Alphakitty

I won this tea on Della Terra’s Facebook page along with two others, they are so generous with contests! I like being able to try small portions of teas before I commit to larger sizes, which is probably why my samples are very close to outnumbering my actual teas… I may have a serious problem!

This tea smells AMAZING in the bag. Marshmallow, chocolate, and even a whiff of graham cracker! I could sniff it all day long, just walk around with my nose in the bag. But tea is for drinking after all, so I reluctantly pulled away from it to brew up a cup. As I suspected, the flavor isn’t as POW as the smell, which I think happens a lot with teas. The black base is actually the strongest flavor, it’s quite brisk and malty. Next comes a soft creaminess with a distinct marshmallow flavor, not surprising since there are actual mini marshmallows in it! The chocolate is also strong, though it’s a very milky chocolate—like a Hershey’s bar, which is fitting since this is s’mores. However, I really love dark chocolate so I was kind of hoping for a bit more depth. Then again, that wouldn’t really be “s’mores” would it? The one thing missing for me is the graham cracker—I get a bit of cinnamon, but not that toasty flavor I expected.

This is definitely a boldly dessert-y tea, with no qualms about what it is. Creamy, sticky-sweet, milky, bordering on the edge of cloying without stepping over it. It’s pretty heavy for an everyday tea, but as an occasional treat I can definitely get behind it!

Steepster is such a dangerous but wonderful place. I was perusing newly added teas the other day and saw a Crystal Malt tea that I just HAD to find out more about. So I hopped onto their website and saw there was a cheap sampler pack. Now, I know company experience isn’t really part of a tea’s rating, but I’d like to mention that I got amazing customer service! There were some issues with my order and they were fixed speedily. Also, my samples cam in this adorable little tin! This is the first of 5 teas that I have to try, but I already know I’ll be ordering again soon.

I decided to cold brew a teabag of this, and something very strange happened. It brewed to a dark amber in ONE HOUR. I know, right! The fastest I’ve ever had a tea “finish” cold brewing was 4 hours, and that’s usually for bagged tea (which infuses faster because it’s all cut up) or I’ll throw a whole bunch of leaves in there. This, though, is whole grains, so I’m amazed it only took that long. And it was strong too! I got a second brew out of it, but I have a feeling you could probably cold brew a bag of this all day long and get 4 cups easy. Which, of course, makes it a whole lot more appealing!

If you’ve ever had barley tea, the taste here is obviously similar. It’s rich and has an almost savory quality, but the corn adds a surprising hint of sweetness at the end of the sip. I am reminded of genmaicha, but with a stronger background taste instead of a green tea. The malty flavor is quite strong, almost molasses-y. So delicious and refreshing!

I got my gaiwan a few months ago, but I’ve been waiting to use it. I’m not exactly sure why to be honest—I think I was waiting for the “right tea” to break it in. One that would benefit from gaiwan-style brewing but wasn’t high maintenance enough for me to worry about totally ruining the steep. As soon as I sniffed the dry leaves for this, I knew it was the right choice to start out my gaiwan journey! I’m sure it isn’t at all typical to brew a chai this way, but I thought it would be interesting to see what flavors came out on different steeps.

I have a tiny gaiwan, it holds maybe 4 ounces? It’s tiny, and really meant for one person, but I split all the steeps for this with the bf. I thought it would be a fun little tea adventure to do together, even if it meant only tasting half of an already small steep. It came with a cute little set so I had a strainer (since I am not adept at holding the lid right, this was a godsend!) and a pitcher to hold water. It also has tasting cups, but they are REALLY small and the gaiwan makes 4 so I just used smaller mugs. Oh, and there’s a tea tongs holder shaped like a hand… it’s kind of weird, but I don’t have tea tongs so it’s really just decorative.

Steep 1: This steep was a bit bitter, probably because I only did one rinse on the leaves. I wasn’t exactly sure how many it would need and didn’t want to take away too much of the flavor. This was a very oolong-y steep, with pretty much no spice or chocolate to be found, but still tasty! A bit mineral, and I think the vanilla came through.

