Savoy Tea Co

I have a kind of fascination with the idea of matching rooibos up with different flavors. It’s as if I’m watching a favorite bachelor dating various women and laying bets as to which one he’ll marry. This combination looked interesting so I decided to give it a try.

It smelled good during it’s five minute steep, though my big sis’s observation that rooibos tends to crumble into tiny fragments and find it’s way out of the tea strainer and into the cup was sadly evident. I really ought to pour this stuff through a coffee filter but I’m too lazy. Oh well, ce la vie…

This blend is rather nice, actually. The lavender goes well with the rooibos and the additional coconut flavor rounds it out and gives it a little something. There’s a hint of caramelized flavor as well, as if the coconut were toasted. I’m pretty sure this one would be lovely with cream or coconut milk and sugar, but it stands alone quite nicely. I’ll look forward to more of this in the future.

But next time I brew this, I’ll be using a darn coffee filter.

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

Woke up with a crazy craving for this…it had bubbled up to the top of my half-drunk-up basket when I was rummaging yesterday. Vanilla mint. It still doesn’t make me think of candy canes, but it’s sweet and perky. (This morning I am neither of those…must do it artificially!)

White cake with key lime frosting only makes this betterer. (Not a typo. It’s worthy of the extra er.) Sweet, authentic-tasting fruit flavor against the green tea. Sooooo good.

Ahhh! Now this is plausible cherry flavor, still a little sweet and syrupy, but the dried pineapple balances it nicely. And whaddya know? Son who calls tea “water with aftertaste” actually had a cup with me. That alone makes it worthwhile.

(I think I’m turning into the mommy from “Love You Forever” when the son grows up.)

Happy surprise: liked the sample so much I got a 4 ounce pouch when we were in NW Ark. at Christmas—room for great big blobs of dried pineapple and (I think) the cherries that weren’t in the teeny packet.

Gooooood stuff.

I chatted with one of the owners at the Savoy Tea Co store about cold brewing and this came highly recommended. “It gets better the longer it brews,” he said. Since I like my teas cold brewed and am apt to leave the jar steeping in the fridge till I get around to drinking it, (which can sometimes be as long as a few days) this sounded like my kind of tea. I put a generous measure in a quart jar of water and tried it after a few hours. It smelled great, very tropical and fruity. Since I’m allergic to pineapple, it’s nice to have a tropical blend without this ingredient for a change.

This tea is very mango-ey. Enough to stand alone as a good, solid, fruity tea. I’m sure it would be great with coconut milk and sweetener (I doubt a splash of rum would hurt it any either), but it’s a tea that doesn’t need “help” to be good, which is the sort I’m most inclined to drink. All by itself this is pleasantly fruity and just the thing if you like mangoes (If you hate mangoes, maybe not so much.) Since the weather here is a bit wintry, I’ve taken a few cups of this cold brew out of the fridge and heated it in the microwave, and can say it’s quite good warm too.

There’s supposed to be rooibos in this one, but I’m not tasting it. I’m not sure I mind, though. The fact that a blend contains rooibos and I can taste ANYTHING ELSE seems a tentative step in the right direction… :)

Good stuff, especially for those of us in the middle of the country experiencing winter and beginning to tire of cold weather. It’s making me dream of tropical vacations.

I think Jamaica in the moonlight. . .

I decided to try this on Christmas day. It tastes. . .well. . . it tastes like. . . Rooibos. . .sigh. And maybe it should but I’m growing bored with rooibos blends. Regardless of how they are made, they all seem to be tasting more or less the same to me lately. I think the roibos tends to overpower every ingredient added.

This has vanilla, almond, and walnut added, but all I seem to notice is rooibos. So I tried it with coconut milk and sweetener and it’s a lovely dessert tea . . . Just like all the other rooibos combinations.

I want to say this tastes like cookies but it doesn’t. It tastes like rooibos and vanilla. I’m not catching any of the almond or walnut at all. It’s nice as a dessert tea and amiable enough if you like rooibos and don’t mind pouring it through a coffee filter to get all the tiny bits out of it. As far as cookies, though, I think they missed the mark.

Just getting home from a wonderful day with my awesome aunt, I thought I’d give the tea she had bought me for Christmas a try. At first I wasn’t sure, because mostly I drink herbal teas. But the aroma made my mouth water. i let it steep for the least amount of time it said, and it tastes just like fruit plate, I guess would be the right way to say the taste. I took a little taste when it was done without sugar, and it tasted fine, but I found a small, very small amount of sugar makes all the flavor come out perfectly. Thank you very much Aunt Mswhatsit!!! :D

Eat an almond, then go try something flavored with almond extract. They’re both nice, but they aren’t the same. The scent of this tea is kind of a parallel to this phenomenon. I like pistachio nuts and I like this extract but it’s a different animal, more like someone’s fantasy of what pistachio ought to taste like than the real deal.

