The Republic of Tea

This tea smells of sweet ripe currants and spicy cardamom. It tastes green, almost like a lighter green tea, but it is green rooibos. There is light currant flavor and overtones of cardamom that tingle the throat after continuous sips. I really enjoy the lightness to this tea/tisane. I really like how well RoT does green rooibos.

I was going to pick up Chocolate Ginger and the Blood Orange Chocolate red teas but I’ve heard disappointing things about RoT’s chocolate teas, so I passed…even though they are limited additions at World Market….well, the chocolate ginger red tea is, I’m not 100% on the Blood Orange Chocolate tea. World Market has so many amazing foods, treats and housewares I love taking a trip there! I just wish more were open near me, most of them have closed :(

The Final Sipdown: Day 2[ish].3

Feeling guilty about my narcoleptic episode last night, I’m banging this one out before I leave for work.

This tea smells strongly of both honey and ginseng. Honey is something that I usually prefer as an accent to stronger flavors. [A little honey drizzled over some blue cheese? Fuggedaboutit.] However, this smells pleasant and like the kind of thing that would reek of heaven if I were ill.

The tea itself has a definite honeyed note to it, and also, apple juice. Didn’t expect that one. The finish is sweetly bitter, which I’m guessing is coming from the ginseng. Can’t taste a lick of green tea in it, though. On the breath, honey, honey, honey.

All in all, not unpleasant but I don’t find myself particularly impressed. I’m sorry, I know that I’m unsuccessfully attempting not to sound like a snot here, but reading their book is leaving me with a bitterly critical aftertaste. This is hardly the best thing that the tea world has to offer.

Anyway, it tastes as advertised but lacks finesse. I doubt I will find myself buying it, though if I come down with a cold this winter I suspect that this could be great for a sore throat and congestion; especially after adding a few drops of actual honey. The flavoring, while not medicinal in taste, seems medicinally inclined in a strange sort of way.

ETA: I should also mention that this was a free sample that came with their catalogue.

Samples Downed: 6

Thank you Jaime for sending me this special treat. The best way to describe it is as follows…Creamy Chocolate Cake. Need I say more? :-) Yummy!

Oh, Republic of Tea. Where do I start with you?

As I fished out the [admittedly free] packet enclosed with your catalog, I began to think about your company as a whole. You boast a rather catchy concept in an Old Navy kind of way [coincidentally, they are a sister company of half of RoT’s entrepreneurial past – Banana Republic], thoughtfully designed packaging and imaging, well-written copy, and what I imagine is a pretty powerful marketing team as I’ve seen you prominently displayed in [but not limited to] Whole Foods, Wegmans, and Balducci’s. Indeed, you have cornered the market at Crate and Barrel.

But I most often find myself wishing that your tea stood up to all the hype. I am even in the middle of your book, which while a great deal insightful in its own right and a very interesting read at points, I find mainly overbearing, self-indulgent, and a bit obnoxious. Do you really believe that your tea is the best tea that can be found? That you are traveling to the ends of the earth to bring the most selective quality of leaf to the people of the “Republic”? It’s fascinating, because your levels of confidence are clearly not ultimately displaced, as you all seem to be doing very well for yourselves, but at some point do you not find yourselves pausing to ask, “…Seriously?”

Now that the RoT has begun carrying loose leaf, I suppose it might be worth while to give a tin a try to see how they hold up on that front. But, as I sit here drinking this “sip by sip” as they like to put it, I find myself becoming angry.

This tea is so far past even mediocre, it’s almost insulting. What makes it worse is that a) it smells like a carbon copy of hot apple cider and b) I can see how this might impress a long time drinker of Lipton.

The taste is weak and watery, and I thought it may have been because I only let it sit for three and a half minutes, but given how long others have steeped it that does not seem to be the issue here. The flavors that do emerge are dull and unimpressive. When I think about this tea compared with the also “light” Nishi Sencha that I drank last night, it’s like thinking about the difference between a sloth and a stallion; a Ford Pinto and a Bugatti Veyron; Psyduck and Pikachu. It’s simply not fair to do so.

The tea starts off with a lackluster, bland flavor akin to…argh. I don’t even know. It reminds me of the time when I bit into an Apple Gone Wrong [as I called it] – a fruit that wasn’t bad in that it was mealy and rotten, but truly was an apple that had no apple flavor in it whatsoever. No sweetness, no crispy tartness, nothing. Just watery blahness that was met by the disgusted faces of the people who I made try it. Following that is an unimpressive spice-like flavor and an aftertaste that tastes like some kind of bizarre mix of hot lemon water and chamomile.

