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GCTTB
This is a tea with a lot of strength to it. It’s bolder than I expected for a black/green blend with a rich, full-bodied maltiness tinged with smoke. It takes adding milk to bring out the vanilla and honey notes but I’m not getting anything citrus-like at all. It’s nice but I wouldn’t shell out the $45 that a full tin would usually cost.

GCTTB v2.0
I felt like a complete weirdo for not liking the original version of this tea while everyone was raving about it, but the combination of flavour just…didn’t appeal to me. Somehow I like this iteration better, even though it’s the same recipe. It might have something to do with the quality or variations in the individual ingredients. Here the lemon/green tea combo isn’t too harsh and the marshmallow root helps soften the tea. I don’t love it, and that maybe just be my preferences, but I’m liking it much more this time around so I’m bumping up my rating.

Often when two drastically different fruit flavours are blended in a tea one tends to overshadow the other. In this case I can taste both the watermelon and the pineapple in equal amounts. They’re on the milder side but I find the flavours be a lot more natural tasting and they mix well with the bai mu dan base. This would be a great tea to try iced, I think.

I received a sample of this tea from Liquid Proust (all the thanks yous!). I was excited about this one in particular since I really enjoyed the similar Razzleberry Genmaicha from 52Teas. Genmaicha in general pairs so well with sweet flavours.

There were big pieces of dried strawberry in my sample – big enough that I actually broke them apart into smaller pieces in order to measure better. The green tea is very green indeed; when the leaves are wet they look like fresh young spinach leaves. The flavour is wonderful, the malty, roasted flavour of the rice pair well the the berry flavours. I’m mostly getting strawberry but there might be a bit of blueberry in there too.

I’ve gotta say this knocked 52Teas version right out of the water. And if you’re reading this Liquid Proust, keep making more genmaicha blends with this base, you’ve got a winner. :D

This is a light earl grey, the bergamot flavour is middling to strong depending on whether you add milk and how much (for the record I do recommend taking it with milk). The rose flavour is light and delicate, a pleasent complimentary note that isn’t cloying. This feels like a very dainty tea, the sort you would have at an old fashioned English tea party outside in a garden.

The nutty, roasted flavour of the houjicha is a great base for this blend as it has the warmth and substance that you’d need for strong, spicy flavours like these. It’s not quite gingerbread for me – it needs more molasses flavour I think to get to that point. Even so, I found myself enjoying this tea, it’s a nice blend for drinking on cold days.

This tea smells just like a batch of freshly-baked gingersnap cookies – seriously, it’s giving me a craving for those cookies. It tastes quite a bit like gingersnap cookies too; lightly spicy with a hint of molasses. There’s also a hint of cardamom that you wouldn’t normally taste in a gingersnap, though it works so well in this tea I’m almost tempted to try adding a bit to my cookie recipe next time. I think the rooibos based really works in this tea’s favour for once (I’m not a red rooibos fan). Tonight I’m drinking it plain but I bet it’ll be great with milk too.

This tea has been on my wishlist forever. It used to be part of the permanent collection at 52Teas and I never purchased it, thinking I could always buy it ‘next time’. Of course companies change and I lost my chance – so I was delighted when LiberTeas reblended it.

The smell of the dry tea is so good I almost want to eat it. The peach is the more dominant flavour when the tea is warm but the banana comes out after the brew has had a chance to cool. It’s a fantastic flavour combination that would probably be good iced as well.

My local Davids Tea was sampling this cold and since I love all things pina colada I HAD to try it. Unfortunately there’s something about the smell and something about the taste that I found really unpleasant. I wanted to like it, but I just couldn’t. I can’t even pinpoint as to what it was, as apart from the hibiscus i like all the ingredients individually and even the hibiscus wasn’t in a quantity large enough to be off-putting. Maybe my taste buds are off – that happens sometimes with the meds I’m on. And since it was such a small amount I got to try I’m going to hold off rating this tea for now.

Yay, my order from 52Teas came in! I have a wealth of new teas to choose from, but I was so excited to try LiberTeas’ version of this popular blend so it’s the first one I steeped up. The dry tea has a fragrant lemon-line scent with hints of something sweet underneath. The sweetness bloomed as the tea steeped until it reminded me very much of how lemon meringue pie smells fresh out of the oven.

The flavour is citrusy and fresh and very much like the filling of a meringue pie if you left out the sugar. The meringue flavour is hard to find at first but as the tea cools off it sneaks its way in. I wish it were a bit more prominent from the get-go but overall I really enjoyed this blend.