Cynthia Carter

I bought this bagged for iced tea, which is very handy. This is delicious iced – sweet, fragrant and complex. Even though I live in the Land of Sweet Tea, I felt this needed no sweetening at all. I used one bag for 1 quart, and resteeped it to make a second quart. The resteep was also excellent.

I ordinarily don’t care much for flavored teas. And, I’m not a big fan of many green teas either.

I love this tea.

The coconut flavor is mild and very natural tasting, and does not overwhelm the bright, grassy notes of the green tea. So often coconut flavored teas have a very harsh in-your-face I’m-meant-to-taste-like-coconut-but-really-taste-like-the-product-of-a-chemical-lab sort of flavor. The ginger is a gentle sort of zing that tickles the palate in passing. Harney’s ginger oolong is one of my favorite teas, and now it has competition. I think this will have to become a cupboard staple, as I don’t want to think about running out.

After one sip of this tea, it is clear to me why the British Isles have not been successfully invaded since the introduction of tea. It makes a really muscular cuppa that will jolt me awake in the morning. Very strong Assam flavor, dark brown color and heavy on the caffeine. I drink my first cup of the morning with milk and sugar, and this tea is plenty robust enough to stand up to it. After the second cup, I am ready for anything!

I think I may have mentioned before that I love mint. I do. I really love mint.

So, this tea makes me really, really happy. Just opening the pouch and sniffing the fresh scent of it makes my whole day. Since I bought it earlier today, I have not been drinking it so much as actually swilling it.

Since I love mint so much, why not just drink straight mint tea, you ask? Because the gunpowder green tea adds a richness and complexity that makes mint so much better. It’s a light, buttery note that adds sweetness to the mint. A match made in heaven. A marriage of true soulmates. It makes a really, really good tea.

The scent of the leaf is bold and winy – it reminded me of opening a bottle of a good dry red wine.

The liquor is dark and red. The flavor is very bold, and I taste mostly Assam with some overtones of Ceylon and something else. Very little bitterness, and the fermented grape smell persists after brewing.

If you live in the South, you are familiar with the muscadine grape, or scuppernongs, as they start making an appearance in the grocery stores and farm markets about now. They are rather alien looking, as they are perfectly round and very large, and have this incredibly thick, tough skin. They also have the oddest flavor – very sweet, musky like a cantaloupe, but with a tannic, rather bitter bite.

This tea reminds me strongly of fresh muscadines. Which is a good thing. And which reminds me – since the muscadines are coming in, it’s time to put up some scuppernong jelly. Which would taste wonderful on toast, with a cup of this tea.

I’m drinking this tonight iced. It is helping to reduce the local heat index by at least 5 degrees. Fresh and sweet without any sweetener added.

This may be the tea that reconciles me to bancha. The color is green-gold, and the aroma is grassy with just a hint of rose. The taste is fresh and light, with just a hint of sweetness. I steeped for just about 2 minutes, and there is only a tiny hint of bitterness. Most banchas taste horribly bitter to me, and this tastes more like a lower grade sencha. Which is a good thing.

This is a refreshing summer cup for a hot and muggy Florida morning.

That soft, buttery oolong taste with just a mild zing of ginger. I foresee an empty tea tin in my near future, as I will probably be drinking a lot of this.

I don’t know what I was expecting from this tea, but It was definitely a very pleasant surprise. The flavor reminds me of chocolate covered candied orange peel, and that’s not a bad thing ;) The tea is a robust, earthy black. I’ve not had any mate before, so I really can’t identify the flavor.

A surprising amount of depth and complexity. I usually don’t like flavored teas, and this one is definitely good.

The globes are tea leaves tied into a flower – they expand when brewing, but remain tied in a cluster.

The tea is light and delicate, with a very light jasmine aroma. The flavor reminds me of a very pale, light version of Jasmine Silver Needles, and I wonder if perhaps the tea would not be more flavorful if it weren’t bundled. It’s a pleasant cup, but I prefer Jasmine Pearls or Jasmine Silver Needles. When I took my first cup from the pot, I removed the tea bundle, but after sipping that cup, it occurred to me that a longer brew time might improve the tea, so I returned the bundle to the pot while I finished the cup. My second cup was much stronger and more flavorful than the first. I think a steep of at least 7 minutes greatly improves the cup. It has the delicate sweetness and wonderful fragrance I expect from a good quality jasmine.

A kinder, gentler Irish Breakfast tea. Excellent with milk and sugar. Tastes like a very good quality Assam should.

I received a sample of this tea from a swap with an acquaintance on Ravelry.

My dogs often wake me way too early in the morning, and they are not patient about waiting when they want/need to go out. So, many, many mornings I stumble blindly out of bed, let the hounds loose, and grope my way blearily towards the tea kettle. When I am in that state, I want a good, stout breakfast tea that will stand up to a bit of sugar and milk. Something that will metaphorically kick my arse into motion, and not something that is necessarily refined or subtle.

This tea fulfills that requirement for basic stimulation, but adds to it a smoothness, and a sweet caramel smokiness that makes those 5:00 am wakeups into something almost pleasant.

