This is it! The eight contestants’ teas are tested and a winner is chosen! There were no losers, since all eight contestants will be receiving free teas, but there was definitely one tea that came out on top.

Watch the video to see who won our first Tea Showdown:

Filming took about five hours total, so you may notice a bit of caffeine-induced hysteria and what may have been a case of caffeine hangover by the time we had sipped our way through eight cups of tea.

The Disembodied Voice (Amy) joined us for this episode as a third official judge of the eight teas. Each of us drank each tea and gave them each a score between 1 and 10. The tea’s three judges’ scores were added together to give the tea its final score, with the highest final score being the winning tea. We also announced each judge’s favorite (i.e. highest scored) tea.

Here are some of the pictures from our tea-drinking marathon:

If you were one of our eight contestants, you can expect an email from us in the very near future so that we can obtain mailing addresses for each of you and get your pick for your free tea. We’re emailing each contestant one at a time, in order of highest to lowest Showdown scores (the highest score getting first pick of the free tea).

This has been a really successful event for STeaP, and we look forward to bringing you more contests and promotions throughout 2008! We have also received samples from several tea companies that we will be featuring soon, so watch for more opportunities to win tea goodies and learn more about what some of the smaller tea companies have to offer.