This tea has a lovely scent, but no real flavor. It would make a lovely bubble bath or extract for cookies (where all that sugar would no doubt “bring out” the flavor), but I take my tea without cream or sugar most of the time and expect it to stand on it’s own. It does not. As a stand alone tea, it lacks something and doesn’t really meet my standards. I love the fragrance that comes out of the bag when I open it, but this tea always disappoints me.

Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all.

Now if you like a dessert tea with cream and sugar, you’re in luck. These “bring out” the flavor. Indeed, I’ll likely be finishing this batch that way, and will no doubt enjoy every drop. However, I probably won’t be buying it again because I cannot afford the calories necessary to make this tea worth my time.

Your mileage may vary. J

Mini-Christmas with sister and elderly folks today, and I served this in tiny little handle-less cups (Mom eats and drinks like a bird). Got a very polite “Well, that’s interesting” from Mom; but my sister loved it. I sent the rest home with her and…well, shoot…I’ll just have to get more.

My current favorite flavored green. A pleasant Christmas-compatible candied fruit sweetness to it. I don’t know that Savoy blends its own tea, but I’m not sure where they get stuff for private labeling. Not a mystery I have to work too hard to unravel now that the shop has its own website (http://www.savoytea.com/) and I’m planning a run in a few days.

Good black tea with a ton of vanilla-mint flavoring. Reminds me more of wedding butter mints than it does candy canes, but a very pleasant and sweet tea. (It was my out-the-door steep this morning, but I think it’d be better for an afternooner.) Looking forward to trying it with milk to bring out the creaminess.

Incidentally, Savoy Tea has a nice little website up and running now: http://www.savoytea.com/default.asp Looking forward to a trek down there sometime during Christmas break!

Some shaved coconut added a little body, if not strong coconut flavor, to a second steep. Still mighty tasty.

I’m really digging this little blend. Was just the right topper-offer for take-out lo mein tonight. Not changing previous descriptors a bit…lovely candied-fruit sweetness that reminds me of good Christmas fruitcake.

Hubby took a sniff and wondered what it would be like with a little shaved coconut thrown in. Still enough left to give that a try soon.

Of course I needed this tonight. Hopefully it’ll keep me out of the minature Hershey bars intended for our miniature and eerie visitors. This tisane tastes spookily like Apple Jacks. Wish they made a black tea version.

Some weeks ago, I went to Savoy Tea Company in search of autumn blends. One thing I like about the place is there are little “sample jars” of each tea to sniff and examine to aid in the selection process. This is so much more helpful than merely looking at artwork and ingredient lists on boxes.

This variety was dark in the container with little orange bits and smelled wonderful, so I grabbed a package to go with my other autumn selections.

The directions on the package called for a five minute steep! I was a bit surprised at the notion of such a long one but . . .ok.

When the water hit it, this tea smelled like Christmas to me. I stood over the steaming cup reminiscing about sweet winter spices and the fresh oranges I used to find in my Christmas stocking. Finally, the timer went off and I got to sample it.

The tea was strong and sweet with cinnamon and a good tea base which didn’t seem to mind the long steep at all. The orange was less strong after brewing but still a good balancing presence amid the background flavors.

A word of warning: This is NOT a subtle tea. If you favor delicately scented, poetry-in-a-cup sort of blends, do not waste your time with this tea. It is strongly flavored with cloves and cinnamon. If you hate red hots, this is not for you. I’ll admit to some hypocrisy here—I’m the one always griping about the chia artists who get heavy handed with the cinnamon oil—yet strangely enough, I really like this variety. Perhaps it’s because I’m not terribly subtle either.

This stuff was very spicy, a little stingingly so. It made my beloved Celestial Seasonings Mandarin Orange Spice seem like kids stuff as this packed a much bigger punch. I found it a good morning blend. With a nice bite from the spices and a good kick of caffeine from the black tea, it certainly woke me up!

This was another “it just smelled good” treat from my husband’s unscheduled trip through the Savoy shop. And does it ever! Very sweet and tropical—I can see why it reeled him in.

Enjoying my first cup right now, and I think it’s one of the sweetest flavored green teas I’ve ever tried. Reminds me a lot of candied fruitcake fruit, which I love and eat straight out of the tub. Leans significantly to the cherry side.

I’m thinking a little additional sugar and this would be a really nice dessert alternative or a nice pairing with my mom’s apple cake. (Hey, Mom…would you feel up to baking…?)

Low temp and short steep (175, less than 3 minutes).

