Miss Sweet

Sweet, rosy and smooth. I’m resisting the urge to say something filthy here, so I’ll just mention that its best drunk plain, though if you want to drink it with milk brew it for a few minutes longer.

I did everything short of gargling with this tea and could not discern the slightest hint of smokiness at all. And then I gargled with it and still got nothing. A smooth, light and slightly sweet tea that is best drunk plain and unfortunately doesn’t taste like much at all. For that smokey taste you need to hit up the Extra Russian Caravan from this company.

I had the pleasure of trying this tea recently at a high tea. To me, Dilmah usually means a slightly nicer tea supermarket bagged tea, but this was a pretty decent cup! The tea had a lovely malty flavour with that hint of biscuity-honeyness that I love in my favourite Assam estate, Namdang. Huh, a Ceylon that I don’t find revolting! Go figure.

Look, I expect my tea to really wow me. I prefer the complex tasting, the stunning leaf both wet and dry, the interesting mouthfeel, the lush round flavours, the lazer light show, the tassel twirling. This is a perfectly acceptable tea, especially to accompany a meal, but it lacks pizazz. I find it neither here nor there, so will leave it unrated.

Does what it says on the packet and is surprisingly tasty! I’m loving the soft nutty taste, it reminds me of a lighter style genmaicha. Thumbs up, etc.

I’m sure I would find this tea perfectly palatable under most circumstances, but tasting it in conjunction with Jasmine Dragon Pearls – this tea doesn’t even come close. A much flatter and slightly astringent green, with a less amazing Jasmine taste. Its like the plain, slightly dowdy rebound girl your ex dated immediately after you broke up with him, but their relationship only lasted a few months because she was nowhere near as awesome as you. And now you get frequent weeping phonecalls begging you to take him back.
Yep.

From the small rolled ‘pearls’, to how they sink to the bottom of your cup and slowly unfurl, to the light yet lush jasmine flavour – this is a beautiful tea from start to finish! Its also one of those teas that seem expensive up front, but as it stands up so well to multiple infusions I’d say it’d end up on par (or maybe cheaper) than a regular jasmine green. And much nicer too!
Brew this in a glass cup or teapot if you can, so you can watch the pearls do their thang!

Huh, I recall this being completely awful the first time I tried it and reminiscent of stewed vegetables. It must’ve been brewed wrong, because its certainly not the case this time! This Kukicha is an incredibly mild buttery-nut savoury green, that would be hard-pressed to find any haters. I don’t love it, but don’t find it personally offensive either. The George Clooney of teas really.

I am a bergamot fiend but I cannot stand floral earl greys. Somehow this ends up tasting exactly like my nemisis, Earl Grey Blue Flower, with that weird heavily perfumed bergamot flavour. If that sounds delicious to you, you will really love this tea. And green tea haters pay attention: you cannot taste the green tea in this at all, so go for it!

I fully expected this to be the worst tasting of all the flavoured green teas I tried today. The aroma of the leaves was worryingly strong, but the resulting infusion was surprisingly nice! A lovely and incredibly delicate vanilla flavour, with no green taste whatsoever. Vanilla fans or those who enjoy white teas will love this!

Green chai is a concept I absolutely cannot wrap my head around. The flavour is completely on the mark (though the cinnamon is too bitey for me), it tastes exactly like a chai should with just a hint of the sencha base creeping through. Like a serial killer creeping through your backyard in the dead of night. Which is creeping me out.

I’m really not a fan of that weird artificial lemon taste, which this tea somehow has even though the flavouring is nature identical. Hmm.
There is nothing particularily awful or gravely offensive about it, I was just surprised it tasted like your run-of-the-mill lemon tea from the supermarket. Plus I prefer to be able to taste the “tea” in flavoured teas – with this the sencha just gets lost in the lemon flavour. Whatever floats your boat, I guess…

I want so badly to like this tea, because the ingredients sound so yummy! Citrus zest, rose petals, almond pieces, cloves, vanilla pieces, cinnamon flavouring and cardamom… delicious right? Wrong.
The only reason I braved a second tasting of this tea was because the first time I tried it, the leaves were from a fairly old packet so I thought it may have been let down by a stale green tea base. But it turns out not to have made much of a difference. The flavour is overwhelmingly dominated by the citrus zest and cinnamon, making for a harsh and lip-puckering brew that I would only wish on my most hated enemies.
I’d love to see a reblend of this, though I think it would be more suited to a black tea base: remove the cloves, cardamom and citrus, lighten the cinnamon, keep the vanilla, rose and almond?

A light spearmint flavoured tea, this would be perfect to serve in place of (or with) after dinner mints. Nom nom!

I do not remember this tea being so delightful the first time I tasted it! Delicate, incredibly smooth with just a hint of smokiness and barely any astringency. Another inoffensive brew, almost like the elevator muzak of green teas…

Look how gorgeous this tea is! Even the wet leaves look lovely: long, spindly, bright green things. What a delight! The color of the tea is very light, with the taste being smooth, buttery and slightly fruity. One of the more interesting greens I’ve tried, I think you will especially enjoy it if you are a fan of the more complex tasting Darjeelings.

This tea is way too light for my liking, much like my bedroom when the curtains are closed during the summer months. Defiitely drink this one plain.

You know, I wish “broken orange pekoe” wasn’t abbreviated into a word like “bop”, because it makes me think the tea will be something you can tap your feet along to. Which was not the case with this one. I’m not sure if it was an old packet or my rising distrust of ceylon teas, but this barely tasted like anything. With milk, it was definitely more “meh” than “bop”.

Incredibly smooth, nicer than English Breakfast and lighter than Irish Breakfast. A lovely tea to drink plain as well, I think milk mutes the delicate flavour too much. The perfect afternoon tea, would pair well withsomething light like a lemon friand…

Ah, its so good trying a bunch of teas at the same time, I think you get more of a feel for each tea than when you taste them individually. This has similar strength to the Irish Breakfast, but what I previously remarked as “maltylicious” is actually more herbacious (due to the manuka) than malt. Still a lovely tea though, both with or without milk. Plus it looks pretty while you brew it, as al the manuka leaves float to the top.

This has a rounder flavour to it than the Irish Breakfast and is of course, best with milk. Maltalicious!

Yikes, this tea is rough when drunk plain. But adding milk mutes the flavour a surprising amount. There’s a very small difference of strength between this and the english breakfast – to be honest, neither of them are strong enough or malty enough for my tastes.

Ah, the classic breakfast tea. Classic though it may be, its pretty boring. Smooth, very light, with a hint of malt on the back of your tongue. I think most people choose this blend because they find such a large selection of plain teas overwhelming, which is a shame because there are so many that are nicer than this one!
If you want a slightly less boring version of this, the organic version from the same brand is far more delightful.

What the hell, this tastes EXACTLY like buttered cinnamon raisin toast! So much so that its actually blowing my mind (and its taking all my restraint not to type this tasting note entirely in caps). Did 52teas make cinnamon raisin bread, toast it, butter it then cut it into tiny tea-leaf-shaped bits?!? Either that or magic are they only reasonable explanations for the bang-on flavour of this tea.
The aroma of buttered cinnamon raisin toast was present in the dry leaves, with the resulting brewed tea being a bit more buttered-raisin on the nose and first sip, the cinnamon-toast comes through on the aftertaste. Its even more perfect if you add a splash of milk!

This was my first tea from this company (they were awesome enough to give shipping to New Zealand a go) and it will definitely not be my last. Gah, I still can’t get over how amazing this tea is!