Steep 2: The chocolatey-ist steep, rich and creamy. It’s caramelly and malty, very rich, with hints of cocoa and honey.

Steep 3: Spicy! I don’t know if there is any pepper in here (I don’t think so, yet mysteriously I taste it), but that is what this steep tastes like. It’s not heat from the ginger, but is warmer and tangier. The chocolate plays a supporting role, and the floral notes were also prominent. I think this was my favorite steep, it has a good balance of everything.

Steep 4: This steep was ginger all the way. Very strong and pungent, with a nice bite. I can taste a bit of the saffron on this steep, adding an almost savory quality to it. It was also quite buttery with a nice hint of cocoa, my second favorite steep.

Steep 5: I think I didn’t let this one brew for long enough, since it was a bit weak yet I’m sure I didn’t run through all the possible brews yet. It had, you know, that generic tea taste but none of the spicy/chocolate notes from previous steeps. Okay, but not my favorite.

I have the used leaves cold brewing in the fridge, so hopefully I’ll be able to pull a lot of use out of these leaves! I’m sure I could have done twice as many steeps, but 5 took about half an hour and I was all tea’d out. It was such fun though, really interesting to go through all the steeps. I have to admit I played it a bit fast and loose with steep times: they were probably between 15 seconds to 2 minutes each. I know, I should pay more attention, but I tried to keep this tea session relaxed. I think it was a great success!

EDIT: Totally forgot to update how this was cold brewed! Well, it was definitely… unique. Not in a bad way, but I got a very strong sage flavor backed up by the ginger that made me think of Thanksgiving dinner. By this point the chocolate was all gone but it was still quite a refreshing cup.

I sure am drinking a lot of tea tonight. This is my second cold steep of the day and I already have another one in the fridge, plus I had matcha this afternoon. I’ve already planned out my evening tea as well, sigh. Hopefully it’s not too much caffeine—usually tea caffeine doesn’t have too much of an effect on me, but 5 cups in one day is more than my usual so we’ll just have to wait and see.

I love melon teas, and I already have two I adore (Butiki’s Cantaloupe & Cream and GMT’s Persian Melon) but they are both white teas and hey, one more can’t hurt! Actually, counting watermelon I probably have way more than 2, but for some reason I don’t count watermelon in the “melon” flavor family. Cantaloupe, honeydew, and stuff closer to that is what I think of when my brain goes to melon. I guess the flavor of watermelon is just really different? It’s also got a really different consistency.

The description doesn’t say what type of melon flavor is used. It smells somewhere between cantaloupe and honeydew, so I’d assume it’s sprite melon. When Japanese snacks are listed as melon flavored that is usually what it is. It’s also got very pale flesh, and the chunks of dried melon in here are white. So, sprite melon oolong! The smell itself is juicy, fresh and enticing but almost candy-ish in its sweetness. I find that true with a lot of Lupicia’s blends, but they rarely have that artificial, sugary-sweet aspect once brewed.

This is no exception, since the taste is pure, delicious, fresh melon! At first I thought the oolong was kind of lost, but as my tea “warmed up” (my fridge is VERY cold!) the oolong popped into the picture. Soft, floral, and very delicious. The melon compliments it perfectly, and it seriously tastes like fresh-squeezed melon juice mixed with green oolong. Perfection! Well, honestly this doesn’t beat out Cantaloupe & Cream, but in its own way it is almost as good!

In a happy coincidence, this is my 200th tasting note! Whoo, I got here so fast! I think it’s quite fitting for this to be my 200th note, since it’s a very special tea. I didn’t even plan it this way but I really wanted something I loved for 200, and here we are, with my new tea crush.

