Jillian

It’s hard to find a good cherry-flavoured tea that doesn’t taste either like cough syrup or hibiscus, but this blend manages it surprisingly well. It has a lovely sweet cherry flavour and a hint of floral rose and cherry blossoms. I’m glad they went with a white tea base rather than a grassy green tea like many cherry teas are.

I’m not sure how long this has been chilling in my tea cupboard, but it was sealed the whole time so it doesn’t seem to have gone stale. I’m definitely getting more banana than bread out of this blend, but luckily I like bananas. There also a hint of nuttiness in the background and just the right amount of sweetness. It’s great with milk and makes a good breakfast tea IMO.

I couldn’t resist anything that has Saskatoon berries in it – they grow wild around here although they tend to be a bit small and seedy, but they’re wonderful in pies and jam. You can smell the berries right away in the dry tea and the flavours meld very well with the dark oolong base which has a complimentary fruitiness. The maple syrup also adds a touch of sweetness without being too cloying. The resteep (@ 5 minutes) was lighter with less of the toasted dark oolong flavour and more of the berry sweetness coming through. I love that they went with a berry that was a little bit unusual, but quintessentially Canadian, for this tea.

This is another tea from the Coconut Sampler I purchased from work. It’s a not a bad tea, but out of the three different teas in the sampler I think I like this one the least. It comes across as a little weak and while I can taste the spices they don’t quite mesh with the coconut flavours as well as the chocolate truffle and pina-colda blends do.

I saw that this was one of the blends that Davids Tea was discontinuing so I decided to snag it while I had the chance. I don’t generally have much faith in Ayurvedic medicine but the ingredients all sounded interesting so what the heck. Mint comes across as the dominant flavour in this blend, but there are layers of other flavours as well – a bit of spicy basil, a touch a licorice, a hint of rose. It’s quite nice.

While searching for something decaffeinated to drink tonight I came across a sample of this tea. I wouldn’t think of lemongrass and clove going well together but they suit each other very well in this blend. Together with the other ingredients they’re just the right mix of sweet, tart and spicy.

I will forever be grateful that the bookstore I work at also sells teas and tea paraphernalia. I don’t think I’d ever have been introduced to Harney & Sons, for instance, without them. Just in time for summer they brought in a bunch of Tea Forte’s Coconut Samplers and being a fan of all things coconut I put my staff discount to good use.

No surprise this particularly tea is heavy on the coconut flavours and it gives the tea a rich, almost creamy taste. There are notes of lemon and citrus, and mango too although it is pretty subtle (though I might just need to steep the pyramid-thing a bit longer). I could see this totally rocking as an iced tea this summer.

Yum, adding some agave nectar really brings out the fruity kiwi flavour. Why are good kiwi-flavoured teas so hard to find?

This is a little one-cup sample that I brought back from my last trip to Vancouver. The Granville Island Tea Co seems to have a standard tea they use as a base for their black tea blends which is a decent, if not terribly inspired, Ceylon Orange Pekoe. The citrus bergamot is nicely balanced with the creamy vanilla notes. It’s a blend that’s fine for drinking plain, though in my opinion it’s better with milk. A fairly standard cream earl grey, all told.

This blend is very smooth for a black with almost none of the tannins I can usual taste in an Asian black tea. There’s a creamy note that I’m not sure if it’s the coconut or the base itself, but whichever it is it’s quite nice. The lime isn’t overpowering but it adds a nice little citrus zing to the blend. Too bad this one seems to have been discontinued.

This was another tea taken from the Traveling Teabox during its stop at my place. It might be that this sample is rather old and lost it’s flavouring, but I’m not really getting much beyond rooibos and bit of fruity blueberry flavour out of this tea. I can’t taste anything even remotely resembling cheesecake, which is disappointing, especially since this tea has gotten a lot of good reviews.

This came from the traveling teabox – there was only a teaspoon’s worth so there’s no going back now. ;)

Nothing about this blend really stands out much for me, it’s mostly green rooibos with a bit of extra citrus flavouring. There’s a bit of coconut in there too but it could stand to be stronger. This isn’t an objectionable tea, but it could also be so much better.

I can totally see this as an iced tea, it’s got that fresh, thirst-quenching quality to it that would be wonderful in hot weather. The flavours are sweet and juicy – a mix of mostly peach but there’s a little bit of citrus tucked in there as well. The white tea base compliments the flavours well by giving the tea structure but not drowning the out the fruity notes.

I can’t believe I never reviewed this tea – I’ve been drinking it for months! I suppose now is as good a time as any to fix that.

