Argo Tea

Good news, everybody! I finally escaped O’Hare and made it home.

Before leaving the Argo in the terminal, I picked up another tea to sample. Iced black tea with honey and lemon sounded great, so I went with a Carolina Honey Tea. This stuff was CRAZY sweet. Growing up in the South, I can drink my fair share of the sugar water they like to call tea. This tasted like it was Southern sugar water/tea to which they had added heavy amount of honey and a dash of something that was supposed to be lemon-flavored. Not good at all. The only redeeming quality was that the honey they use was really tasty. If they would have just sweetened the tea with only the honey, it would have been a much better experience.

I got to enjoy my birthday dinner at Frontera, so being stuck in O’Hare wasn’t a complete disaster, even if the teas were a bit of a bust.

Well, I didn’t expect that I’d be celebrating my 25th birthday alone and stuck in O’Hare, but I’m trying to make the most of it. I’m already planning to treat myself to Tortas Frontera by Rick Bayless for dinner. The fresh lime margaritas at the bar looked awesome when I passed by, so I may just have to indulge.

In the meantime, I’m hanging out at Argo Tea enjoying the first of what I expect will turn into 2 or 3 cups of tea. The first I picked up to try was Ginger Peach. They serve it both iced and hot. I went with hot and almost immediately regretted the decision. The ginger is a bit spicy, but not overdone. It tastes like there was probably dried ginger chunks in the tea rather than a ginger flavoring. The peach, however, was just okay. I’ve had much better tasting peach teas. As it cooled, the ginger really started to shine through. I’m kicking myself for not getting the iced version of this!

I have been an Earl Grey fan since I went to Oxford University (New College) in 1985. (They really do have tea time and the whole school breaks for tea- or did, I cannot imagine they’d ever stop…)This Earl Grey is smoother and tastier, more soothing and delicious than Twinings. It’s a great morning cup if you like Early Grey! I do not sweeten teas or add milk for now because I am trying to taste the tea alone.

No matter how short I try to steep it, this is not going to work. Maybe I haven’t played around with the steeping times enough, but any shorter, and I don’t think there would be any flavor at all.

Ok, so you open the jar, and the smell is just completely blueberry. It’s not a bad smell, but the fact that the bitterness is apparent as soon as you open it is a bad sign. The package suggests a steeping time of 5-6 minutes. To that, I say: you have gotta be kidding me. Even with steeping times around 2 and a half minutes, the taste is just all bitterness, astringency, and maybe the tangy bite of blueberry.

Blueberry and white tea isn’t a bad idea. What is, however, is the fact that the leaves come in clear glass containers. WHITE tea leaves. I bought this before I knew that light would have a bad effect on tea leaves. I found this at a convenience store, sitting underneath bright fluorescent light for who knows how long. Maybe it’s not the tea, then, but the godawful packaging.

No notes yet.

An interesting blend of roasted brown rice and green tea. I didn’t really know what to expect when trying this, and wasn’t really sure what I thought after my first cup. I went off to do research, learning that genmaicha was originally consumed by poor Japanese and became known as the “people’s tea”.

I had multiple cups, playing with the steeping time and temperature, the most successful of which is to use boiling water, steeping for anywhere between 30 seconds to a minute, pouring into a cup and letting it cool for a bit. The resulting tea has the scent of the roasted rice and the flavor is difficult to describe, but, it’s smooth and delicious to me, in this particular blend I can barely taste the green tea, most of the flavor is of the rice. After the 7th cup of this or so today, I think I have to allow myself to like it because I keep drinking it…

So far I’ve not managed to brew a great cup of tea out of this stuff. I’ve tried everything I know how, but, haven’t been able to drink enough tea to try all the options on steep time. The directions on the label say 4-5 minutes, but, so far every variation on temperature and steep time I’ve tried has left me with something that’s not quite that good, I’ve yet to explore some of the shorter times. It’s not bad, but, it doesn’t have the sweet almost chocolatey taste that I’ve gotten out of some of the other oolongs I’ve tried, leaving me drinking some slightly weird flavored water. I might be doing it wrong. :|

Not bad, but make sure that you don’t over steep. Otherwise it is just undrinkable. It gets that kind of mouth puckering powdery feel to it. So, under controlled circumstances, cold… not bad. ^_

is one of the best chamomiles other than in my yard .. lol but I use these flower buds whenever i had an abscess from infected tooth to heal the abscess.

steep for couple minutes and take pinch of hot chamomile and place on abscess
for about 45 minutes 3x per day .. for two weeks even if swelling disapates .. :)

My first attempt at this was an utter and dismal failure, I was almost ready to agree with everyone else, the tea was overpowering, too strong, and just didn’t taste very good with instructions on the container.

I looked up some sites on brewing loose leaf tea and decided to try it a little different. First instead of using a full teaspoon, I put just enough to cover half the bottom of my little styrofoam cups. I know that’s not an exact measurement, but, because this tea has lots of chunks of apple and such, you could probably translate it to a light teaspoon, just be a little less eager to get a huge amount. Second, instead of boiling water, I had hot water and let it cool for just a minute or two and then steeped for about six minutes. I shall do more science in the future so that I can get exact temperatures and such, but, doing it this way produces a very delicious cup of tea and is not near as overpowering as my first taste.