I’m not exactly a matcha virgin, but this is my first order from Red Leaf Tea. I’ve never actually had flavored matcha, but I use it to cook a lot (green tea mochi cake with red bean swirl is food of the gods!) and make lattes with it. However, my usual matcha is only an okay grade and is a bit bitter—I don’t have money for a really nice grade, sadly. So Red Leaf to the rescue! They have amazing flavors for low prices, and lots of upgrade options. I was waiting for the right time to order my first one, and then like magic a flavor I had my eye on was 50% off! So for my first order I got the caramel matcha, which you can find here:

http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/caramel-matcha.html

I went with the minimal options, my matcha has the following:
Size: 30g
Grade: Starter
Flavor: Delicate
no accessories or storage options since I have tins at home!

You know, I was a bit worried about getting the delicate flavoring option. I’ve seen a lot of reviews that prefer distinctive or robust, so maybe the delicate would be, well, too delicate? I wanted a strong caramel flavor but still a distinct matcha taste, but I also wanted to know the “base line” for their flavoring for when I place my inevitable second (and third and fourth and fifth…) order. But when I snipped open the bag, I was hit with a huge whiff of the most delicious smell. Caramel, pure caramel! And not from a bag of candy caramel, fresh off the stove hot creamy caramel. I do a lot of candy making and this reminds me so strongly of that. I wonder what distinctive and robust smell like?! I might get a stronger flavor when I order the cheesecake, just so the smell will knock me out. Okay, seriously, I keep sniffing the bag. Ahh, that flavor is so good! I think I’m tea high.

Continuing the theme of “I’m nervous about matcha” I was nervous about preparing it! Thankfully Red Leaf Tea gives you this really hands little pamphlet with instructions on how to properly prepare it. So I sifted about 1 teaspoon of matcha into a mug (not a bowl, I know, I’m a bad matcha maker! but it was a really cute mug so it’s okay), then boiled my water and let it cool to 180. I made matcha once with boiling water, it was absolutely disgusting. Bitter and gross and… urgh, not good. So 180 it is! I almost did lower but the pamphlet said 180, so I guess it’s not as delicate as it looks.

Then I added 2 oz of hot water (yes, I measured exactly, I was a bit anal since this was my first time with the brand and I did NOT want to mess it up!) and whisked furiously. It got so frothy! I don’t have one of those fancy bamboo whisks so I just used my normal metal one and it worked out perfectly fine, no clumping or chunks left in the bottom. I also made sure to sift it REALLY well which as it turns out is quite important. I actually didn’t now about this step before and my previous matcha attempts have ended in big bitter clumps at the bottom. This way, though, no delicious flavor is wasted! I tried it at this stage and it was REALLY strong, too strong for me—I’m not brave enough to drink “straight” matcha like that yet so I added a pinch of sugar and filled my tiny mug up with some cold milk. I whisked some more, and voila, matcha latte! Well, kind of a bootleg matcha latte, but it works for me.

Oh. My. God. This stuff is AMAZING! Heaven, tea heaven. I felt like I was in nirvana at the first sip, it was so creamy and sweet and grassy and pure pure caramel. I can’t believe I went this long without ordering any before! It’s amazing how well the flavors balance, the caramel and matcha blend together to perfection. It’s sweet but not too sweet, creamy but not overly creamy, deliciously fresh from the matcha. I know I only got the basic grade but the quality is just so high! It’s better than any restaurant or coffee shop/tea shop matcha latte I’ve ever had, and it took almost no effort! So fast, so easy, I can never go back to pre-made. But given the prices, it’s not hard for me to make one myself every day!

I’m so excited to try some of their other flavors (or uhh all, I want them all!), but for now me and this caramel matcha are going to run away together to a cabin in the countryside. Seriously, I want to marry this stuff. It is SO good! Here’s the link again, I can’t recommend this enough! http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/caramel-matcha.html

I love grapefruit—pretty much any tea with grapefruit on the ingredients list is an instant buy. This is actually the reason I decided to order with Tea Guys, and for some reason I saved it for last. And of course cold brewed it because, well, I freaking love cold brews. Also, hot grapefruit doesn’t work for me. It needs to be icy cold always!

