Joe’s Cold Brew Iced Tea.

The ingredient list of these tea bags includes black tea and lemon powder. The lemon powder includes dried cane syrup, lemon oil, and lemon juice. The dried cane syrup adds just a touch of sweetness, but not a lot, so you can customize it to your liking. I usually add a squeeze of honey to my glass.

Your tea bag only needs to sit in water for 5 minutes, but I usually do mine for 7 or 8 minutes just to get a little extra flavor. There’s just the right amount of lemon flavor here – it’s more of a hint than anything else. This tea is refreshing with a perfectly subtle lemon flavor. Between these bags and Lipton’s cold brew bags, I’d choose Trader Joe’s version every time.

7. Winter Wake Up Tea

The Winter Wake Up Tea is a spicy, cozy tea that’ll give you quite the jumpstart in the morning, thanks to the spices stuffed into each bag. This black tea is blended with cinnamon, licorice, orange peel, ginger, and clove.

I’m not the biggest fan of licorice flavor, but there’s the perfect amount in this tea to lend an earthy, sweet flavor to it. The warm spices bring an incredibly cozy, latte-like feeling to each sip. I like to enjoy this tea with some cream and sugar on chilly days when I need a mid-afternoon pick-me-up.

6. Spiced Chai Black Tea Concentrate

One of the most popular items in the Trader Joe’s tea aisle is their Spiced Chai Black Tea Concentrate. This fragrant, bold blend of spices includes black pepper, allspice, clove, cardamom, cinnamon, and plenty of ginger.

The mix of these spices makes for a warm, cozy drink, no matter what you add to it. Trader Joe’s recommends adding two parts of any base (I use regular milk, but you can use almond milk, oat milk, etc.) with one part of Spiced Chai Concentrate. This combo makes for a perfectly balanced, spicy, and creamy tea latte every time.

The sugar is already added to the concentrate, but there’s not too much. It’s just enough sweetness while still being customizable, so you can add more if you want. This chai tea is slightly more ginger-heavy than other chais I’ve encountered, but I love ginger, so no complaints here.

5. Golden Oolong Tea

Black and green are probably the most well-known types of tea, but another category between the two is often overlooked. Oolong tea is right in the middle. It’s stronger than green tea but weaker than black tea.

Trader Joe’s Golden Oolong Tea is unsweetened, but it has an inherent natural sweetness to it, even without any sugar added. The flavor in this tea is refreshing and bright, and it comes pre-brewed, so all you have to do is heat it up or throw a few ice cubes in and sweeten it to your liking before enjoying.

4. Organic Moroccan Mint Green Tea

For me, two of the most refreshing teas are mint tea and green tea. Mix the two together, and you’ve got a delightfully unique drink that’s just as good iced as it is piping hot. Trader Joe’s makes their Organic Moroccan Mint Green Tea with spearmint, lemongrass, and, of course, green tea leaves.

The mint flavor in this tea is front and center, but it doesn’t overpower the earthy green tea or the zesty lemon notes inside. Instead, the mint enhances and complements these other flavors. I like to enjoy this tea hot with a bit of honey for some sweetness, but it’s also incredibly refreshing in iced form.

3. Maple Espresso Black Tea Blend

I’ll never forget the first time I saw a box of Maple Espresso Black Tea while browsing the Trader Joe’s tea aisle. It caught my eye immediately. Coffee and tea, all wrapped into one little bag? Could that possibly taste good? Obviously, I had to buy it, and I’ve bought at least four more boxes since that fateful day.

This is one of the most unique teas I’ve ever tried, thanks to the addition of ground espresso beans to the tea bag. This brings a toasty note of bold espresso to the drink, but since there’s not much of it inside the tea bag, it doesn’t overpower the rest of the ingredients.

There are also black and herbal tea leaves and a natural maple flavor inside, which brings a sweet, almost caramelized flavor to your cup. This is a seasonal Trader Joe’s tea, so if you try and love it, grab a couple of boxes if you want to drink it year-round. It makes a great drink when you need a pick-me-up but don’t want to have another cup of joe.

2. Organic Ginger Turmeric Herbal Tea

Some of my favorite flavors in tea are ginger, black pepper, turmeric, and orange oil. It just so happens that the Organic Ginger Turmeric Herbal Tea has all those flavors and more, which is why it’s one of the best teas to ever hit Trader Joe’s shelves.

Besides the ingredients I mentioned above, this tea also includes licorice root (just a hint of it can be tasted) and orange peel. This brew has so many unique flavors happening all at once – citrus, sweet, earthy, and spicy – and they all blend perfectly for a warm, comforting cup of tea. 

Turmeric and ginger are the main flavors here, with ginger being responsible for that spicy, warm feeling and turmeric lending the earthy, slightly sweet flavor. I love to drink this tea as I wind down for the night. There’s no caffeine in it, so you can drink it as close to bedtime as you’d like.

1. Candy Cane Green Tea

Every holiday season, just in time for the chilly weather, the best Trader Joe’s tea of all time hits the shelves. And each holiday season, without fail, I stock up on it to last me through the year.

This tea is different from any other you’ll find at Trader Joe’s. It’s made with many cozy, fun ingredients. My favorites are peppermint, vanilla beans, orange peel, cinnamon, and chicory root.

Although the main flavor here is definitely the peppermint, there are plenty of other interesting notes that are complemented by the minty freshness coming from the peppermint. The vanilla, cinnamon, and toasty chicory root bring in the classic flavors of the holiday season, while the orange peel helps to brighten everything up and bring in a little zest.

Since this tea is not caffeinated, you don’t have to worry about getting the shakes if you drink a lot of it. Because trust me, once you taste it, you’ll want to have more than just one cup of this stuff. If you want a comforting and cozy tea drink that’s refreshing and bright at the same time, the Candy Cane Green Tea is the one to try.

Despite its festive packaging and flavor profile, it is just as good in December as it is in July. I’m still waiting for the day that Trader Joe’s decides to make this a year-round product.