Love the smell of this. Very simple, tart, and kinda sweet. Very good for when you are in a prime colors sorta mood.

The Bai Mu Dan is strong with this one.

//bad Star Wars reference.//

I’m not a big Bai Mu Dan fan. Too earthy, too woodsy. The blueberry in the smell is beautiful, but it’s overpowered in the cup.

It’s okay. It came as a gift from my friend. I’m open to swapping.

Edit: Second steep better. Not as fuzzy. More blueberry.

Elizabeth brought me some of this back from NYC!

Just used it to make honey crinkle cookies- so good. Also a hit at the last tea party, especially with milk and, well, honey.

(iPod note, so super short)

I had heard from a friend that this was the best tea Argo had, so I bought a bunch of it loose-leaf. I’m not the biggest fan of Earl Grey, but this tea just smells AMAZING. I made it with milk and a little bit of sugar when I was having a rough day. The smell is much stronger than the taste but it was delicious. Vanilla-y, Earl Grey-y goodness. I didn’t really taste the bergamot, but I’ll probably make it stronger next time. If you like Earl Grey, you should at least try this tea.

I’m going to hold off on rating this for now. It seems a bit less flavorful than some teas, but it could be that I should just use more tea and less water. The green comes out as a bit of a grassy one, and the flavors are there more in scent than flavor.

I had a cup of this at an Argo in Chicago. However, I can’t find any record of it on their website! As best I can remember, it was an herbal cup with fruit pieces (apple, specifically, but I forget what else). It was less spicy than I had guessed, and I think more hibiscusy, but I’m having a hard time even recalling the cup since yesterday. I think it’s because it was such an herbal tea that I just put it in that category in my head and can’t recall specifics. So obviously: not a stand out tea.

I had this and it was really more like a soft drink. I had a black tea with peach flavor. This drink includes carbonated water, and I’m certain a fair amount of sweetener, so it was not quite what I am used to drinking. Still, a fun and refreshing drink—especially if a rare treat.

I had a pumpkin spice chai tea latte, and it was quite good! Not nearly as sweet as the Starbucks chai lattes. I got it with soy milk, but the barista pointed out it’s really good with almond milk—which at least that location had. So, if I find myself near an Argo again in the future, I’ll be giving that a go!

A review of Carolina Honey by Argo Tea

I had this tea today and it was lovely and very sweet; tasting very much like the honey depicted on the bottle. This is sweet, sweet tea with honey oozing throughout. It tastes like taking the honey directly from the hives. Winnie the pooh haven like!

I could not drink this tea daily since it is too sweet. The lemon juices and the honey and cane sugar all blends nicely; no tartness at all. It is good tea.

No notes yet.

A review of Green Tea Ginger Twist by Argo Tea

I purchased this tea while doing grocery shopping at Shaws Market last week and I had placed one bottle in the fridge and forgotten about it until today. I decided to take it with us while out at a fair. Once again, I did not enjoy this fair, I am sorry to say. Anyhow, I shook this tea vigorously before pouring it into my trusty travel drink carrier and sipped it along the way.

Tea color is darkish brown and smells strongly of the spicy ginger and once tasted it is there to meet those tantalizing taste buds. Tea is very sweet and is a strong black tea.
I would have liked/enjoyed it more without the pulp.

This is nice – it tastes like a cider actually. It really is a great Winter tea – wonderful to curl up with. Not at all bitter or astringent, not sweet either, just super wonderfully pleasant and fruity with great apple elements. After I brewed it up there were big pieces of orange peel in the strainer :)

So I haven’t had this in awhile, though I remember it very fondly. This was my first Rooibus and it wasn’t bad. I could taste the pomegranate which is always good but then their was the Rooibus taste that distracted me for a little bit. Over time I was able to cancel it out though and just enjoy the Pomegranate. Only weird thing is that after I drank this or any other Rooibus tea I would end up having messed up dreams every time with night sweats. Not sure if this has anything to do with the tea or not but it seems like a weird thing to happen every time.

I’ve found I generally don’t like the vegetal note of unflavored Green Teas—Hojicha, which is atypical in being roasted, is an exception. It was suggested I might want to try Genmaicha as well. So when I dropped into this tea shop and saw I could buy a cup I thought I’d give it a try. Mind you, at $2.67 for a small cup, I could almost buy a couple of ounces at TeaSource or Adagio. But it was a chance to see if I’d like it w/o going through the fuss of an online order.

It was… weird. Unlike anything I’ve tasted in tea, and by this time I’m not exactly a newbie. I could taste a bit of that vegetal note, and it tasted savory somehow, like a broth, and somewhat bitter. I didn’t think I’d like it. But the more I drank, the more it grew on me. I could taste that popcorn-like nutty taste coming through. I’m glad I gave it a try, though I’m still left unsure I’d want to order it again.