Sleep Well Tea – Camellia’s Tea House

One of the sets of tea bags I received in the free goody bag from Camellia’s Tea House last month was called Sleep Well. As someone who suffers from chronic insomnia, I am open to anything that might aid in helping me sleep so I was interested in trying it. It’s actually an infusion as it doesn’t contain any type of tea leaves but I will still be treating it as if it is tea. 

I did have some slight concern as one of the ingredients is my old nemesis chamomile but as it contained plenty of other (potentially) good stuff too, I decided to give it a go.

Ingredients: Valerian, hops, chamomile, lemon verbena, hawthorn, red clover, violet and spearmint.

They describe it thus:

‘Sleep Well is a lovely infusion which combines lemon verbena with chamomile to produce a gentle and soothing infusion with delightful undertones of mint. The ingredients of the tea are believed to ease insomnia and promote restful sleep.’

Wrapped in a sealed foil packet, the infusion comes in a little gauze pouch filled with what looks like a selection of wildflowers and grasses. 

Camellia’s pride themselves on their handcrafted blends that are made with pesticide-free and organic teas and herbs from specialist tea gardens and this bag, although I hesitate to use the term, definitely provides that homemade feeling — reminding me more of one of those old-fashioned lavender sachets tied at the top with string that your grandmother used to make rather than a traditional paper or silk tea bag.

For once I actually followed the instructions (because of the chamomile) and brewed the pouch in boiling water for 5 minutes and I drank it without any sweetener.

This infusion is quite mild and although the chamomile aroma I so despise is the only thing I could smell, it is actually very gentle and wasn’t enough to stop me from being able to drink it as traditional chamomiles have in the past.

The taste itself is quite odd, starting with the floral notes I would expect and ending with the spearmint rushing in at the end and somewhat overpowering the other flavours, for me at least — although this isn’t a bad thing as it killed the floral taste that I can’t cope with and meant I could keep drinking it. I didn’t get any sense of the lemon verbena at all but that might be because the chamomile is still a little too noticeable and masks it.

Although I have a sweet tooth, this is definitely not a tea I would add any sweetener to as I suspect it would make me heave as it would accentuate the floral aspect. However, as it is, I can say that I managed to drink a whole mug and wouldn’t be averse to doing so again in the future although I’m not sure I would actually buy the tea unless I discovered it really was a cure for insomnia.

So, does it have sleep inducing qualities? The truth is I can’t be certain.

I do know that as I was drinking it I found myself yawning although whether this was because of the tea or because my brain had convinced itself that the infusion was working I can’t honestly say. However, by the time I drank the tea, it was almost 1 a.m. after a long day of hospital visits that had left me physically exhausted, so it’s likely that this was also a factor but I definitely wasn’t yawning before I started drinking.

I have to admit that when I woke up the following morning I did feel as if I’d had a decent night’s sleep and don’t remember taking that long to drift off. My Fitbit stats tell a slightly different story, though, and although I did apparently fall asleep a couple of minutes earlier than it usually takes me to drift off I was every bit as restless during the night as I normally am.

So the jury is out on Sleep Well’s benefits as a sleep enhancer for the time being and because of the chamomile, the sleep benefits would be the only reason I would drink it. I shall give it another try to see if I can get a better idea of its efficacy as I still have a couple of bags; probably sometime during the week when sleep is more crucial to me than it is at the weekend. 

I shall report back and let you know.