Dragonfly

Dragonfly comes from the family that first put rooibos in a packet: founder Bruce Ginsberg is the grandson of Benjamin Ginsberg, who began selling rooibos as a tea in South Africa in 1904, and Bruce introduced rooibos to British tea drinkers in 1976. The brand built its name on certified organic rooibos and simple herbal infusions, and it has stayed unflashy about it. The philosophy has never changed: a genuinely good rooibos or peppermint does not need dressing up, and if the botanical is grown well and not adulterated, the cup speaks for itself. That restraint is unusual in a category that competes on packaging and wellness claims, and it is why Dragonfly became the quiet benchmark for what single-origin organic herbal tea should taste like.

The range is the essentials done properly, pure rooibos, rooibos blends, mint teas, green tea and a small set of clean herbal blends, all certified organic, no artificial flavourings, no filler leaf. For our shelf Dragonfly is the British retail benchmark for honest single-ingredient organic herbal tea. The rooibos is the afternoon cup to drink when you want something caffeine-free that still tastes of something, and the mint teas outperform flashier, pricier rivals because there is nothing in the bag but leaf. It carries less brand polish than Pukka and a deliberately narrower range, and that is the trade. What you get back is purity and consistency, from a family brand that keeps proving the simplest version, done properly and certified rather than merely claimed, is usually the best one on the shelf.

Key facts