Zhena's Gypsy Tea

I am starting to think that Zhena’s tea is just not for me. I’m not tasting any of the vanilla. There is a tiny hint of sweetness, but it’s mostly just a bland tea taste. I’m not impressed.

This is a nice Dragon Well. It has a very pleasant sweetness to it – it is not overpowering. It has a vegetative quality to it that is somewhat of a mix between grassy and lightly buttered, roasted veggies. A nice balance.

Yum! I drink this with a splash of cream and a teaspoon of honey, and it’s so lovely! Normally I’m not into coconut or chai because it’s always too heavy/bitter, but this was a gift from a friend and it’s delicious!

Yum! This is like dessert in a teacup. It is sweet – but my sweet tooth is not objecting!

The green tea is delicate in this blend – almost overpowered by the other flavors… but not quite. The vanilla is the strongest component, and it is sweet and creamy and brings out the delicious berry flavor quite nicely while softening that typical tart flavor that often accompanies a berry. There is just a hint of tartness in the finish.

The biggest problem with yummy teas like this is that they disappear from my cup too fast… this is almost all gone!

But I enjoyed it while it lasted.

This smells like a fruity wine prior to steep. Afterwards more Hibiscus and tarty to the nose. It’s Tarty by tolerable to the tongue. This was better than I thought it would be. I can see people who like fruity tarty herbals liking this iced as I think it gets more tarty and fruity the colder it gets but my hot cup was better hot than as it cooled…in my book.

A pleasant breakfast blend. At first I thought that there was Assam in this blend because my first few sips had a sort of malty quality to it, but, that has developed into more of a “baked” taste. Some fruit notes to it, as well as some lingering floral notes. Ends with a clean but not overwhelmingly astringent feel.

Nice.

I love the perky, crisp flavor of this tea, without being too overwhelmingly mint. A very pleasing balance of mint and green tea. Check out my previous review of this tea here:

http://www.teareviewblog.com/?p=10337

This is one of my favourite teas. It is a light tea, when not steeped to strong, and if it is steeped too strong, it is very good with a fruit juice as a sweetener (I prefer white grape).

De-Cupboarding this tea – thank you TeaEqualsBliss for giving me some to try – I found it a really enjoyable green tea.

Maybe I should take part in the Daily Sipdown – I certainly have enough tea overflowing from my cupboard at home! Unfortunately most of it is in quantities too large to consume in one day. Still, I’ve wittled my collection down to a few teas I’d like to use up soon.

A minute less make the tea taste much more like a green tea and while the mint is present it’s not the main focus anymore. I think I liked it better stronger – I’m not getting any of the sweet vanilla right now.

I seem to have developed a craving for mint-flavoured green teas (mint madness anyone?). This one is quite a vegetal-tasting green – it’s GREEN with capital letters – though I think this characteristic is at least partially enhanced by the mint.

TeaEqualsBliss was kind enough to lend me some of this from her prodigious tea stash.

It tastes to me like a more sophisticated version of Celestial Seasonings’ Candy Cane Lane. The peppermint is nice and refreshing, but it doesn’t cover up the flavours of the other components of the tea. I can actually taste and identify the vegetale green tea and the touch of sweet vanilla that were added to this blend. There’s a also a hint of spiciness – but just a hint. A chai this ain’t, but it gives the tea a bit of a zing and makes it taste like some sort of X-mas goody.

I feel rather guilty about drinking this in the middle of June. ;)

This tea tastes like most other green teas, the difference is probably the quality of leaves. They are much larger than the other teas I’ve tried and the taste is strong enough for a third cup (I actually use a mug though).

Apparently, this line of tea “offers one of the smallest carbon footprints of any agricultural method.” which is good if you do care for the environment. I don’t find this fact very important, but others may so might as well throw it out there. So I steeped the tea bag for the 3-4 minutes recommended and was rewarded with a brilliant taste of green tea.

While I was waiting for the 4 minutes to pass, I noticed something odd. The string that is supposed to hang out of cup, but it was way too short to pass over the top of the cup, so it just flopped over and stuck to the tea bag (which was pyramid-shaped). The tea leaves, as I said before, were a good size and definitely made a difference. The smell of the tea was similar to a slightly sour peach, the tea however was not sour. A taste of this and I realized that the peach and kiwi were only part of the smell; there was not enough of it to make an impact on the taste.

Overall, this was a nice flavorful tea.

I like the nice little acidic bite—almost lemony.

