cteresa Send Message

This not strictly green tea. It is honeybush (normal I guess. I do not know if there is such a thing as green honeybush) with green rooibos and supposedly some mint flavouring. I say supposedly because I did not notice it – maybe my package is too old and mint too volatile, or maybe I brew it too long (it´s rooibos. It stays there till I am ready to drink it).

To me it tastes mostly like plain green rooibos – the first rooibos I ever had was green rooibos and I am quite partial. It is a totally different taste (and infusion colour) than normal red rooibos. Its taste is more herbal, “greener”, a bit more like green tea or linden or camomile or a mix of all of those. Not bitter at all. I like this a lot and might rebuy – though I am looking as well for good quality plain green rooibos as well, and good quality plain honeybush.

This Marco Rouge is lovely and nice – it is rooibos (duh) and upfront about being rooibos. If you hate or just dislike plain rooibos this one might not be a rooibos for you.

The tea smells heavenly on the package, brewed up its smell seems far less complex – but then again, it is rooibos, it brew very hot and long. But then again Berry Berry Nice (by Yumchaa, a small London tea company) which is my favorite rooibos ever and to which I can not help comparing this with, is also brewed very hot and long and seems more intense and complex when drinking. A lot more.

After brewed Marco Rouge tastes of plain rooibos (stating the obvious, sorry. But a good rooibos) and strawberry and vanilla. Nice. Not bad, but for this sort of thing, my beloved Berry Berry Nice is much better and deeper. IMHO and all that.

I bought a small ammount to test at home. And I do like it better if I brew it myself, on my small teapot and just so. Better.

This tea smells incredible in every stage. The tea leaves with a thousand fruity smell, then after brewed, like strawberry jam and green apples and maybe caramel. First taste is for me strawberry with green Granny Smith apples coming later at the back of the mouth. Nobody else seems to have tasted apples, never mind green apples, so my brain might be just wrongly assigning a particularsmell to a very complex blend of flavours.

Must retest, less brewing time I think and maybe try milk. Lovely indeed, though it did not knock my socks off as much as expected.

According to the ingredients, it is black assam tea with all “natural” flavouring of honey, cocoa and vanilla. A fair description apart maybe from the naturalness of the honey flavouring. It smells very strongly of honey before brewed, true, but it reminds me not of how true honey smells and taste but of “honey” lipbalms (particularly The Body Shop´s defunct honey lipbalm) and other “honey” products. After brewed it thankfully tones down a bit, the honey is still uppermost, but there is a nice aftertaste for the cocoa and vanilla. I like it a lot for that aftertaste, I wish the honey was not so intense, and dislike the assam tea base underneath, which seems a bit tanninic and bitter to me. In all I did not hate it, but both the flavouring and tea are a bit too strong for me.

This is probably too old or something – though it shouldn´t and the tea bags are sealed hermetically in a nice sealed packaging. But while it smells very nice (caramel though not really dulce de leche and red fruits) it tastes like nothing. Trying to rescue it thought to add milk. Bad bad idea, by some weird chemistry it now tastes almost dusty, slightly smoky but in a cigarette way, not a pine lapsang souchong.

Considering tossing this.

well, this is the scraping of the barrel, the last lost little broken dusty bits at the end of the tin. So this tasting might not be too fair, because of that and because the tin was bought a couple years ago.

It is lovely. I think by now the caramel overtone is topmost note, though I can also catch some vanilla and some chocolate. It tastes almost almondy to me as well.

Very very good, though I will probably take a break from it right now and buy instead maybe Thé sur le Nil. In Autumn I will reconsider buying – maybe this is a season prejudice of mine, but Wedding Imperial is in my mind, a very winter-ish type of tea.

It´s mostly a grapefruit flavoured (not that grapefruit is mentioned on tea description, but really it´s grapefruit) rooibos. I can detect the orange as well, a bit overpowered by the grapefruit, but none of the other flavours. Not bad, but not anything to write home about (or rebuy).

I was expecting to lurve Marco Polo. I didn´t – very nice and our relationship might develop and grow, but no love at first sip. I was expecting to not particularly like Thé sur le Nil, it has lemongrass(? erva príncipe?), which I do not like. And it´s not subtle about that lemongrass, it is the main taste note to me, though there are also lemons and I thought (without any foundations since nobody mentions it) a chamomile-y sort of flavour.

But I did love this Thé sur le Nil, and left me with a very nice inner glow that nice teas leave you with. I still do not like citronella, but here it works, even for me. Really lovely and I am definetely looking to buy.

I had this with a slice of lemon meringue pie, and the combination is highly recommended.

This will probably make a fabulous iced tea.

I was expecting somebody taller, I think. More intense maybe. It was lovely the strawberry smelt natural and delicious but it felt a little bit short of the OMG-ness I expected.

Still I mean to buy some to brew at home and experiment with dosage. And yes, it is lovely, even if it did not awed me.

I am really really liking this. The twinings mixed teabag box now made me discover two of my favorite, staple teas (fyi, the other being lady grey).

This is a pretty “different” kind of black tea. It is supposedly mixed with green and oolong, and it does show something of that. It is lovely.