Harney & Sons - 9 Reviews

The sons of John Harney are really milking this "and sons" thing. John is up all night carefully blending ingredients while the sons are out driving Ferrari's and Porsche's that the family fortune bought. They're up drinking comically large bottles of Dom P at clubs "spreading the word" while daddy is in China meeting with Chinese business people about the best leaves to use for the green tea, black tea and white tea.

While daddy Harney was on his last excursion, he really nailed it. In between calls from his sons asking for more money for expensive watches, you know, "for the business" he was nailing his latest recipe for this half and half. It's nice and tart from the lemonade and the tea manages to shine through. It might be, this is a strong statement, the best half and half I've ever had. Nothing is lost and nothing needs to be improved on. It's a full flavor and a fair, even mix between the lemonade and the tea. Best of both. Nailed it. Great job daddy Harney. Sons? Get to work. Your daddy knows that you're milking the while "and sons" thing.

Harney & Sons have proven themselves to be masters of tea. They know how to brew it and they know how to flavor it. If you've ever tasted their products you know each of them is their own special treat. Now they have ventured out past the borders of Tea Town and have traveled to the world of juice drinks. That's an important distinction there, the inclusion of the word drink. The reasoning is that if this bottle had just said juice, I probably would have made a little complaint about added sugar. For some reason because they used the word drink, I think it is more acceptable to have cane sugar in the mix. I know it's all semantics, but I go crazy sometimes.

Yes this is sweet, but so is fruit and this really does taste like you're biting into a mango that has been pumped up with water. A weird visual I know. It doesn't taste watered down per say but it tastes naturally light. There is orange in the title, but I don't taste too much of it in the drink, but I'm okay with that. Orange is a filler juice to me. There is also apple, passionfruit and hibiscus juice in here. Those three all blend together to accompany the mango. This is just great, plain and simple.

Of course I don't think the added sugar is necessary ( I couldn't resist), but at least they were upfront about it, and you know what you're getting yourself into. I don't need the sugar in my diet, but hey sometimes you just have to indulge, and I could indulge in this way more than I probably should.

I want so badly for the eldest male in the Harney clan to be named James, and for everyone to call him Jim. I also hope his sons are really only in their mid-twenties. My whole reasoning for this is that I am a child and I so badly want Mr. Harney to have been about 15/16 in 1987, when the classic film Earnest Goes to Camp came out. The only dumb reason I have for this is that every time I read Harney and Sons, all I can think of is Varney and Sons, and in case you don't know the actor who played the role of Ernest was named Jim Varney. You see I am a cruel man and I want to patriarchal head of the Harney clan to have been teased as a child because of his name. It's a rite of passage for teenage boys and I would hate for him to have missed it. If no one yelled “Hey Vern” at him, there is no hope for this world.

Okay, never mind that tangent I just went off on. It had absolutely nothing to do with the contents of this bottle. So let's move on to the important information. Harney & Sons make delicious beverages that I have enjoyed up to this point. When you take a solid company and introduce blackberry in to the mix, magic is bound to happen. This is a wonderful mixture of black tea, blackberry juice, hibiscus, and boysenberry juice. It all blends together into a beverage that anyone would long for on the long nights at camp. It's very sweet and fruity, actually it's a tad bit too sweet with 42g of sugar per bottle. It probably wouldn't taste overly sweet to most people, but I've been drinking unsweetened tea constantly this summer, so I've been noticing sweetness more.

My only real complaint here, and it's hardly a complaint, is that I wish the tea flavor was a bit stronger. The berry taste is a natural one, but it's still very in your face. If it were mellowed out a bit, that might take care of the sugar as well and this would be absolutely perfect.

Chuck didn't like Christmas. It was always the time where everyone was very thoughtful and it made him feel like a pile of garbage. Everyone else was happy, buying gifts for each other and he just never wanted to participate in any of the festivities. He never was at a store and thought, "Oh, Karen would love this." He knew it was him and he could probably fix it if he just tried harder but he was in his thirties and if it didn't just happen by now, it never was going to.

This Christmas was no different. He went out on Christmas Eve and just bought everyone gift cards. He knew it's what people could use but not necessarily what they wanted, which also made him feel bad.

He went to his girlfriend's parent's house for Christmas and felt like he was just going through the motions. Everyone was open presents around him, smiling, and just shredding paper like it was suffocating the presents it was encasing. He just sat there and opened his, respectfully and to himself. Socks, ill-fitting sweater, videos in a format he can't use...same thing every year. All of a suddenly he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was his girlfriend's dad with a cup of tea. He was a cynical man himself and just gave Chuck a nod like he understood. He smelled it and it was rich with cinnamon. He took a sip and it was a very strong cup of tea but it was good. It was almost like a spicy, candy cinnamon but it wasn't sweet. There were some other spices in there that made it a pretty bold tea. It defiantly perked him up and allowed him to at least fake a smile as people opened their awful gifts from him.