And therein lies the reason why it’s proving so difficult for me to get through the RoT book. It would be a quick and easy read if their tea lived up to all the lovely promises portrayed by the eager authors, but when I drink something like this, it makes me wonder. Is this simply an earnest effort made by people whose opinion of tea is truly that far misplaced by my own tastes? Or is it a marketing ploy constructed by a team of people who learned from experience that in the American market sometimes all you need is a cleverly crafted image to sell a shoddy product, therefore resulting in a ridiculously high profit margin?

I can’t even rate this higher than the “devil tea” [Tazo’s Wild Orange] because that at least had flavor. The inaptly named “Comfort and Joy” is just…is just…a flaccid excuse for a tea. The only reason I would recommend to a friend to keep this around would be if they were selling their house during fall or winter and they wanted to have something sitting around to make it smell homey and inviting but they didn’t want to waste good cider. And in all seriousness, that is hardly a reason to buy tea.

Just for the sake of discussion, and for the more practically minded of us out there, let us consider something. Comfort and Joy can be purchased in the amount of 50 tea bags [2.8 oz, says the tin] for $11.50. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, we’ll say that this weight reflects only the tea and not the bags. So, you are essentially paying $4.10/oz [rounding down] of this tea. A brand perhaps considered notoriously expensive in the tea world, Mariage Frères’ Marco Polo can be purchased on average at $20 for a tin, which holds 100 g, or 3.5 ounces. Comparing this in the same manner, you are looking at $5.72/oz. However, let’s assume that you resteep this tea [I have had success with one resteeping], not even all the time, but about half the time that you make it. Already you are down to $4.29/oz [rounding up]. Yunnan Golden Bud is a tea that I typically resteep about three or so times on average when drinking, but even considering it being resteeped only twice, it’s down to $5.88/oz [jumping down to $3.92/oz for three steeps per use]. If I were to buy Comfort and Joy [and I won’t be] it is most definitely not a tea that I would find use in resteeping. Tea bags rarely lend themselves to this kind of use anyhow, as I find most of the flavor is typically extracted during the first steep and besides, it’s a bit psychologically disconcerting to reuse the dried, wrinkly, mushy bag another time. Even my parents, who are avid drinkers of bagged tea, do not reuse their tea bags. The convenience lies in the ease of the use-and-toss.

This is a point I want to make because, while we all hear about how fairly inexpensive tea actually is when you price it per cup, who here actually sits there and makes these calculations when you are buying tea? I certainly don’t. And even then, I very rarely go on tea buying benders where I buy teas from several different companies at the same time.

I believe that most of us subscribe to the idea that we are willing to pay a little bit more for things we like more. Comparing an $11.50 price tag to a $20.00 one or especially a $47.00 can seem like an incredible difference, but when you think about how much you will use these teas realistically [not even comparing opinion of flavor at this point], it truly becomes much less of a price jump. In life, I am one who considers it more cost effective to pay a little bit more in the beginning and get something of quality, than to save money at the point of sale and have to replace it more often later on down the line. This does not mean that the higher price point always belies a proportional difference in quality and that you shouldn’t research things – especially life’s bigger purchases – but all in all I find that the philosophy holds and it has served me well. Granted, there will be some people who enjoy Comfort and Joy, or who will always balk at the prospect of paying an undeniably higher price for something up front. That’s fine, but this point is, certainly, something worth considering.

Lastly, because I couldn’t resist, I decided to document this admittedly contemptuous account with a picture. For your viewing pleasure, please behold Comfort and Joy as compared to Mariage Frère’s Marco Polo and Samovar’s Yunnan Golden Bud. | http://bit.ly/bUcdVC

Kristen sent me a sample of this! And, I was so excited to get to try it. Red Velvet Cake might be my favorite thing on the planet (damn… now I might have to make cupcakes just from thinking about it). I tried this last night so I am backlogging.

It does taste like red velvet cake which really surprised me. I even feel like I get a taste of cream cheese frosting.

BUT… as much as I want to love this tea, there is something weird about it. I had to drink almost the whole cup before I figured out what the strange flavor was. It’s almost like the chocolate is artificial, but then it occurred to me that it’s actually akin to the flavor that low-calorie sweeteners give off. It’s more of an aftertaste that you can’t get out of your mouth, kind of like saccharin (for those of you old enough to remember what sweet and low tastes like).

So, it’s definitely worth a try, but I don’t think I’d want to buy a whole tin.

It was alright. Thought it would be sweeter than it really was.

I was interested to see how this tasted since I really enjoy RoT’s ginger peach white tea. I saw this sitting on the counter in my school’s post office with a few other teas and the women there said I could take one! The ginger is definitely much more toned down in this one, and in general I’m not really a black tea kind of girl. It’s a pleasant tea overall though!

Brew it really strong, sweeten it when it’s hot, and drink it over ice. Delicious!