I’d actually expected this tea to have a bit more bite to it than it actually does given that it has both chili pepper flakes and peppercorns blended in it. But it’s actually fairly mild and the dominant flavour is probably the chocolate which is rich and cocoa-y. It goes quite nicely with milk, but a touch more spice would be my preference.

This is from a sample packet from god-knows-when that I dug out of my cupboard this morning. I like the blend of spices that Frank uses in his chais as I find them nicely balance. I taste the same thing with this tea but there’s an added creamy vanilla note that makes it seem decadent. I’m not getting that much cheesecake flavour, but that might be due to the age of the sample rather than any failing on the tea’s part.

This is the first time I’ve seen a tea made into little pastilles that you unwrap like a Lifesaver. It has a sweet floral, slightly hay-like scent and it expands into a surprisingly large amount of tea once it’s soaked up a bit of water.

The flavour has a natural light sweetness that actually remind me a bit of certain silver needle white teas I’ve drank, with notes of fresh hay and sweet grass. There’s also a bit of a tart, fruity hint, probably from the goji berries. It’s a bit odd having goji berries steeped in tea, as I usually just munch on them as a snack. Overall the blend is light and sweet enough to be refreshing without being cloying and quite enjoyable to drink.

Sip down! I found that as I drank more of this tea I liked it less and less. It’s just too much sour herbal to be my cup of tea (*rimshot *) and while sweetening does improve it somewhat I’ve had better herbal blends that didn’t require a ton of sugar.

I had to restrain myself form eating the big chunks of caramel that were scattered throughout the dry tea. It was worth it though, as the liquor had a yummy, rich, caramel flavour augmented by creamy notes of vanilla.

This tea could easily fool me into thinking it was flavoured. When I opened the pouch I was hit with the aromas of berries and dried fruit. The tea itself is practically bursting with flavour, with a juicy peach or apricot flavour standing out most prominently but there’s also a bit of a wine-like undercurrent. So good!

This was a Christmas gift from a coworker (part of a Secret Santa exchange) and it comes from a small local tea shop which I would visit more often if not for the fact that it’s located in a rather rough part of town.

This blend has that nice, nutty, vegetal flavour that you get from pan-fried green teas and the sweet strawberries and slightly tart rosehips compliment it quite nicely. I’m not getting much pepper but otherwise it’s quite a nice blend. It’s not really screaming “Christmas” to me though – actually it seems more like a summer tea – but whatever. ;)

This came as a sample with my latest Davids Tea order – I love that they always send so many extra samples because it lets me try teas I wouldn’t otherwise have drank.

The smell of this blend is quite lovely, a spicy mix of ginger and tangy orange. The pu’erh/oolong blend is a bit of an odd combo in my opinion, and I think it was the pu’erh that made the tea smell like meat (yeah, I know) when I added the hot water. The flavour was a bit of a let down, all told, as the base had a leathery, smokey flavour that was a little bit bitter and the ginger made the whole thing came across as medicinal. Mind you, it did soothe my mildly upset stomach quite nicely.

Here’s another tea purchased at the Victoria Tea Festival imported via the Dream Tea Boutique (http://dreamteaboutique.com/).

I’m afraid that I don’t know what a quince is supposed to taste like, never having tried one, and I had to resort to Google to find out what a ‘cherimoya’ even was. But regardless I found the flavour of this tea to be very agreeable. It’s tastes light and fruity with a bit of a tropical tang to it – from the pineapple maybe – as well hints of citrus and apples. I like that this tea company offers something different from the usual flavoured black tea fare. I mean what other company can you think of that can say they carry a cherimoya-flavoured tea?

I got this tea from the Urban Tea Merchant in downtown Vancouver. I was disappointed that they stopped stocking THÉ Ô DOR, but TWG seems to be a pretty decent replacement line.

I’m never quite sure how to steep black tea/green tea blends so in this case I temporized by doing a slightly lower temperature and less time than I would for a straight black tea. I love the Bourbon vanilla scent of this blend – it’s sweet and rich and makes me think of baking sugar cookies. Unfortunately the flavour is more vegetal and less vanilla-y than I would like, although the vanilla is still certainly there. There’s also hints of something else under the vanilla – maybe something citrusy and traces of some sort of spices.

I followed the steeping direction more closely this time – 1/2 tsp in 8oz water at 77C for ~3 min – and it seems to have paid off. The tea is much smoother and less bitter and while there’s still some astringency it’s more like that of a dry red wine. It’s slightly grassy in a way that reminds me of a Japanese green tea but this is balanced out by a sweetness that’s a little bit fruity. Very interesting, all told.