Cait

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I feel a little bad about logging all of these tasting notes when I can’t really taste the tea, but it’s kind of useful for me to remind myself that this tea is really good with a great big dollop of honey: it’s very smooth and sweet, and the sour berry scent from the dry leaves is completely gone leaving only an interesting tang.

(As you may have gathered by now, I got myself the Art of Tea Dessert Sampler off of the steepster select a while ago and am working my way through it!)

I will reserve full judgement until my head cold clears up and my taste buds are my own again, but I liked this so far. What I can get out of it is a strong, rough rooibos with a chocolate sweetness, no mint or vanilla. I do like rooibos for itself as well as for being a good flavoring base, so that’s a reasonable first tasting.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to open a new kleenex box….

…This tea tastes and smells exactly like banana taffy! And yet my teeth aren’t stuck together. Tea for the win!

Normally I don’t sweeten green tea, but I have an awful sore throat so I spooned in some honey. Bearing in mind that I am stuffed up enough to taste maybe half of this, it’s quite nice this way: sharp enough that I can tell it’s there, but smooth and comforting anyway.

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Oh my. I lump “oolong” and “green” together in my mind most of the time, but this tea may just force me to accept finer distinctions. This is an absolutely delicious tea, very sweet and flowery, and not at all what I expect when I think of green tea. Oolong, huh.

ETA: And it’s definitely getting juicer with resteeping. Interesting!

My first thought when I opened this packet of tea was: doesn’t my girlfriend have this lip gloss?

So it definitely smells like artificial fruit. A lot of things do; it’s pretty much impossible for anything but actual fresh strawberries to smell or taste like fresh strawberries, and I also like fruit flavoring as its own thing. I don’t smell kiwi particularly, but there’s definitely something mixed with the strawberries.

Steeped, the tea is the color of strawberry dessert topping. I find this amusing.

Sipped, it feels like fruit tea, one of those really tart (but not at all sour) ones that roughs up your mouth on the way through. It’s the sort of feel that makes it hard to taste anything, although it definitely leaves the lingering impression that actual fruit has come this way. The taste isn’t artificial at all.

You know, I don’t brew a lot of my own iced tea, but this tea does stand out as one that could be really good iced, served very cold and a bit weak with a small amount of sugar. I’m not going to try it — I don’t know if I can really express how little the weather suits iced tea right now, but go ahead and google “north american east coast blizzard 2010” if you’re curious — but I will keep it in mind!

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Given that my city just got two feet of snow dumped on it this weekend and another foot is expected tonight, I had resigned myself to my Tea Table subscription not getting here for another week at least. However, I give respect to the US Postal Service after all, because there it was this morning!

This one sounded delicious and smelled very peaches-and-cream-y, both in the leaves and while steeping. And there is an absolutely lovely peaches and cream taste to it, but there’s also an immense bitterness as a taste and as an aftertaste. I dropped two lumps of sugar in, and it’s drinkable. I think perhaps if I were having this with dessert I would enjoy this level of bitterness for the flavor, but if this is a typical steep then it’s definitely not a morning tea —

— Wait, hang on a sec. I just had a brilliant idea: milk.

— Oh yes, that does it! A tiny splash of milk cut right through the bitterness. It really brings out the flavor, too. Oh, this is good! Definitely heavy on the cream with a hint of fruit; I wouldn’t necessarily pin “peaches” on it if I didn’t already know, but it’s not not peaches. I think I need to make myself another cup of this and add milk right away this time.

Augh, augh, what did I do to be punished like this? This tea smelled so good when I opened the packet with the tea bag, and it smells almost as good brewed, so I keep sipping it, thinking, Surely I must have been imagining how sour this is!

…It has a sweet if slightly medicinal aftertaste, at least? Once my mouth unpuckers, I mean.

I think I will try steeping this drastically less. Perhaps I will pour hot water near the tea bag.

I’d forgotten I had some of this left! It got lost in the back of my “samples” section.

I think I made this a little too strong, but it’s quite bracing! It goes down bitter, but there’s a lingering aftertaste that isn’t sweet but feels like it ought to be, if that makes sense. And it’s a lovely dark brown that looks strong; I do like when teas look like they taste.

Accidentally oversteeped this, so I tried it with milk again. It’s standing up to it a little better, but the milk is still killing a lot of the flavor.

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Yes, okay, this tea is clearly well past its useful life. I might as well dump the rest of it out and use the tin for something better.

The frog-shaped infuser is still pleasing, though!

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