Best tea advent calendar 2023: Enjoy 24 Christmas brews
Get festive with these selections of quality herbal teas, green teas, black teas and more from the best tea advent calendars
We all love to count down the days until Christmas, with the daily door-opening ceremony of an advent calendar being one of the most fun and festive ways to do it. A perfect accompaniment or alternative to a chocolate-filled version is a tea advent calendar, with the best ones containing an intriguing mix of familiar blends and interesting brews you might not have tried before.
Alongside the teas themselves, tea advent calendars often contain extra treats and goodies to be enjoyed alongside a cuppa. As well as all that, their cheery, colourful designs allow them to serve a double function as a Christmas decoration themselves.
If you have a whole host of people you’ll be needing calendars for, be sure to check out our other great roundups, which include our best beer advent calendar, best gin advent calendar and best unusual advent calendar selections. However, if you’re solely interested in brewing up a tea-rrific Christmas, keep scrolling and check out our list below.
Best tea advent calendar: At a glance
- Best overall: Whittard Advent Calendar | £70
- Best budget calendar: John Lewis Tea Advent Calendar | £22
- Best for variety: Fortnum & Mason Tea Lover’s Advent Calendar | £30
- Best herbal calendar: Pukka Herbal Tea Advent Calendar | £13
The best tea advent calendars to buy in 2023
1. Whittard Tea Advent Calendar for Two: Best overall tea advent calendar
Price when reviewed: £70 | Check price at Whittard
The immediate draw of this advent calendar is its high-class packaging. Ornate, colourful and well finished, the box opens to reveal 24 labelled slide-out drawers, each with their own beautiful festive pattern. Inside each drawer are four individually wrapped tea bags, for a total of 94 tea bags spread across 24 varieties.
Well known for the high quality of its teas and infusions, this well-curated calendar from Whittard includes some classics, such as breakfast tea and Earl Grey, off-beat selections, such as Mango and Bergamot green tea, as well as fun seasonal blends in the form of the Christmas tea and Festive Breakfast tea.
Key details – No. of teabags: 94; Varieties included: Black, green, herbal, fruit, organic infusions; Extras: Yes
2. John Lewis Tea Advent Calendar: Best budget tea advent calendar
Price when reviewed: £22 | Check price at John Lewis
Compact, cheap and cheerfully designed, this tea advent calendar from John Lewis is a great option for those looking for a nice selection of teas without all the frills. While tidily sized and restrained, the packaging for this calendar is still aesthetically pleasing, with a green and blue patterned outer layer opening to reveal 24 festive doors.
The teas inside have been selected from the royalty-connected Darvilles of Windsor’s range, and include breakfast and afternoon black teas, an Indian Spiced Chai, a Japanese cherry tea with flower petals, fruity options in the form of passionfruit, strawberry & kiwi and blood orange infusions, as well as a sweetly flavoured Christmas cookie infusion, to name just a few.
Key details – No. of teabags: 24; Varieties included: Black, green, chai, herbal, fruit, infusions, flower petal
3. Fortnum and Mason Tea Lover’s Advent Calendar: Best tea advent calendar for variety
Price when reviewed: £30 | Check price at Fortnum and Mason
Known for many years as “the Queen’s grocer”, Fortnum and Mason’s pedigree is such that its London locations have become tourist attractions in and of themselves. While it’s a purveyor of a range of quality goods, its main specialisation is in tea, so it’s no great surprise that it has put together a stylish tea advent calendar packed with quality and variety.
Sporting luxurious red, green and gold colouring, this advent calendar will add a classy Christmas “pop” to your kitchen and living room, while the tea inside will make for a warm, enlivening treat at any time of day. There are various eye-catching teas and infusions included in this calendar, with highlights including Fortnum & Mason’s classic Royal blend, its Camomile and Bee Pollen tea and the juniper and botanical-infused Gin and Tonic tea.
Key details – No. of teabags: 24; Varieties included: Black, oolong, green, rooibos, chai, infusion
4. Pukka Days of Joy Herbal Advent Calendar: Best herbal tea advent calendar
Price when reviewed: £13 | Check price at Holland & Barrett
Some tea lovers enjoy nothing more than a strong, black tea, while others prefer the gentler, herbal side of things. For the camomile, fennel or turmeric tea drinker in your life, Pukka is probably a name they know as well as their own. Well-priced and varied, this Pukka herbal tea Advent calendar offers up the best of the brand’s range, including its tasty Licorice and Cinnamon tea, its zingy Three Ginger offering and its take on classics such as Chamomile and Matcha.
All the above is housed in a festively designed, blue fold-out calendar, perfect for wall-hanging. Beyond being Christmassy, Pukka’s packaging is also environmentally friendly, with everything from the outer packaging to the cotton dipping string and compostable tea bags being fully recyclable or biodegradable.
Key details – No. of teabags: 24; Varieties included: Infusion, green, matcha
Check price at Holland & Barrett
5. Teapigs Christmas advent calendar: Best ethically-sourced tea advent calendar
Price when reviewed: £23 | Check price at Selfridges
Teapigs’ stated aim as a company is to bring customers ethically sourced, organic tea in environmentally friendly packaging, and this advent calendar does just that, offering up 25 days of different delicious varieties of compostable Teapigs tea bags in a recyclable cardboard box.
All of the teas in this calendar are housed in Teapigs’ signature ‘tea temples,’ which is their name for their roomier tea bags, filled with larger strands of tea and bigger pieces of fruit etc., which they claim brings out the deep, rich flavour of loose-leaf teas in a more fuss-free tea bag form.
Some of the delicious-sounding options available in this current iteration of the calendar are the brand’s signature Mao Feng green tea, a berry-based Super Fruit blend and a Spiced Winter Rooibos offering.
Key details – No. of teabags: 25; Varieties: Black, green, rooibos , infusion