This is definitely very grapefruity! Tart and a bit bitter, but that’s the way grapefruit should be. It’s quite tasty, sweet and grassy from the green. It’s also quite floral as well, which is interesting. It’s more grapefruit rose than straight-up grapefruit and reminds me a lot of their Mango Rose. I think I still prefer Lupicia’s Grapefruit Green so far, but this one is pretty darn close!

I got my amazing envelope of goodies from TeaEqualsBliss and this was included. I’d never even heard of it before! Honestly, I’m not a big fan of root beer flavored things, but the bf likes them so I showed him this and his eyes almost popped out of his head. I brewed up a cup and he was in love! Apparently it tastes just like root beer, fizziness included. I didn’t try any since I was ensconced in my cassis & blueberry, BUT judging from his reaction this is a real winner. Thanks, TEB, for bringing this awesome tea into our lives!

I got a couple free pyramid bags of this in my order and I’m really in the mood for a low-maintenance tea so into the cup this went! Like others have said the smell of this is intoxicating, like fresh jam that you’re just about to spread on wonderfully crusty toast. Steeped, it has almost a candy aspect. There are these Japanese cassis hard candies that I really like and this smells just like them!

I think the reviews on this one are spot on: it doesn’t taste nearly as strong as the smell (either of the dry leaves or the steep). However, it’s a nice mellow black with a prominent cassis flavor and a hint of blueberry, and like all teas that I’ve tried from Lupicia it has no artificialness at all. I also really overseeped it and it came out fine, not bitter at all! I’m honestly kind of glad it doesn’t smell as strong as the leaves, since that would be kind of like drinking candy! I love berry teas and this is definitely a nice one: I’d actually consider getting this in bagged form rather than loose since it’s so darn convenient.

The last of my samples from The Tea Table! I wanted to do something special with this one, so I brewed it extra strong and then made a latte with coconut milk and dulce de leche. Ooooh lord is it amazing! The chai itself is quite strong and spicy, with a lot of ginger. The lemongrass is prominent, but it doesn’t overpower the other spices. The base tea is very strong, even with all the other stuff going on, which I love. I like my chais strong in all respects, and this definitely delivers!

With the coconut milk it reminds me a bit of Adagio’s Thai Chai, only dare I say better. It’s stronger and spicier, but still with distinct lemongrass/ginger flavors that gives you that Asian feel. The dulce just takes it to the next level, adding caramel notes and delicious sweetness. As I prepared it this probably warrants a 100 rating, but of course I’ll try to contain my excitement and rate based on the tea itself!

EDIT: I made a second cup of this with all the extras and the flavor held up just as well—in fact, it was a little spicy! Chais often don’t resteep well but I think I could even get a 3rd out of this blend. I really shouldn’t be drinking two sugary lattes in a day, but my kitty is sick and I won’t be able to get him to the vet until tomorrow and of course I am driving myself crazy with worry so I need something comforting.

Continuing on my exploration of lychee teas, I picked up an ounce of this from The Tea Table. It seems to be one of those blends that is stocked at a few stores, I suppose it comes from some other source. Sometimes I wonder where all these teas originate—some blends seem to be carried by 5 or 6 different places with the exact same ingredient list & description! But, in any case, it’s pretty cheap anywhere you get it.

I cold brewed this for 12 hours and it’s pretty much exactly what I expected. A soft, sweet green base complimented by floral jasmine and sweet, juicy lychee. It’s a nice departure from the black-based blends I’ve been trying, the lychee matches so well with both the jasmine and green tea. Since lychee is a little floral on its own I was worried that this might come out perfume-y but it’s definitely not! Another lychee blend I love, sigh. Now I have to make decisions on which ones to stock!