Any Lapsang is one of those things you either love or hate. It smells like leather, or a bonfire, or meat— or all of the above— and that’s kind of a turn off for a lot of people, but when you brew it up, it’s no smokier than a Russian Caravan tea most of the time. It’s great for winter. Good with sugar and milk. If you’re eating with it, don’t do anything too delicate— this is a tea for a fried breakfast, not for tea cakes (unless you have one hearty enough to dip without it falling apart; it’s good on a good buttery-sweet sort of cake).

Twinnings has a gentler one to start with. Stash has a bolder one to move on to. The ones direct from China are bolder still, and higher-quality tea makes them more complex.

A little sharp for everyday drinking, but the best thing in the world if you have a bad cold coming on, especially if you add enough honey to soothe a sore throat along the way. I’ve fought off strep throat with this. It’s that good.

The smell of blackberries and the fresh, slightly astringent taste of sage. Tasty, refreshing as an iced tea, and if you don’t sweeten it, it’s really good for when you have canker sores or bad teeth.

At the coffee shop I worked at, we used to call this “Tea of Iniquity”. Because it sounds funny. There are better brown-rice / genmaichas out there, but this is the perfect one for a starter or an entry-level: to get used to the flavor and the idea. And it’s a good fall-back, too, for when you want genmai, but you can’t afford the really expensive stuff from Japan.

Very strong. This is tea for coffee drinkers. But if you like strong teas, this is a good one!

It had a very good coconut with a touch of chocolate/cocoa smell to it. When I tasted it, that same smell had a matching flavor that alternated in sips with a old, possibly bad, coconut milk flavor. After 3 or 4 sips, all I could taste was the bad coconut milk and I decided I didn’t want to finish it. The points are primarily for smell.

The tea bags smell fairly caramel-y with some cocoa notes and a bit of coconut. Brewed, I can smell the barley plus some sweetness and perhaps coconut. The taste is seriously surprising. The barely and caramel combine in a way that makes me think of some sort of baked and glazed dessert. The coconut and cocoa are more accent notes to the sweet, roasted barley, adding to the almost-savory-yet-still-dessert-like feeling. The last sip is the only cocoa-y sip; it looks like there is some cocoa sludge that settled at the bottom.

It’s not at all what I expected – I thought it’d be more sweet and desserty but it’s darker and more grain sweet – but I’m really grooving on it. So much so that I finished my cup and then I finished the husband’s when he turned his nose up at it. Tasty.
3 bags/18oz

Got a sample of this from Jillian and decided I needed to try it this morning.

Unsweetened – this is very toasty-coconut, not so much cocoa.

Sweetened – the creamy, almost oily flavor came out much more, and a little more cocoa flavor.

Overall, this is a nice tisane, but not one I’d actively seek out. I’d want either more cocoa or another flavor (spices or something similar) in order for this to be a drink I’d want again. I do apprecaite the opportunity to try it however. (Thanks Jillian)

This one gets better each time I have it! I like to use two bags per cup better tho! :P

I’m digging this one way more than I did before. I received a large tin of this today! It’s smells very chocolaty and when I steeped it it lost a little bit of that chocolate smell but the taste is VERY smooth and vanilla-YUM and the rooibos is a delight. It more red in color than I expected but I will chalk that up to the beet root! I’m liking this one a little bit more iced than hot but they are both good.

I want to thank Kristen for this one! This isn’t too bad…It smells like Rooibos and chocolate. It’s very sweet but I am thinking more sweet from the rooibos than the chocolate. I can’t pick out the other flavors but it’s alright overall! I would have it again but I don’t think I would buy a HUGE tin of it tho!

Thanks again Kristen!!!!!

I didn’t care for this tea. The taste was a general “fruitiness”, not cherry specifically. Also, it was quite sweet and I occasionally got a bitter taste (maybe overheated the water?). All in all, I wouldn’t re-order.

I only got this as part of the Fair Trade sampler, and I was quite surprised by how much I enjoy it! The dominant flavor is cranberry, but hints of orange that sweeten and balance the slight tartness of the cranberry. Quite tasty, and I’m sure I’ll order it in the future

I received a sample, this isn’t the type of tea I’d normally try so take the review with a grain of salt. I thought it tasted more like strawberry flavoring than real strawberry and was unpleasant.

I kind of detest ginger teas, so I went into this halfway expecting something entirely unpalatable, halfway not knowing what to expect. I’m a big black tea fan, love it dark and rich. I love/adore everything pumpkin, so there was a shot I’d like it.

This reminds me of pumpkin pie, in all the right ways. I wouldn’t say this tastes like a proper black tea per se, but great for a dessert tea. (Testament to the not-such-a-great-black-teaness, my boyfriend cares for this tea a great deal and seems to otherwise detest tea.) The only downside for me is – when it gets cooler the clove is more apparent. Otherwise, rock! I can totally enjoy pumpkin pie without fussing over baking.