Strand Tea Company

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Full review tomorrow April 7th on http://sororiteasisters.com/ but for now let me just say …

Lilac Blend from Strand Tea Company has me just beaming with happiness. It is a beautiful sun shiny day outside, I am looking at my first flowers of the year, although they are daffodils, not lilacs, and dreamily sipping on such a delightful surprise! I love lilacs, they are so very fragrant and beautiful. This tea speaks to my sensibilities of summer, flowers, and yet there is a wonderful, surprising fruitiness as well. Mmmmm, so good!

Lilac from Strand Tea Company has a full mouthfeel nearly creamy. Add a splash of milk and you have a dessert tea for sure, oh so creamy and delicious! The mouthfeel is surprisingly heavy for what one would think is a light dainty tea. This tea has some heft to it.

And the taste? Can it match up to all my self imposed hype? Why yes, it can! It is sweet – like honey, fruity, wonderful berry notes, almost a blueberry flavor but I get some deep red berry notes in here too. It tastes wine like, a bit like a blueberry mead tea.

A BIG THANK YOU TO Aplhakitty for sharing this with me!

This was the very first loose leaf tea I ever tried. I’ve since expanded my collection, but this still might be my favorite black tea. The leaves are mostly dark but there’s some gold color here and there. Already, the leaves give off a really sweet, fresh scent. It’s a fresh, grainy, almost woodsy smell that hit me in the face as soon as I opened the package. It steeps to a reddish, coppery color. Any darker than that, and you’ve steeped it for too long.

The cup is DELICIOUS. There’s absolutely no pungency, or no bitterness. It’s got a great deal of natural grainy sweetness, and it would be a shame to add milk or sugar to this IMO. It’s full bodied without being too strong.

…So yeah, this tea kind of got me into loose-leaf tea. The amazing flavor you get from the leaves alone, with absolutely no additives keeps me coming back to bai lin.

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Second tea of the day! Going to try as many during my time off this week since I’ve been slacking. This is another sample I received from Kasumi, and this is my first time trying a floral blend!

I taste the floral/lilac but more than that I taste something fruity? I like it, though! I think it’s a nice introduction to floral tea blends.

It also smells amazeballs.

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had it morning

i like it

I got this tea through my organic food supplier.
( Has anybody heard of Azure Standard? )
It was 4 dollars and some odd cents for 4 oz, so I thought I would give it a go.
The dry leaf smells rather unremarkable.
But, the tea itself has a nice brisk black tea odor.
The taste is very polite.
It is a nice quality black tea, its not to bitter or robust and just awakens you with Jeeves-like quality
“Ahem, excuse me Madam but it is time to arise”

After hearing of the legend of the Harney & Sons Golden Snail tea that disappeared from stock, perhaps ne’er to return, I searched far and wide for another of this type of tea.

The tea leaves themselves have a unique appearance, curled with golden tips and black leaves, a rather neat aesthetic. I learned quickly that a teaspoon of this tea is actually too much for a single cup as the leaves expand significantly beyond the initial dry volume. The tea darkens quickly and so a steep of ~3 minutes is adequate to produce a robust dark amber colored brew. The tea has both a strong nose and strong flavor, the notes of cocoa cannot be mistaken. It is full bodied and very satisfying, at least to my tastes. There is a hint of smokiness, more so the longer the steep. I rather like this tea.

Thanks to Alphakitty I was able to try this one and really enjoyed it! I agree with what Alphakitty said with it smelling and tasting both fruity and floral. I think it was a bit more fruity than floral taste-wise and it did taste like a berry of some sort. At the very least blueberry-esque but maybe even a berry-combo based around that blueberry! teehee!

Regardless…I found it to be a tasty cup. I was surprised it wasn’t more focused on the lilac but, personally, I was ok with that. Others REALLY interested in a lilac-specific tea might think differently.