This tea smelled wonderful like fresh, fragrant peaches when I opened the little package. There was only one serving in one of those pyramid-shaped sachets – a big thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for sending it to me, BTW. :D

The taste is distinctly that of a dark oolong – bakey with a slightly woodsey note to it. Unfortunately I found that it tasted more than a little on the harsh side in the way you’d expect a lower-quality oolong to taste. The peach flavouring was nice – it wasn’t too artificial and meshed pretty well with the oolong like it belonged there, and I think made it less unpleasent.

Most of the harshness seemed to be gone when I resteeped it (@ 4 min) and enough of the peach flavour still lingered to make it interesting. So this tea is definitely good for more than one go.

All in all this strikes me as a pretty average tea – if the oolong base were better I probably would have rated it higher.

Yawwwnnnnn boy did this make for an unremarkable cup of tea. I had this at the hair salon, and was actually expecting to get served a cup of plain green tea. Kinda disappointed to taste the mint.

While I do like mint teas, something about this was just ‘meh’. Now I’ve had Moroccan mint tea, and I just can’t picture this blend with sugar in it as the description suggests. It’s not really much better than some of the shlock you can find at the grocery store. I do think Zhena’s has some good teas, but I am ambivalent about this one. Maybe it was oversteeped.

Had this at the hair shop this morning while I waited for the henna to be done sitting on my hair. It’s a perky lemon blend, with only a hint of a backdrop of jasmine, and a very pale green tea presence. I really liked it, despite generally being wary of lemon tea- and this is a result of the lemon coming from lemon myrtle, and not either artificial lemon flavoring, or plain ol’ citrus. The down side was that I accidentally spilled the last 1/3 of the cup on my lap and while I smell good now, I do look like I wet myself. Recommended if you tend to like citrus, but find most lemon teas taste too intense.

I got one of those Zhena’s Gypsy tea samplers from World Market, four flavors in a cute stackable metal tins, one lid. Yes, I am a sucker for packaging. But I also thought it was a good price to try four flavors of tea from a company I haven’t tried yet. It included Ambrosia Plum, Raspberry Earl Grey, Italian Chamomile, and this one. I’m done with the rest of them, so I am trying to finish this up to use the tin for other goodies!
It’s mint. I’m not a fan of hot mint drinks. The only mint I consume is breath mints. Well, and the mint leaves in a mojito, but I’m not really consuming the mint leaf, just its juices as it’s crushed in the glass for my drink. So in that sense, mojito is almost a mint tea, just cold with some added “enhancements”.
Still, I don’t like mint teas. It smelled okay, like Doublemint gum, but it tastes like mint tea to me. Even oversteeped, I didn’t taste a bitter note, and the mint aftertaste does linger on the tongue. It’s not unpleasant, I just don’t care for mint tea.
But I will say, Zhena’s has a great little container here.

Made directly in milk rather than water, it’s like a hug. So soothing.

Tastes of chamomile and a hint of hibiscus. But mostly chamomile. Maybe a faint mint in there. Licorice, but I think I usually get a little hint of licorice with any chamomile. Nice flavor, very smooth. Not totally outstanding though, but a nice wind down kind of tea for the end of the day.

Finishing up the last of my sample that Doulton so kindly sent me a while back. I do like this but I really have to be in the mood for it. So far, rooibos and I haven’t really gotten along. I think he is too sour and strongly scented, he thinks I just enjoy complaining and being picky. I’m still determined to find a rooibos blend where rooibos isn’t the primary flavor or scent. Any suggestions?

I actually like this tea which is slightly surprising because my experience with rooibos has been hit and miss. This is very smooth and has a pleasant flavor. It is nice to have bagged teas at night so if you aren’t up long enough to resteep, you don’t feel as guilty.

I actually had this last night before bed. I was a bit afraid that either the rooibos would be really woody or that the lemon would taste like hard candy. Luckily I was wrong on both accounts. I could taste the rooibos, but it tasted cleaner/smoother than I usually experience with rooibos. The lemon was very muted in the taste, mostly present just at the end of the sip. This tea was rather nice and I enjoyed trying it, courtesy once again of Doulton. I will have no problem finishing the rest of this sample.

Got this in a little Zhena’s sampler. A friend of mine RAVES about this tea, and I didn’t feel like fussing with loose again today, so I grabbed a sachet of this.

It really does smell delicious! The typical chai spices with a hint of toasted coconut come across. As for the taste? I think I may have made it too weak. It does have a nice flavor (the spices and coconut balancing out nicely), but it tastes a little watered down, so I may do a longer steep next time!