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This was a free sample provided with my last H&S order. I received the large sachet for iced tea. It makes 2 quarts.

The description states that this is a hibiscus blend but doesn’t go into as much detail as the description of Raspberry Herbal loose leaf, so I don’t know if they are identical mixes or not.

When I was at Barnes and Noble a few months back, an employee was encouraging me to buy a tin of this. I asked if she had tried Tazo Passion and she said yes. I asked how this differed and she said it didn’t. I think she was wrong there.

While the two are similar, this is a bit more restrained than Passion. The hibiscus is there, don’t get me wrong, so if you hate hibiscus you probably won’t like this. But it isn’t so….well, like a kids’ drink.
There is more than hibiscus to this blend and while I think children would enjoy it, I think it has a little more refinement than some such blends.

This is not one I am likely to buy unless the family just goes crazy over it, but I will enjoy this pitcher of it. I would really love to try their other iced blends that have a tea base, black or green!

I made a pot of this for after breakfast today, but it didn’t have the pizzazz of last time. Must be me. It was still good, but there was less earthiness and no fruitiness, none of the Muscatel notes one looks for in a Darjeeling. Ah well, better luck next time!

I am almost out of this one. GASP! Open the pouch and sniff and you will swear you are sniffing a box of rich chocolates. The ingredient list is even more complex than the description at the top. The label says there is green apple in this, and yogurt.

This isn’t a cloying chocolate but a complex one. Delicious plain, decadent with milk and sugar.

I ordered this because my eldest daughter is a Harry Potter fan and threw a fit when she heard about the blend! She is not, however, a black tea fan. In fact, she practically hates the stuff! She began drinking green tea for health less than a year ago but still had not made friends with black. Nevertheless, the Butterbeer we must have!

I made a pot after lunch today when daughter came to visit. The dry leaf has quite a unique aroma. There is a sharp high scent that at first reminded me – not unpleasantly – of camphor. But really, it was overwhelmingly a root beer aroma, and it had the strong, natural scent of the many, many sassafras roots I tugged out of the ground in my mother’s yard.

There is such a great, pure, natural root beer flavor to this. Don’t think of cheap soda, think artisan, old fashioned, natural flavors root beer. My daughter said if we added milk and vanilla we would probably be convinced we were having a root beer float.

One cool thing was that my daughter really liked it! The next cool thing was that my iPad dinged a notification just as we finished our pot of tea and it was a message from her boyfriend in N. Ireland saying that the box of tea I mailed him had arrived today and he had just had a cup of Butterbeer and loved it! He loved it so much that he said if all the teas in the box we’re as good as this one, then he would count himself very fortunate. To quote him, “I am hugely impressed.”

So, Frank, can we start begging, wheedling, pleading, for this one to come back somehow?

I just love clicking “add to cupboard!”

I need something good to celebrate being home from my all day jaunt to Raleigh, Garner, and Durham. When I got here the box was waiting for me on the front porch. Hooray!!

This is the first time I have ordered a black and gold tin to go with the pound bag of loose leaf tea. I am really delighted that this service is available to us. I had the label preprinted for Diamond Jubilee so I don’t have to use the computer to print a clear Avery return address label for it. I think it was $1.25 to do this, tin and all. This is going to make it soooo much easier to split bags of tea with a friend.

Surprisingly, hubby agreed to drink this with me. I am surprised because he really does not like flavored black tea other than Vanilla Comoro or Vanilla Black by Harney, or Marco Polo from Mariages Freres.

This tea is fit for a Queen. The bergamot is definitely there but not bold and in your face and peppery. This is genteel tea for which one wants to hoist one’s pinky into the air. My tea party friend is not a big fan of bergamot, but I will serve it and see if she likes it better when it is mild like this one. I am having trouble picking up grapefruit flavor, but that has been true of every tea I have tried that says it has grapefruit flavor. I usually just get a citrus-y sweet taste.

Thank you, Harney and Sons, for humoring your tea fans who want everything loose leaf!

This is a sample provided by Teavivre for review! I already reviewed this one today but I felt that the resteep deserved a review as well because of the circumstances.

I had a late student tonight so I decided to make a resteep of the leaves from this afternoon. The mom of the young lady is not a big tea drinker and has really only had sweet iced black tea and maybe a flavored and sweetened Christmas tea.

I offered her a cup of the resteep and she accepted. She sniffed it and said it smelled like perfume. She sipped. She loved the aroma and the taste, and refilled her cup.

I love when someone enjoys new teas – I don’t think she had even heard of white tea before tonight. She told me that I should tell Teavivre that a tea “imbecile” – her words not mine – loved their tea!

What impressed me was how much color this white tea still had on the resteep, and the flavor was virtually the same as the first steep. And now I have one more friend who is a tea friend as well!

This is the last of a free sample sent by Teavivre. Thank you, Mary, Angel, and Teavivre!

I chose this as the final tea of tea party. Normally a white tea would have been served first and we would progress to darker, stronger, or more flavored teas. But today I wanted hefty black tea to go with our food, and I used this as a “wind down” tea for relaxing and chatting after eating.

If any jasmine tea can compete with Teavivre’s Jasmine Dragon Pearls for the top spot in my heart, this would be it. The jasmine is sweet and not soapy, the tea has great body and color, and everything about it whispers, “quality.” I say it whispers because those two jasmine teas are the ultimate relaxation to me and neither would ever scream. You might even say it purrs.

Aaaahh! Very good, my guest loved it, I loved it. I am thinking this will probably be on my next Teavivre order, which I will be making very soon because I have to order for a couple of friends who came to tea and can’t live without Jasmine and Taiwanese Ginseng Oolong.

I chose this as the second tea to go with our fudge brownies and strawberries. This was the favorite tea of my guest, although she said that all three teas today were winners. The strawberry is a very true, straight strawberry natural flavor. The black tea base is quite good, reminding me of the French tea bases that are less astringent…many French teas have an astringency or bite that turns me off. This base was not at all astringent, but sweet and smooth while still being able to cut through the strawberry flavor so that you taste the tea as well. Excellent. Lupicia hasn’t disappointed us yet.

It’s tea party day! Hooray!

We reversed the way we usually serve tea today. Customarily we would serve the lightest tea first and progress to flavored or bolder ones. But today I really wanted to start with our warm, fudgy brownies topped with chilled sugared strawberries, and I was in the mood for a heartier tea to go with it, so we began with Hunan Golden Twist.

What can I say? It was better than ever and tasted delicious with our food. It is malty and bready, yet smooth with no astringency at all. There is a light smokey maple bacon taste, but that was less noticeable with food. So sad we can’t get this anymore!

I haven’t had this one in a few weeks, and last night’s trial of Mighty Leaf’s Jasmine tea in bags made me question whether this was really as good as I was remembering.

It is. Ordering my third pouch now.