The Tea Emporium

Oh my god, this tea is amazing to drink while eating chocolate. I’m working on an absurdly huge bag of Lindt chocolate, a result of too little self control in an outlet mall. The rich sweetness of the chocolate that lingers after a bite just makes each sip of this incredibly creamy and loaded with vanilla notes. I have the urge to try making hot chocolate with this tea as the base. Mmmm.

A nice, soothing cup for a sleepy morning. I really like this variation on Earl Grey. It’s smooth and a bit sweet, with bergamot, vanilla and caramel notes. And easy cup to drink when I’m feeling a bit out of it.

I usually like this one a lot, as a nice variant on Earl Grey. Today’s cup was not good – I think it still had some soap residue on it, because there was a lot of soap taste and not a lot else. Boo.

SSTTB #13.

haha. First review, what?!

Ok. This tea brews up such a brilliant, pretty red colour. I was hesitant to “ruin” it with milk, but it’s so good this way! A milky rose tea. :) It’s actually pretty tasty, although sniffing it before milk it struck me as one of those teas that could easily go very unpleasantly bitter.

I like it this way, but due to that potential bitterness (even with milk as it cools, I can tell it could be bitter) I probably wouldn’t get it.

It was fun to try a rosey tea, though. I haven’t had any rose blacks, but now I’m thinking it might be a flavour I would want to have in my cupboard…

Backlog. Had this tea a few days ago. This one is definitely better than their Pi Lo Chun but not the best quality dragonwell I’ve had. As far a I remember it had a clean astringent taste but lacked the freshness. Again this is last year’s crop. I am a bit annoyed that they are selling last year’s teas when all of the new spring ones should be in. I am also a bit disappointed in Tea Emporium. None of their teas have been very good so far.

Backlog. Okay, stupid me. I love the Bi Lo Chun sample from Teavirve. I figured I would try out a local one and see if it’s okay because I didn’t want to pay for shipping. I got about 25g of this tea. I thought it would at least be somewhere close to the tea I loved from Teavirve. This tea is like a very very faint muted flavour. There is not the same freshness or buttery flavour. In some ways it’s not even like the same tea. How sad. Overall , not a bad tea but nothing like Teavirve’s.

This tea will get demoted to the early morning cup when I’m too sleepy for my taste buds to wake up. As well, I think I will just order the tea I love from Teavirve.

Sample sipdown!

This was quite a nice green, actually. Vegetal, a nice light tan liquor, and definitely an authentic flavour. It’s quite sweet as it cools. This is surprising since I steeped it at a very high temperature – it didn’t get bitter on me.

Sample sipdown!

I got a sample of this about a month ago in a chain store that’s reselling the Tea Emporium’s wares. However, I haven’t been impressed so far, and I’m not sure if that’s because the Tea Emporium’s teas themselves are bad, or because the reseller is not storing them correctly.

Anyways, this tea fits into that trend. It smells promising but the flavour is somewhat lacking. I can taste the rooibos and chocolate, but I can’t really taste the mint or the coconut, despite seeing huge flakes of coconut in the dry mix.

Hoo boy.

A few weeks ago, I got some Moroccan mint tea with peppermint in it. It was okay, but I’ve found that peppermint can get harsh really quickly. So I busted out this sample I got last week, hoping that the spearmint in this tea would be more to my liking.

I didn’t like this at all. Which is a shame, really.

I don’t know how to describe this – there just seemed something off about the green tea base. Like it was stale or old or slightly spoiled. Highly unpleasant. I underleafed the tea – the steeping instructions say to use 1 tsp of leaf for every 6 oz, and I only had 3 tsp of leaf yet still made a 24-oz pot – but I doubt that’s the culprit here. There was just something really unpleasant about the whole thing.

I poured out a mug for my mother (who has a cold, and even if she didn’t, wouldn’t really know better to know this tastes off) and poured a mug for myself. I couldn’t even finish the one mug I poured, and just tossed the remainder of the pot down the drain.

It’s entirely possible that this tea would suit someone else, but it just tasted odd to me. What a waste.

Edit: This is a sipdown, thank goodness.

