Wissotzky Tea

I never thought about it when I used to regularly leave teabags in the mug while drinking my tea, but some teas seem to benefit substantially from lengthy steeps. This is one of those teas. At 3-5 minutes, it’s very meh. Flavor is weak and unimpressive. Luckily, I got distracted at work and didn’t come back to the cup until 15-20 minutes later. Oh. my. goodness. The flavors really come out to play. It’s a lovely balance of honey and sage and I find it extremely enjoyable. I wasn’t paying attention to aroma or color, but I’ll definitely be having it again and will try to notice those things.

I think many of the Wissotzky green teas fall into the category of teas that benefit from lengthy steepings. Not sure why.

I love the smell of this, though I can’t quite pin it down. Seems to primarily be black currant, rose, and hibiscus. Color is a very pretty red, though I think I understeeped this (and threw out the teabag, d’oh!). Flavor’s fairly light because of that, but I’m picking up a lot of strawberry, rosehip, and passionfruit. Aftertaste is definitely strawberry.

Overall, pretty tasty but not a staple tea.

Drank this when I had a migraine and people recommended mint tea. I put it in my travel mug and brewed for about 3 minutes, and it was much better than last time. Maybe not being able to smell it through the mug made the mint less offensive? I don’t know how much it helped my migraine, but it wasn’t an absolutely awful tea drinking experience like last time.

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I needed something for the commute home, so I just tossed a bag of this into some hot water in my travel mug and left the bag in for the trip home. This tea holds up to a long steep pretty well. I agree that the green tea flavor is weak, but the ginger and lemongrass are strong and very well balanced. I quite enjoyed it. Very soothing.

Alas, can’t testify as to color or scent, since it was in a travel mug.

I know it’s probably technically impossible to ‘oversteep’ an herbal tea, but after a certain point the hibiscus, if it’s present, takes over. I think that is what happened here. I set my alarm and when it went off, I failed to take the tea bags out and then forgot I was making tea. Not my best execution.

With this, I can certainly taste the berries, what must be the wildberry flavour because I’m mostly unfamiliar with it. Unfortunately it’s also very tart and that detracts from it. There’s something almost sour with the berry flavour and I find that I’m just not enjoying this tea.

First off, this smells absolutely fantastic. The honey smell is very prevalent and strong. The smell was really faint when the tea bag was dry, but as soon as I poured water on it, boom, in your face smell. Kind of surprising for a chamomile blend. I have some hopes for something I’ll like from a company that I haven’t been impressed with yet. This tea is from yssah who was kind enough to send me a bunch of Wissotzky teabags.

I think I oversweetened this a bit, since it had honey in it already, but this is pretty decent. Not something I would seek out though, since I find chamomile kind of boring most of the time and prefer to sweeten my teas with rock sugar because of the distinct flavour that honey imparts. Still, for a bagged tea, pretty decent.

Couple of tea bags of this from yssah about a million years ago that I’m finally getting to. I actually took all of my trades out of their bags last night and labeled them by swapper so I can get to them at random rather than go person by person. I think it’ll be faster this way since I won’t be stuck avoiding moving on to the next bag just because I don’t want to try one of the old bag’s teas immediately. Anyway.

There is just something in this tisane that is not sitting right with me. It’s not the mango. I don’t think it’s the passionfruit. I’m pretty sure it’s not even the hibiscus. But there is something that is just off that I do not like at all. Distinctly unpleasant cup of tea.

Thanks to yssah for this sample. This may not be a true picture of the tea because I accidentally made it in the mug that still had a bit of french vanilla matcha in it so it’s kinda contaminated, even though I poured it into the correct mug almost immediately. So yeah…not quite a caffeine-free herbal anymore.

That being said, this is really a very apple-y tea. More on the tart side than the sweet side of the apple family. The hibiscus…I think I steeped it for too long, because I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t set a timer and now it’s pretty strong and making this tea taste not very good to me. I think I taste something that must be the roasted chicory root and it’s not sitting too well either. Summary – yuck.