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I bought this a bit impulsively—I love floral teas but hadn’t seen a lilac blend yet, so of course I had to try it out! I have lilacs in my front yard and the smell reminds me of beautiful warm spring nights, so I was hoping this tea would evoke the same feelings. Before I rate the actual tea I’d like to mention what a pleasant shopping experience I had with Strand—they actually charged me LESS for shipping than it actually cost (paid $4.95, label said it was $5.15). This might be a small thing, but high shipping charges will generally make me not want to shop at a company. They also sent a very generously sized sample even though I only bought one type of tea, and cookies! I’ve never received cookies along with a tea package, but they do fit rather well together so it was a nice surprise.

Well, on to the actual tea! I was a bit worried about this when I opened the bag, as it smelled really fake and fruity, with no trace of lilac at all. Thankfully the fake-ness disappeared once it was brewed, but it still smelled very fruity. And indeed, the actual tea tastes like a mix between a light floral blend and blueberry. I personally love blueberry, so this was more of a nice surprise than a bad one. The floral taste I suppose is lilac—it doesn’t taste like the smell the way jasmine does, and it’s very soft but still there. It’s sweeter than other floral blends I’ve tried, and very subtle. Going to try this iced soon, I think it would be a great summer beverage.

EDIT: On a hunch, I added a splash of milk to my second cup. Tasted like a blueberry muffin! Bumping up the rating a bit: this wasn’t what I expected at all, but it’s delicious.

I brewed up a pot of this in my new Japanese teapot! Hubby took me to an estate sale, I got a cute little teapot with four sipping cups for $10. This did make up for yesterday’s dismal day of shopping at Canton Trade Days.
Inside the teapot, the leaves had plenty of room to unfurl:) This is what I should drink when I want popcorn. Very savory and meaty yet light and satisfying. Less caffeine than black teas makes this one a better choice for nighttime drinking.

It is hard to describe just how much I adore this tea. It has a lemon flavor, but is never tart. So many lemon teas are tart or bitter. This a smooth, refreshing tea. I drink it without any sweetener, as it needs no embellishments. As with all green teas, do not oversteep. You can re-steep it once more for another cup/pot. They used to call it “Judy’s Lemonscent”, but have dropped her name from it. No matter. It is awesome.

Loving this! I received this tea as a free sample with my order placed some time ago, and I am just getting around to trying it. This is a fine Keemun, very light astringency to this one, with a dry finish that is quite like a dry wine. The wine-like notes linger in the aftertaste. It is sweet, slightly smoky and very delicious. And after checking it out on the Strand website, I can’t believe it’s only 3.95 for 2 ounces! Wow! Definitely worth it.

Maybe it is just me, but this used to taste alot better than it did last night! Fishy is how I would describe ths tea…disappointment…sigh….
Perhaps it was not as fresh as it could have been when I purchased this tea or Perhaps it was my water temp:(

I don’t know why it took me so darn long to try this tea, which is named after my stomping grounds, but I finally got around to it. I got this in a care package ages back from LiberTeas. It’d been sitting in a tea case for months, unopened. This morning I was desperate for a pick-me-up, so I turned to it. It was black, it was there, and it was new. Done.

As far as black blends go, it was surprisingly even. The Chinese blacks certainly dominate the profile, in my opinion. There may have been a little bit of Darjeeling muscatel on the forefront, but it was nigh on subtle. The rest of the tea’s character was bold, smooth, woody, middling-to-malty, and astringent at the end. A decent enough blend.

finishing up my last lil bit…

SIPDOWN!

Drank this when I came home from school and again after dinner.
I just love the richness of this tea. The roasty aroma is intoxicating to me.
I also want to give a shout out to the Strand Tea Company. This quote is on their web page “We specialize in offering quality tea and tea accessories at affordable prices for everyone.” They also ship teas out the same day ordered 99 % of the time. And you get a free sample with your order + some really great tea cookies:) hmmm….one perk after another…& Jack Strand is happy to return an email about tea questions. When I first started drinking tea, he sent me a lengthy explaination of the all teas. Bottom line, they are tea experts and they really care about their customers.
Shout out over. Enough said.

I took a better picture, but I cannot get it to load. Sorry:(
This tea is mild and really good. The price point is affordable and the customer service from Strand Tea is outstanding!
I have drank this tea everyday since it arrived.

Enjoying a cup of Portland Blend with my breakfast. Here is my full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2011/01/24/portland-blend-from-strand-tea-company/