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Yum. This one is such a tasty peach tea. The white peach is sweet and soft with a juicy nectarous flavor and a bit of crispness to it. Very authentic, it tastes just like a real peach and nothing like candy. And then it’s paired with a good quality sencha base with nicely balanced vegetal, grassy, and umami notes. Lovely silky mouthfeel as well.

So very tasty, this is a flavored tea that I think could appeal to straight tea lovers. And probably my favorite peach tea! :D

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So I’m not a creamy Earl Grey person, even though I love London Fogs. For some reason they just don’t often taste good to me (with a few exceptions, like Camellia Sinensis’s version).

But this tea is honestly delicious. The vanilla-cream tastes slightly caramel-y to me for some reason, it reminds me of flan or crème caramel, or some other kind of creamy custard with caramel sauce. Or maybe even butterscotch sauce? I can taste the bergamot as well, it doesn’t get overpowered, just smoothed out and dessertified.

Will definitely consider reordering some of this once (or should I say “if”? XD) my cupboard is reduced down a bit. Highly recommend for Earl Grey cream lovers!

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My last bonus sample from derk! This one is “Cretan Dictamnus picked by family”.

Of course I had to look up Dictamnus, which is also known as Dittany of Crete. To me, it smells and tastes very similar to oregano, which makes a lot of sense considering it’s in the genus Origanum, along with oregano and marjoram.

It has a pleasant herbaceous and savory flavor to it, with that oregano flavor that I’m unsure how to otherwise describe. Peppery maybe? Slightly minty? It’s quite soothing in the evening. I’m not sure I would seek it out over other, more conventional herbal tisanes, but I really enjoyed trying it. And that goes for all of the samples, thank you derk! ❤

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Finished off my portion of this from last year’s spring shipment. It’s such a lovely tea, with a rich spinachy vegetal flavor and a great balance of sweetness and savory umami. There’s the silky richness of kabocha squash, and notes of freshly cut grass and soft hay at the top end.

Definitely one of the best from Obubu, and one that I’m glad I still have another package of. :)

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Another sample from my recent Camellia Sinensis order.

This is an interesting fruity tea. Apparently there’s no flavoring added (according to the ingredients), which is amazing to me as the fruit is very noticeable. I definitely get the pineapple, plus strawberry and cherry, and some lemon notes from the lemongrass. I don’t taste rhubarb, which is supposed to be one of the main flavors.

But overall it tastes quite… powdery? Candylike? Which is ironic considering it’s not even flavored. I agree with Arby that it tastes like Pez (wow, I haven’t had Pez in forever!). Strawberry and lemon Pez with some cherry in there. There’s also something that’s reminding me of elderflower, it has that same fluffy, effervescent quality to it. The lemon myrtle maybe? Not sure.

Anyway, it’s nice enough, but not something I would order since somehow it tastes quite artificial to me. Unrelated, I was taught “parapluie” as the word for umbrella, so I find it quite interesting to learn there’s another version! Maybe “ombrelle” is more like a parasol, since that would make sense for a paper umbrella. Google translates it as umbrella, but then the French description mentions a women’s parasol so who knows. :P

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My tea of the morning for the past couple of weeks. A lot of times with these Andrews & Dunham teas, I have a tendency to not want to sip them down because the stock is so inconsistent. But this one wasn’t my favorite so I figured I would go ahead and sip through it, as it was one of my oldest teas.

This is a mix of multiple Yunnan black teas, one is a smaller, wirier dark leaf with a bit of gold, and the other is a large, fuzzy, golden bud. Mostly it’s the smaller leaf, with a few buds mixed in. It steeps up a deep, dark, chocolaty brown, almost like a shou puerh. The flavor is very woody with some mineral earthiness underneath, along with a hint of smoke. There’s a touch of malt as well. It brings to mind an ancient forest, with massive tangled trees covered in a layer of moss.

Anyway, as I said not a favorite for me. I feel like it lacks a bit of dimension and I tend to prefer Yunnan teas with more bready and sweet potato-y notes to them. Not a bad tea by any stretch of the imagination, just a bit underwhelming given the beautiful tin.

(this tea, Checkered Flag, and Caravan Resurrected happen to be available at the moment, by the way!)

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A sample from derk, Lemon Verbena from Cretan Farmers Natural Products.

The leaves are lovely, full and curly and featherlight. The flavor is quite light, gently herbaceous with soft and sweet lemon notes. A touch of hay as well, that reminds me a bit of a white tea. I get a hint of sage at the end of the sip, but I wonder if that’s simply because this sample was next to a sage tisane.

Very enjoyable, but I think I tend to prefer lemongrass if I want a lemony herbal tisane. Would definitely drink this again though!

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So I finally made a Camellia Sinensis order recently. Even though I’ve been trying not to buy much tea, I got a notification that their wintergreen was back in stock so I jumped on it immediately. I mostly chose their Quebec herbal tisanes, but a few flavored tea samples also hitched a ride.

The apricot here is on point. It tastes so natural, with a juicy sweet-tart flavor. Maybe closer to a dried apricot than a fresh one in terms of intensity? However, there’s something about the oolong that I’m just not loving. Mostly it tastes like a fairly standard green oolong – lightly grassy/leafy with a smooth minerality and hints of stonefruit and flowers. However, there’s some other note here that almost reminds me of spirulina, or maybe moringa? It’s like a little punch of vegetal-mineral flavor that throws the whole thing off.

Lovely apricot aftertaste though. Probably not one I would reorder, but I did enjoy sipping through my small sample size.

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This is a nice tea for a grocery store teabag. The green base is smooth and lightly grassy, and the flavoring reminds me of green apple candy, if green apple candy were pear flavored. It doesn’t taste like Asian pear to me though, which tends to have a more delicate flavor. There’s also a hint of banana taffy? The dry teabag smells strongly of banana Laffy Taffy to me, but it’s much more subdued in the taste.

Anyway, I doubt I would buy it again, mostly because Heirloom Bartlett Pear from Harney & Sons has defeated all other pear teas for me.

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Another oldest tea down! \o/

This has such a vague description lol, “citrus and other fruits”. I do get a bit of citrus, but it’s more of a lemon candy flavor. As for the other fruits, I definitely get jammy strawberry and maybe something like fig? It’s a pleasant sweet syrupy, jammy sort of fruit flavor overall, with added notes of honey. The base is smooth and a touch woody, inoffensive but not contributing a lot of flavor either.

I enjoyed it, not sure I would go out of my way to order it since Mariage Frères tends to be expensive and I’m not in love with this tea or anything. It’s also similar to Dammann’s Noël à Provence, which I already have in my cupboard.