I got this tea as one of my free samples simply because of the name. I used to live in a gorgeous house in Hoboken that was actually IN the movie On The Waterfront! So how could I resist? Well maybe if it was banana bacon flavored or something, but it also happens to have a lot of ingredients that I love.

At first sip, it tastes like a peppermint tea. A very nice one, but just peppermint. But the more you drink, the more the other flavors start popping up in the background. A bit of rose, a hint of nuttiness, a whiff of ginger. It’s really an interesting tea! I am going to try it with a shorter steep as well to see if the other flavors become more dominant, though right now I am really enjoying playing the “flavor guessing game” with this blend.

EDIT: Did a short 4-minute steep (which is very short for an herbal!) and the other flavors came out a lot stronger. The peppermint is still dominant, but it’s easier to pick out the rose, ginger, almond, hibiscus, and a few other things. It’s a long ingredient list! I am thinking of keeping this around as an everyday mint—it’s between this and Mint Medley, though at the moment I prefer the complexity of this blend.

I’ve finally added a large portion of this to my stash! Drinking it with some milk & sugar while hanging out with my kitty. He keeps sticking his nose in it, I guess it smells good to cats too! It is so so delicious, one of my favorite everyday teas. Up there with Paris for sure! Thanks so much to Azzrian for introducing me to this awesome tea.

I don’t like rooibos or banana, so I had a moment of fear when I got this as a free sample in my last order. But hey, a sample’s a sample, and I did want to try it out! The dry “leaves” smell really good, not at all banana-like or rooibos-y. It kind of smells like… apple pie, without the spice. I guess that’s because of the apple chunks!

Steeped it also smells really good. While I hate (and I mean HATE) fresh banana, this is like a baked banana taste. Like banana bread or banana oatmeal cookies! Sweet and creamy. The rooibos is surprisingly un-medicinal (though that might be because I got nervous and steeped it for a pretty short time), and it adds to the bakey-ness of the tea. And the apple chunks add some nice fruitiness. The chocolate, sadly, isn’t really that present—I would definitely like a little more chocolate oomph in my cup, given the name and all! And most surprisingly of all, the peppercorn adds a pretty big bite at the end (though there were like 5 in my cup). Sometimes they are just there for decorative purposes, but I feel like they do add some dimension to this.

This isn’t my favorite or something I’d dip into often since, well, I don’t like most of the ingredients, but surprisingly I did enjoy it and will definitely finish my sample off! I think banana fans will really love this one.

I got this as a free sample with my last Persimmon Tree order, and was a bit skeptical. As much as I love loose leaf tea, I didn’t think there’d be any real difference between a bagged mint and loose mint. I mean, it’s just mint, right? Not like it expands or anything.

Well, I was wrong! Even though this has spearmint, and I really prefer peppermint, the blending is just perfect. It has that characteristic sweetness from the peppermint, but it’s balanced by a nice bit of tang/bite from the spearmint. It’s so smooth and refreshing, I think I’ve found a new everyday mint tea! Plus it’s grown domestically which is pretty cool.

I really need to try this tea on its own, but not today! The first time I mixed it hot with Tea Guys’ Maple Sugar and it was amazing, so I decided to experiment a little bit more. Ads for Teavana’s Pineapple Blueberry Pop mix keep popping up, and it seems like a good flavor combination but their teas are so expensive. So, I made my own—2 parts Persimmon Tree’s Tropical Pineapple, 1 part Wild Blueberry (since the flavor is a lot stronger). I cold brewed it overnight, and it’s just what I wanted—juicy and sweet from the blueberry, tropical with a slight hint of tang from the pineapple. They both have a green base so the flavors don’t clash but work together in harmony. Very nice!

One of the nice things about The Tea Table is that you get 3 free samples with any order, no matter the size, and you can pick from any of their teas. So I placed a teeny order, just for 4 teas in a 1-ounce size, but got a bunch of samples too! This was one of them, since I’ve discovered that I love berry teas.