I haven’t had a very good track record with kombucha teas but this blend sounded intriguing enough that I purchased it when I saw it on the 50% off rack at Chapters bookstore. The tea has a slightly yeasty, fermented scent which made me a bit trepidacious, but it doesn’t seem to have translated over to the flavour. The tea tastes slightly sour, from the lime I assume, with an odd sort of lightly herbal undertone. It’s…not my fav though I’m going to play with the steeping time to see if I can’t improve it any.

Thank goodness I only bought a tiny amount of this. It looks fantastic. Brewed up – smelled hibiscus. Taste – hibiscus. Enough said.

Sipdown! Organized my tea cupboard this morning and dumped a whole bunch of teas that only have a sample size left in a bag to sip down. This tea is okay but it doesn’t really live up to it’s name. I could swear I was drinking plain white tea. It’s not a bad white tea. It’s actually pretty good (sweet & light) but I wanted strawberry.
Bye bye Strawberry fields forever. Won’t be buying this one again.

I picked this up from The Tea Emporium in Oakville. When I wanted to add a picture I couldn’t find it on their website. Maybe they don’t have it up there yet? I oversteeped this tea accidentally by an extra 2 minutes but it’s still good. There is a sweetness and lightness to the white tea. Sometimes I had trouble picking up the strawberry notes as they were so light. Overall a very delicate tea. Great for the afternoon. It’s still morning and I’m having it now because I had two black teas this morning and need to reduce my caffeine.

I am on a strawberry kick. Maybe because I can’t wait for spring? So I bought two strawberry teas at Tea Emporium today. Since I had enough caffeine this morning I went with the rooibos. This is quite nice. It doesn’t quite have the strawberry flavour I was hoping for but that doesn’t mean the strawberry notes are not prominent. They are. Strawberry is just a very hard flavour to get right. At least there is no hibiscus in this. I really hate when they ruin a tea with hibiscus. I bet this would be amazing as an iced tea. I don’t think I will have any problem going through this tea.

2nd (or could be 3rd) time having this tea. It tastes better than on my first review. I’m surprised I didn’t mention the buttery notes in it. It’s a very mellow buttery green tea. I think it’s too special to have everyday and I’m bumping up my rating from last time because I’m loving this tea even more.

Yesterday I discovered a Tea Emporium in my business travels. I didn’t have a lot of time to spend in there but you can be sure I will be back! Out of loads of untried teas what to buy? I stuck with my old familiar grassy green. The lady picked out this one for me. Yes , it’s a good everyday green. Mild tasting, very grassy. Brews up a golden yellow colour. We can’t be having fancy teas everyday and sometimes it’s just nice to have a good tea with nothing fancy but good flavour.

Cold brewed, just okay. I kinda get a peach flavor, but on the whole it’s unremarkable.

As others have pointed out, there is a strong peach aroma when this tea is dry. It does not, however, carry over to the steep. There is a definite fruity flavour, but not as peachy as I hoped for. Don’t know if I would get again.

This is a lovely, strong and slightly spiced tea. And I like my tea strong. I love it as a way to start off the day.

Received this sample from Sil. Thank you so much for sharing. I took this to work yesterday, and while I did enjoy it, it was just ok. Nothing spectacular, but nothing offensive either. It was good for work, stood up the my haphazard steeping parameters. I just didn’t think it was bold enough, was more on the lighter side of black.
I’ve been exploring a lot of black teas lately and may be becoming more critical of them, but IMHO there are black teas that suit my tastes more than this one. Thanks Sil for the experience.

sipdown! i figured that i might as well finish this off since i had just a travel mugs worth of tea left. I’ve been happy with this one, and i’m starting to think that the tea emporium does a much better job with their straight teas than their black teas. :) It was a good one!

nom nom nom nom nom. Oh how i wish i could have another work from home day. Maybe next week. Especially since there are two companies calling out to me to order from. sigh I think i just need to accept the fact that my cupboard is 200 or so teas. always. lol

This tea? It’s almost done, which in a way is nice only because it’s one of my older teas. Once i finish this and 1-2 others, my oldest tea will then be from February of this year. so yay!

Not too much to say about this one, trying to catch up on my logs from today. I’ve been drinking this one a little more often because it’s one of my older teas but also because it’s a nice cup to start the day with.