About a week ago, I went to Savoy Tea Company to renew my supply of their Paris Morning and pick out some new teas. The nice lady behind the counter asked if I was looking for anything in particular and I said I was interested in seasonal blends for autumn and the holidays. She pulled out a tin of this tea. One whiff and I had to have it.
In the package it smells deliciously minty with hints of butter and vanilla. Brewed up hot, it smells like some kind of fabulous.
At this point, I’d like to state that I am something of an uncultured barbarian where black tea is concerned. I’ve sampled lots of bitter, rancid, seriously nasty, and probably inferior examples of it. Most of the blends on my shelf are either simple herbals or blends of green tea and other stuff. It’s only in the past few years that my husband, a native Ozark hillbilly, brought me around to an appreciation of the syrup-y goodness of southern sweet tea. There followed a gradual appreciation for some of the better black teas in small and very occasional doses, but none of the obsession shown by any of the true connoisseurs on this site. Indeed, I’ve found myself scratching my head and puzzling over a few of their reviews. “What’s with all the nuance and esoterica? It’s just black tea!”
This was not JUST black tea. Despite the label making no claims of anything exotic, I’m pretty darn sure the base black tea used is quite a few levels above any black tea I’ve ever tasted. The scent coming from my cup was less minty than the dry mix, and it was complex and wonderful, as was the taste.
Yeah, I know, there was also mint in there and “natural candy cane flavor” you know, from the sugar plum forest where candy canes grow on trees. I drink a lot of mint blends and this was a very nice one, it’s minty-ness pleasant but not distracting. This is, in my opinion, a very well put together blend, and the whole combination works harmoniously.
But wow, that black tea! Complex, smooth, even having (I can’t believe I’m saying this) a little of that malty-ness I keep hearing people make reference to. Yet it’s so well fitted to the blend I wouldn’t have noticed all this except that usually I don’t find black tea remarkable at all.
All you black tea enthusiasts can now have a hearty laugh at my expense. I’ve just been assimilated.
Anyway, I had this blend without cream or sugar and found it interesting enough to stand alone. Just for yuks and grins I added a bit of sugar towards the end and found it makes a fabulously complex sweet tea as well. No cream for me though…the idea seems strangely sacrilegious to me, though I couldn’t say why.
The blend was lovely hot and I am looking forward to trying it cold brewed sometime to see how it fares by that method.

Not much of a second steeper. Still smells great, but after 10-12 minutes the first time around, we’ve squoze about all the juice we can get out of those Granny Smiths.

Savoy Tea Company is a cozy little shop on the Promenade in Rogers, Arkansas. Bulk and custom-packaged teas, cupcakes, tea goodies and accessories, just a storehouse of things near and dear to our hearts.

As I was browsing, husband was a couple of paces behind me, he checked out the “sniffer” jar of this one, and when my back was turned, I discovered a sample pack in the shopping basket :)

This smells so good, sweet apples and toffee, it took a good deal of willpower not to chew it and swallow it whole. It took even more to wait the full…10…minutes recommended for a full-strength steep.

The steeped stuff is the color of a clementine orange rind. The texture is light, but the flavor is (paused to think about it, but my sweetie pegged it for me) Apple Jacks! (I knew I’ve kept him around for 27 years…today…for a reason!)

I’m thinking that with a little half-and-half I would have me a lovely little cup of cereal milk. And decaf at that.

When I was shopping for Autumn teas, the scent of this one grabbed my attention. You know the aroma that wafts towards you from a candied almond stand? Yeah, just like that, with a hint of apples as well. I didn’t so much want to brew the stuff as eat it, but I curbed my enthusiasm and put the package in my tea cupboard.

Lately, I’ve been cold brewing my teas but this one called for a nice hot steep instead. Disregarding the directions (which I later learned call for 10-12 minute steep…who knew?) I gave it the customary three minutes and sampled it. It seemed weak, so I added some coconut milk (I don’t use dairy much) and a bit of sweetener, then on a whim, put the little tea cage spoon thingy (Ok, so I’m a greenhorn at this) back in to steep some more, and sat down to watch Dr Who until the tea cooled a bit. The flavors intensified and between the extra steeping, the richness of the coconut milk, and the sweetener, it became a lovely warm cup of autumn comfort. I’m going to have to get some more of this as the nights get colder. Yum.

My disappointment at seeing the bottom of the cup was modified a bit when I noticed all those re-hydrated apples among the source material, gave them an experimental nibble, and realized there really wasn’t anything in this tea that wasn’t safe to eat. So I did follow through with my original impulse to munch on some of the tea. And it wasn’t bad, though munching on leftover steepings may not be everybody’s cup…well, you know…
In conclusion, I rather liked this tea, but don’t disregard the directions-It needs a good long steeping to bring out the flavors. And a little added sweetening and richness don’t hurt either.