This is an okay tea. I don’t think it’s anything special, a mildly smooth black base with a pretty generic “berry” taste. It doesn’t really say WHAT kind of berry it is, and I don’t think I could place it. It’s not tart like raspberry or cranberry, sweet like strawberry, rich like blackberry or currant, or with that signature juiciness from blueberries. It’s like… the lowest common denominator berry flavor. It’s definitely berry, but it’s a bit muddled—especially since I had to add cream as the base brewed up a tad bitter. I do have a few cups of it left (they’re pretty generously sized for free samples!) so I might try this iced, I have a feeling that I’d like it a whole lot better.

EDIT: Gave this tea another shot with a short 4-hour cold brew using my once-steeped leaves, and served it with a slice of lemon. Wow, what a difference! The weird “mixed berry” taste has faded significantly, leaving a more distinct flavor: raspberry! There’s also something else fruity, and it’s pretty clearly apricot to me. So it’s like an apricot raspberry blend now! The lemon also helps subdue the artificial taste, leaving a crisp and sparking iced tea. It’s almost hard to believe these are the same leaves I used before: for the rest of my sample I’ll definitely give them a good rinse to get out some of the flavoring and then cold brew it. I’d give the hot tea a 72 and the cold an 85, so I’ll bump the rating to meet somewhere in the middle.

I’ve been enamored with lychee (which apparently is sometimes spelled lichee) in tea since I tried DT’s Cheeky Lychee, which was the perfect balance of floral and fruity. However, there are a LOT of lychee teas out there so I wanted to try a few more before I made a big purchase. Cause honestly, I could drink an iced lychee blend every day!

And lo and behold, this one tastes JUST like Cheeky Lychee. I mean identical—in a blind taste test I know I couldn’t tell them apart. Sweet, fruity, light, floral, with a nice strong black base that works so well iced. It’s also cheaper than Cheeky Lychee, which is always a bonus. I do have a jasmine lychee blend from them to try, but so far this might be the lychee tea for me.

I’ve had this twice in the past 24 hours—hot last night and cold brewed this afternoon (stretching till now, I drink iced tea very slowly ^^;). I love cider, guayusa, and Butiki, so I knew I was going to love my little sample from Stacy. In fact, I’ve been saving it up for some reason, but I plan on placing an order soon so I need to get through my samples!

I think apple and guayusa are a perfect combo. The cider is apple-y and spiced without tasting like a chai, and the grassy plant-like (in a good way!) taste of guayusa is a perfect balance. It’s like a light, airy cider. A little tart, a little sweet, just perfect! I think cider teas are usually pretty heavy (like Adagio’s apple chai) so this is an interesting counterpoint. It’s not overwhelming, and I think I could sip it all day easily! Actually, I kind of did. Two hot steeps and a cold brew without losing flavor, which is nice since tisanes often only hold up to one or two infusions. I’m debating between this and the Apricot in my order, the cider is currently a bit ahead.

I got my tiny order from The Tea Table today, and decided to dip into this one first. I had to be brave because in the bag it smelled… revolting. Almost barf-like. Seriously, it was horrifying! I am wondering if it was just the packaging, though the other teas I got don’t have a funky smell… nor do the dry leaves for this once they were in my little french press. Maybe it was just the smells from the flavoring trapped in there or something? Cause it only smelled like that when I first opened it. In any case, I’m glad I powered through because this is quite tasty!

Steeping, it smells like my beloved Tamarind Pop. Of course it doesn’t have any of the same flavors (or nearly as much complexity), so maybe it’s the rum part? It is a bit earthy and has that brown sugar-y taste going on, which I suppose was the association my brain made. The flavors seem odd (coconut, strawberry, rum, cream?!) but they work together well into a smooth and enjoyable cup. I got quite a bit of strawberry and a lot of cream, not so much coconut. The rum adds more of a buttery/malty background presence, it doesn’t really taste like actual rum. Not that I mind!