A couple minutes later when the wrapping paper was all picked up and everyone was catching their breath, Chuck was sitting with a half full cup of tea thinking to himself that he couldn't finish it. It was good but it was just too much for him to choke down the rest of. It was too strong and sure he could have steeped it less but it really wasn't in there that long. He wished everyone happy holidays but was happy to just go home and go to sleep like the Grinch he knew he was and the old man that he knew he was becoming.

This is one of those rare times where I give a beverage that I did not enjoy a great rating. I couldn't get through more than a few sips of this tea, but that is my problem, not Harney & Sons. If I were a person whose taste buds were in love with coconut (the meat of the fruit, not the water/milk), I would be all over this. It's sad that it turns out I don't have the palate for the stuff. This is a high quality green tea with a little vanilla and even less ginger added to it. Had that been the end of it, I would drink this all the live long day, but there is that previously mentioned coconut in there that just turns me off. The thing is if you are someone who does enjoy that sort of tropical delight, this is probably one of the best teas you could find on the market.

There are a bunch of teas on the market that claim to be lightly sweetened, and that just means it's what should be a normal amount of sugar added, instead of the insane amounts that most tea companies use. Harney & Sons make no such claim, but this tea is the definition of lightly sweetened in my world. There is a little cane sugar and a little honey in here, but it only equals 5g of sugar. It's enough to combat the bitterness of the green tea, but not enough so that it's completely nonexistent. This is a tea that you could drink obscene amounts of and not feel terrible for having done so.

It should also be noted that even though I don't like the coconut I'm powering through this, because everything else in it just tastes that good.

This is one the lightest, and most lightly sweetened teas to ever walk the face of this earth. Did I just insinuate that this tea is sentient? Possibly. For all I know this bottle could sprout legs and it could go on a walkabout. I don't know and I don't care, as I would still drink it. It's a quality black tea that is ever so slightly sweetened with cane sugar and honey. You can taste the honey a teeny tiny bit, but it's enough to add leaps and bounds to the overall flavor. There is only a faint hint of peach. It's more in the aftertaste than the sipping taste. If sentient beverages is the cost of having teas that taste this good, I say let's do it. Sure we'll have a moral dilemma with each sip, but we're humans we adapt to the craziest things.

This just may be the best berry tea I have ever had. It may have an unfair advantage as they call it a "juice drink" and not a tea. It tastes like they created an incredible mixture of blackberry, raspberry and hibiscus and then combined one part of that with one part of black tea. Most flavored teas are mostly tea with a little flavoring and a whole lot of sugar. In this drink the fruit juice seems more important than the tea. It works well.

The label says it's "light sweet," but truth be told it's pretty darn sweet. I have no problem with it, as I said it tastes incredible. If I was looking for a tea that wasn't very sweet and I got this I would be in for a surprise. Other than that this is a top notch drink that I hope catches on in a big way. Also between the company name and the stripes on the bottle I feel like it should be served at a circus. I'm not putting my head in a lion's mouth again though. I'll tell you that for free.

An Ode to Lemonade:
So Simple. So Pure.
Three Ingredients.
Water. Sugar. Lemon Juice.
Tart Yet Sweet.
The Drink Of The Summer.
Harney & Sons Chose Less Tart.
Still Tasty. Still Refreshing.
All Organic.

Apparently "Ode" means writing like a crazy person with every word in capitals.

Jeeves, oh Jeeves, come here please. What is this? What, you say? Harney and Sons Organic Black tea? It's splendid. Where did you get this? In the cupboard? Really? Well, I clearly don't know what wifey brings in and out of this house. I really should pay more attention. I know that she's been spending a lot of time with the gardener and an equal amount of time with the new French tennis instructor.

What is in this? Basically just tea, sugar, and honey. It's so simple. Jeeves, get my people on the phone with this Mr. Harney and let's see if we can't come to some sort of agreement in terms of an acquisition, shall we? I can't let anything happen to this family and their wonderful tea. Why, I don't know what I would do if something happened to them and I wouldn't be able to get this delightful product. I say, it's probably in the phone book under "H". There are seventeen "Hanley's"? Well try them all. You are on the clock and this is important to me.

Jeeves, did I ever tell you of the time when mother used to make me tea when I was sick? When I was a boy, she used to make me tea and I thought it was simply dreadful so when mother wasn't looking, I would put sugar and honey in my tea. She was never the wiser. It cut out a lot of the bitterness and smoothed it out and it tastes exactly like this tea. This tea reminds me of mother and that's why it's so important that you get them on the phone and buy them out. While you're over there making phone calls for me, get my monocle cream. It's fogging up and I can't be bothered to do it myself.