Thanks yssah for sending me these…months ago. I just got around to opening the package and I’ll be working through these. I still have one bag to use later since she sent me 3 and I generally use 2 in my big mug. It’s not quite 16 oz so the tea is pretty strong.

That said, it is VERY strawberry. There’s a little bit of a feel of too much hibiscus, but it’s not too bad. Thankfully I’m not getting any of the cinnamon that the ingredients say is in this because I really don’t like cinnamon on anything but toast (mixed with sugar) and a super sugary cinnamon bun (once in a blue moon…or less often, those happen once a year, don’t they).

For a bagged herbal tea, this is pretty decent. I don’t like it enough to order it because my standards on herbal teas have gotten ridiculously high since I found Steepster and branched out to online companies. Go go gadget Zentealife and Tealux mostly. Anyway, decent tea.

Blegh. Just blegh. I remember liking this tea. Clearly I have memory problems, because this is really truly terrible. I like other Wissotzky teas; I like their green tea; I like their regular mint tea. But this? No. No no no no no. It just tastes like drinking straight spearmint. Maybe it would be ok mixed with a nice green, but then I would have to be willing to risk ruining a good tea. I actively feel guilty now for sending this along to someone else (at least it was a giveaway and not a swap!). I don’t understand why I ever thought I liked it…

Luckily, my brother inexplicably likes this and I was able to pawn the rest of it off on him.

Not a bad tea. Not a good tea either. A terrible example of Earl Grey, more like English Breakfast.

Disgusting. Like drinking syrup. I was served this after a Passover seder- I had to discretely throw it down the sink.

Not bad for a bagged masala chai. I drink it mainly at Passover.

This tea brews up a lovely deep red color. It’s pleasantly, mildly sweet – I definitely wouldn’t add any sweetener – but it becomes cloying if paired with a sweet dessert. This is a very smooth tea with a caramel taste. It also resteeps nicely.

This tea is delightfully sour, I love lemons but anyone faint of heart will enjoy the addition of honey. I can’t stop at only one cup, it’s so good. I leave the bag in while I read, causing the last sip to explode in tart lemony goodness.

This is a tasty herb tea that I sweetened with sugar and honey. I think next time I’ll let it steep for a bit longer.

Have had a few cups of this, both hot, and iced, and I got to say I am enjoying it. It has a nice sweet strawberry taste with just a pinch of tartness. It doesn’t need sweetener, thought it does bring out the strawberry more. The only down side is that there is supposed to be cinnamon in here, but I can’t taste it. Darn. Still a great bagged herbal. Thanks Yssah for the tea!!!

First I want to say thanks to Yssah to all the tea bag samples.

On to this tea. Ok before I even took this tea out of it’s packet it had a super strong order of honey. I did two tea bags in my 8oz pot, poured it into my BFM and then filled the rest of it with hot water; so 16oz. I then only lightly sweeten it with a few drops of agave; since it already smelled so sweet.

Ok, I don’t know if I did something wrong, but this tea was badd. It tasted pretty much like fake clover honey. I don’t even like clover honey; I’m an orange blossom honey kinda girl. I couldn’t even finish my cup.

I am not going to rate this, since I only give bad ratings to teas that I have tried every which way to make good. So just a word of cation, if you don’t love honey stay away.

Good, sweet flavour. This is my new breakfast tea.

Bagged
Aroma when Dry: Sweet, fruity, syrupy raspberry, blackberry faint rosehip
After water is first poured: sweet, syrupy berry notes, jammy
At end of steep: sweet, syrupy
Tea liquor:
At end of steep: deep blood red
Staple? Type perhaps, looking into loose leaf next
Preferred time of day: afternoons
Taste:
At first?: berry cough syrup
As it cools?: gets sweeter, syrupy, thick
Additives used (milk, honey, sugar etc)? No
Lingers? Yes, cherry, raspberry, current and lemon, all cloying