Benner Harvest Tea Collection

I drink tea every day, sometimes multiple cups. I have a whole shelf in my pantry dedicated to tea. I also have several jars on my kitchen counter that hold various types of tea. I’m a fan of it all, from strong black breakfast teas to fruity herbal teas.

I buy some of these teas from Aldi. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed Aldi’s green tea, pumpkin spice black tea, and rose-flavored black tea, to name a few. Even the basic bulk box of black tea at Aldi is pretty good, especially given its low price.

For a few years now, I’ve wanted Aldi to sell some kind of a tea sampler, either with traditional tea bags or K-Cup-style pods. (Aldi already sometimes sells seasonal multi-flavor coffee K-Cup-style sampler boxes.) I’ve even wished Aldi would offer a tea Advent calendar just like it offered a coffee Advent calendar a few years ago.

It’s not a tea Advent calendar (we can still hope), but Aldi is finally selling a tea sampler this fall with 12 different flavors. It features a variety of fall-themed flavors, including apple caramel, chai cinnamon, and spiced cranberry. It offers a mix of black teas with caffeine and herbal teas with no caffeine.

You’ll need a Keurig or similar K-Cup-compatible single serve coffee maker to brew the tea. The box states the cups are compatible with Keurig 2.0 and most single-style brewers. The box also says this tea is not affiliated with Keurig.

We bought an Ambiano Single Serve Coffee Maker from Aldi a couple of years ago, so we were all set. I made sure to pick up a box of this fall tea the morning it arrived in my local store. I don’t always like teas that brew in these kinds of machines (I feel like they tend to taste a little watery and less flavorful), but I’ve never met a tea I wasn’t eagerly willing to try.

The Benner Harvest Tea Collection is an Aldi Find, meaning it’s only in stores for a short time. Each store gets a single shipment, and it’s gone after it sells out. Aldi does not offer online ordering for products that are sold out at your local store.

We buy products for review with our own funds, and I purchased this tea collection for $6.99 for 1.27 ounces at the time of publication. With 12 cups per package, that comes out to about 58 cents per serving.

Flavors include the following:

• Chai Cinnamon
• Orange
• Pomegranate
• Apple Caramel
• Cinnamon Vanilla
• Lady Grey
• Apple Cider
• Chamomile Honey
• Speculoos Cookie
• Spiced Cranberry
• Chamomile Lemon
• White Jasmine

Here are our thoughts on each of the flavors, as well as the listed ingredients for each flavor. I also noticed that the back of the box contains a couple of typos (“Chia” Cinnamon Tea, and White “Jasmin” Tea).

• Chai Cinnamon — The box says this contains black tea, cloves, ginger, black pepper, cinnamon flavor, and cardamom flavor. This contains caffeine. It was aromatic and tasted strongly of cloves. It tasted best when served with a bit of milk.
• Orange — This contains rooibos and orange flavor. It is an herbal, caffeine free tea.
• Pomegranate — This contains hibiscus flowers, rooibos, and passionfruit flavor. It is an herbal, caffeine-free tea.
• Apple Caramel — This contains rooibos, cinnamon flavor, and apple cinnamon French toast flavor. It’s an herbal, caffeine-free tea. This has a nice smell. It has a mild flavor with caramel apple / French toast notes.
• Cinnamon Vanilla — This contains black tea and cinnamic aldehyde. It contains caffeine. This had a bitter flavor with an almost soap-like aftertaste. I added some sweetened creamer, which improved it, but it’s not one of my favorites.
• Lady Grey — This contains black tea and bergamot flavor. It contains caffeine. This is one of the best teas in the box. It’s a classic black tea with very fragrant bergamot. This was good even without sweetener or milk.
• Apple Cider — This contains rooibos, cinnamon flavor, and apple cinnamon French toast flavor. It’s an herbal, caffeine-free tea. This tastes similar — if not identical — to the Apple Caramel tea above. It has a mild flavor.
• Chamomile Honey — This contains chamomile. It’s an herbal, caffeine-free tea. I didn’t care for this. It had a classic chamomile scent, but it was very bitter and had a soap-like taste. It tastes better when served with honey or other sweetener, but I didn’t finish this cup.
• Speculoos Cookie — This contains black tea and cinnamic aldehyde. It contains caffeine. This tasted very similar to the Chai Cinnamon tea flavor in the same collection. It was heavily spiced. I frequently drink all kinds of teas without sweetener, but this was so strong it tasted best after I added a little honey and a splash of milk.
• Spiced Cranberry — This contains black tea, cranberry flavor, cinnamon flavor, and cardamom flavor. It states it’s an herbal, caffeine-free tea, but if it contains black tea it would certainly have caffeine. This was the fourth tea I tried out of this box, and it was the first one I could drink without having to add honey or milk to cut how strong it was. This is a much milder-tasting tea, with notes of cranberry but not much cinnamon or spice. It’s darker colored, so I’m guessing the label is correct when it says this contains black tea, but I’m still not totally sure about that or the caffeine content.
• Chamomile Lemon — This contains chamomile and lemon extract. It’s an herbal, caffeine-free tea.
• White Jasmine — This contains white tea, and it contains caffeine. This has very light floral notes reminiscent of other jasmine teas I’ve had. Flavor wise, it has bit of a sharp tang to it.

The Verdict:

The Benner Harvest Tea Collection features a mix of single-serve cups compatible with Keurig 2.0 and similar single-serve coffee makers. Flavors include Chai Cinnamon, Orange, Pomegranate, Apple Caramel, Cinnamon Vanilla, Lady Grey, Apple Cider, Chamomile Honey, Speculoos Cookie, Spiced Cranberry, Chamomile Lemon, and White Jasmine. They’re a mix of herbal, caffeine-free teas and teas with caffeine.

We are admittedly biased toward regular tea bags or loose leaf tea, as we feel that tea cups like this tend to make weak-tasting or even bitter tea. Many of the flavors in this box are either 1.) very mild, or 2.) on the strong side and best served with some sweetener and/or milk or creamer to add some balance. Our favorite flavor, hands down, in this collection was the Lady Grey. 

This was a fun box to try, but overall we don’t like it enough that we’d buy it again. We’d love to see Aldi sell a boxed tea collection that features traditional tea bags or loose leaf tea.