This is definitely tasty, especially after a nice light summer dinner of grilled chicken and rotini with pesto. It’s kind of rich and the flavoring is heavy: there’s a definite and distinct “black tea taste” but I’d be hard-pressed to pick up any of the individual tea notes. Sometimes, though, I’m really in the mood for a fruity, creamy, no-frills dessert-y tea!

I tried this both hot and cold brewed—hot I think the mint kind of overwhelmed everything else, it just tasted like a regular peppermint to me. Cold, though, the other flavors come out beautifully. The rose, mint and white tea all meld together and work so well in combination. I love mint/rose together, and this definitely doesn’t disappoint! They don’t overwhelm each other OR the base, which I was surprised by. White teas are so light and delicate, I didn’t know how a strong flavor like peppermint would work. But the blending is very nice, just the right amount of everything.

There’s also a hint of something else… maybe fruit of some sort? Like a soft whiff of strawberry. It’s very nice! Being a lover of both rose and peppermint I am totally loving this blend.

This is quite different from what I was expecting. In my head, ‘Tropical Pineapple’ sounds like a pina colada type drink, heavy on the flavoring. However, this is a pretty light blend! The green base shines through, grassy and crisp. The flavors are very subdued: the pineapple tastes like some fresh squeezed juice was mixed with a nice green tea, it’s very soft and subtle. However, it’s without any tang, which I kind of expect from pineapple.

There’s another fruit taste here too—apricot maybe? Well, it tastes like apricot! Kind of rich and lightly sweet, it goes really well with the pineapple to balance it out. It’s a tropical glass without being overly tropical (not that I mind super tropical flavors, but I prefer them with a black base). Of course I had this cold brewed, for some reason I find hot teas with tropical tastes kind of… strange? Anyway, an excellent iced tea, maybe the best green I’ve tried from Persimmon—I think the flavors are balanced a lot better than Green Pomegranate. The Caramel does give this a run for its money though! Maybe I should do a side by side taste-test.

I caved and bought a larger quantity of this in my recent ETS order, it’s just so delicious! A wonderful twist on Earl Grey, not as rich as an EGC but with just the right amount of sweetness and light floral undertones.

My last sample from The Tea Merchant! I sure went through those fast. For some reason I decided to cold brew this one, I’ve never had an iced flavored pu-erh and thought it would be interesting. It smells so rich and earthy, but I do love iced coconut drinks.

Even after an overly-long 16 hour steep, the color and taste are quite light! Not weak, but rather airy. The earthy, rich, hay-y flavor from the pu-erh is still there, but cold it’s almost sparkling. The coconut comes through loud and clear, deliciously tropical. The cocoa keeps it from being too beach-drink-like, and complements the deep flavors of the pu-erh. There are also nutty flavors going on, in fact I’d almost swear there was hazelnut flavoring! It’s kind of like a tropical twist on Florence.

It reminds me a lot of Persimmon Tree’s Coconut Cacao, only I haven’t tried that iced or this one hot yet so I can’t really compare them. This seems to be a lighter take on pu-erh/coconut/cocoa though, with less of a coffee latte vibe.

I really loved the tea of the same name by Darlene’s Teaport, but I didn’t feel like committing to a full order there just yet. I was, however, about to place an order at ETS with the free shipping coupon (thanks for posting it Azzrian!) and noticed they had an identically named tea. Now, it seems like several of the ETS blends can be found elsewhere (though usually for more) so I thought it was possible that they had the same distributor and whatnot. And for $4.20 it couldn’t hurt trying! I needed one more tea to round my cart out anyway.

I did a short cold brew on this and indeed, it is the same tea! Or it’s awfully damn close. Sweet grassy green, hints of juicy strawberry, and a slight hint of tropical pineapple goodness peeking through. The strawberry is just right in this blend, not overpowering or artificial candy-tasting either. It’s such an amazing iced tea! I’m so happy that I found this, since I really do enjoy it! In fact, I’m liking it more now so I’ll up the rating a little bit from my original tasting. Yum!