Almost. I’d still rather sleep late, to, say, 5:45 am.

This is the perfect tea for those bleary-eyed moments in the morning when you can barely remember how to make tea. The flavor and aroma remind me a bit of good Irish stout. It will wake you up faster than a Marine drill sergeant. And, if you just can’t quite face all of that bright-and-cheeriness early in the morning, it mellows quite nicely with a bit of milk and sugar.

I woke up this morning with the migraine-from-hell. I spent most of the morning on the back porch, knitting and sipping this tea, mostly because that was about the most I could manage to do. The jasmine flavor and scent is incredibly rich and soothing. I like jasmine teas, and I like Adagio’s Jasmine Pearls tea a lot, but this is much, much better. The silver needles tea marries with the jasmine very well. The second steep is better than the first – I noted that on the first steep, some of the leaves did not get saturated with water, even after a seven minute steep. The second steep really brings out the full flavor of this tea. That said, I wouldn’t refuse a cup of the first steep, either.

I have a sample of this tea, and am mulling over whether to order it. The oolong leaf is very dark and oxidized looking. There is a sweet almond smell, but my sample contained none of the almond chips seen in the photos of this tea. I don’t know if that means they no longer use them, or I just got none in my sample.

The smell of this tea brewing is amazing – I kept taking big long sniffs because I enjoyed it so much. The flavor is a little thin using the average amount of leaf I generally use. For my second pot, I added about a third more leaf, and it was much better. The flavor is smooth, without an over powering amount of almond. My usual complaint with Adagio’s flavored teas is that they are too intense and rather artificial tasting. This was much better than their other flavored teas. The color of the tea is very dark for an oolong.

This is a new herbal tea from Tazo. I found it in, of all places, my local grocery store, which only carries teabags. I’d love to find it in whole leaf, because this is a delighful herb tea.

The odor when the bag is opened is overpowering and sickly sweet – roses on steroids. The tea when brewed is much mellower – the rose is still present, but I get lots of citrus notes, and a mild sweetness. This tea is made with honeybush, so it seemed unlikely that it would need sweetening, and it does not. A very pleasant cup for evening, or for when your life needs a little more rosiness.

Tazo has its generic brewing instructions on back – 5 minutes in water at boiling temp. It might be worth experimenting with a lower temperature, especially as this is bagged tea and should extract fairly easily.

It is ice tea weather here in the Coastal South, so I made a pitcher of black and blue tea with this today. Two bags Luzianne black tea, about two cups of frozen blueberries, thawed, blended to release the juice and strained, two quarts of water, and a couple of tablespoons of agave nectar to lightly sweeten. Cheers, y’all!

Makes a really forgettable iced tea.

I just can’t make up my mind about this tea. With one cup, I am loving the delicate sweetness of the coconut, and the way it enhances the tea. Another cup, and I am not in love with the pouchong tea, which has a coarse and slightly harsh taste to me. I bought this as a sample, mostly because I love Adagio’s Thai Chai, and the coconut flavor in it. The sample is gone now, and I still can’t make up my mind if I like this tea or not.

Maybe I should flip a coin?

I received this as a free sample from Alice.com (Love Alice! Love, love love Alice!) The sample was 20 teabags, which ought to be enough for me to form an opinion ;) The bag is one of the generously sized pyramid mesh types, and leaves plenty of room for the leaf to expand. The leaf is very black, and fine, but not too fine – no visible dust or finings. The cinnamon scent is intoxicating and almost floral. The tea brews up very quickly – within a couple of minutes it was dark and very fragrant. The color is a deep brown red, with almost no sediment – one of the reasons I dislike bagged teas is that the leaf is generally so dusty that there is a lot of sediment in the cup. The tea is a rich, sweet, straightforward Ceylon with a hint of astringency. The cinnamon adds warmth to the cup without overpowering the tea – it would take some doing to overpower this tea. The cinnamon tastes like real cinnamon – not cassia, not some plastic flavored cinnamon flavoring, but real, honest cinnamon.

I am definitely going to take advantage of the coupon Alice is giving me for this tea.

I was wandering the aisles of World Market yesterday, killing time before my evening concert, and discovered that they have pouches of loose tea. Is this new, or have I just failed to notice before?

Anyway, this is a fairly decent white tea – liquor is golden in color. It is light, sweet, and delicate in flavor, and I’m on steep 4 of the tea, and it is still rewarding me with decent tea.

So, why not a higher rating? Well, it just doesn’t really ring my chimes. I can’t say why, it just doesn’t make me as happy as a good oolong, or a genmai cha. This isn’t going to stop me from drinking it or buying more. It’s a good cupboard staple.

A late night cup after singing a two hour concert. Lemon ginger, agave nectar, and a tot of rum. Yum!

OK – I have at last decided what this reminds me of – mulled wine. Deep red color, spicy, sweet fruity taste. Not tea – wine.

All of the flavor and none of the fun. Nonetheless, I am bumping up the rating, just because it tasted so good tonight after late choir practice (Durufle’s Requiem will be the death of me.)