Dru Bramlett

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Nice aroma but… weak. weak. weak tea.

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I honestly was expecting more vanilla after reveling in the amount of blueberry in the blueberry green tea. I just got a light black tea with a hint of it. Sadsies.

Chalk me up for the deliciousness of the blueberry in this. Can’t really taste the tea, but oh well.

Nothing too special. The teabag has a very enticing honey smell. When brewing it goes from a light yellow to a deep amber very quickly and it’s got an overwhelming lemon taste as well. I still have mixed feelings about it.

Enjoyable bottled tea. No sweetener and the tea has a wonderfully fruity finish. The bottle I got was a little too tannic, but that might just have been a refrigeration problem.

I picked up a bottle at whole foods, I was a little skeptical at first because I’ve always been terrible at picking out goods. Much to my surprise, it’s got a great oolong taste that’s full-brewed (Dru-speak for “more tannic than advisable”) but I really enjoyed it cold.

The spice off of the tea bag would lead you to assume that it’s a very dark and powerful Chai. It was a little disappointing (like how at the zoo, you expect a lion in a lion’s den but are instead left with a kitten in a wig), but it’s got enough flavor and spice to be a mildly enjoyable black tea.

Deliciously sly this one is. It parades itself like any other taiwanese tea, unassuming, docile. But don’t let it fool you.

This is one of the best teas that they carry in the store. A few leaves are all you really need to start since they are so full. The flavor profiling on these have got to be a cross somewhere between butter, pumpkin, spice, and a medium body oolong. It also has a yellow gold brew that looks beautiful after a 5 minute brew. Additionally, the second brew is my favorite, because that’s where the leaves begin to open and really let out the pumpkin notes.

Drinking this tea is akin to falling in love.
At first, you notice the young white and green tea leaves peppered with petals. You blush. Then you brew the tea. The tea leaves sink to the bottom and the petal fragments to the top. It’s cute, but so gently delicate as it swirls around the cup; it bathes your senses with ginger notes of apricot and honey, there is a faint passion fruit, but it isn’t tart with you.

The first sip is heaven in a cup. It’s like satin, gliding over your tongue, really letting the quality of the brew saturate you. The tea surprises you: It’s got a subtle butteriness to it, which is very unique. It’s not a shy tea, it’s just polite. The flavor reminds me of Snow Dragon White tea — a mild marriage of vegetal and herbaceous, but lightly sweet.

Definitely worthy of it’s name :)

If Lychee Black tea were a woman, she’d be intelligent and highly opinionated, gorgeous with a heart of gold…. and she’d have an afro. Of this, I am quite certain.

If you’re the type to expect bland flavors and a lot of fragrance, this is not the tea for you. The label says “Lychee Black Tea”, but what Bird Pick really means is (now this is where you envision Ms. Foxy Brown from Austin Powers) “THIS IS LYCHEE…black tea” *snap snap.

It’s a self-righteous tea that screams sweet fresh lychee without a hint of artificial flavoring. It’s got a heavy body, and the lychee is definitely the most prominent flavo r–jumping out with its unexpected sweetness. It’s also wonderful with creme, since it doesn’t need any extra sweeteners.

This tea is so good… it makes me giggle.

A lot of these teas in this set smell wonderful (pronounced: VAN-da-FOOL). But this made me a little sad, since the papaya didn’t transfer over into the tea and it’s very light to begin with. It felt like I was using a quater-sized teabag; the flavor just “vasn’t zehr”.

Perhaps another tea will do me in?

I liked this slightly less than the Mad Party Tea blend solely because it brews so light. Again, the fragrance is beautiful, perfect balance of mango and tea (Don’t you just hate it when there’s more than the other in a two-ingredient blend?). However, upon brewing it was much more “tea” than “mango”. I honestly felt like I had been handed the flavor profiling for a scented Pi Loh Chun. Also a tad bit drying on the finish, but very good for a bagged tea.

Excuse me, but please forgive the following tizzy:
The time has come, my little friends, to talk of other things
Of peach and leaves and loose leaf tea, of camellia and kings
And why the tea is boiling hot, and whether stems are twigs
Calloo, Callay, come run away
With the camellia and kings.

This is by far one of the better teas in the set. It’s got the wonderful fruity aroma of peaches and flowers with a base of black tea very similar to a Ceylon. The tea’s body is very light, and citrus flavors leave a crisp feeling on the tongue without leaving your tongue high-and-dry. It goes down relatively smooth (I really think it’s the quality of the water that effects this tea more than anything). Other than it having the tendency to get bitter rather quickly, it’s an excellent bagged tea and does not disappoint

You’ve got exactly 75 cents. You want a coke.
You put the change in the vending machine and you quietly wipe the sweat from your brow and exhale a breath of relief. Your coke is coming, you can hear the little mechanisms going inside the machine and its eventual tumble down the chute. You gasp.

It’s a pepsi.

Maybe I was a tad overexcited upon brewing this, but I was slightly let down. It just didn’t shine as brightly as the other teas in the tea sampler set. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an excellent tea! (Please don’t hurt me for saying so). It tastes just like a jolly rancher.. just like the description says, and no I’m not talking about that sickly syrup sweet taste (although I do love a good hard candy), but a real, refreshing and freshly sliced watermelon. It brews a hello-kitty pink color and smells divine.

However, I do think that there are other teas from Sanctuary T that sort of leave this one in the dust.

Generally, I’m not a big fan of flowery teas. I, in fact, despise them the same way any classy lady will turn her nose up at overly strong body sprays and glittery mascara. It’s over the top, it’s embarrassing, and just leaves everyone feeling like you’re a cheap tart.

This, however, is the Audrey Hepburn of teas. It’s elegant and crisp. The tea leaves themselves have the faint aroma of jasmine that is only enhanced by the brewing process. The fragrance wafts gently through the air to meet your olfactory senses upon sipping. It first opens with peach and honeysuckle notes and then morphs into a fresh blend of lighter green tea notes.

The liqueur is a rich gold (on the website it said amber…?) and is utterly smooth on the midsection of the tongue. It leaves no drying sensation and is quite a filling experience in itself.

The leaves retain their flavor for about 3 brews, while the fragrance has a funny way of staying on your cup. Honest to say, even that didn’t bother me in the slightest.

Hello Steepsterites.

Look at your tea, now back to mine, now back at your tea, now back to mine. Sadly, it isn’t mine, but if you stopped purchasing tea bags and switched to Sanctuary T’s Carnival blend, it could smell and taste like mine.

Sorry for that. I HAD to do it. I recently purchased a discounted sampler tea set from Sanctuary T via their July quizzes, and this was the first tea that I decided to brew. Now, let me tell you: The aroma is to DIE for. It’s buttery, caramel, and smooth with a hint of pepper. It’s a medium body black tea that is so perfectly blended, I completely forgot I was drinking anything since it goes down divinely smooth.

Imagine eating the most wonderful slightly salted popcorn without your fingers getting all greasy. Now imagine you can drink that happiness. That is this tea.

My only gripe is that the tea doesn’t do too well on consecutive brews. It smells and tastes great but it’s moderately weaker. Sadies. Wonderful tea nonetheless.

The lack of oolong taste and the artificial smell of the tea leads me only to this:

Cherry flavored cough syrup anyone?

You might have as well seen this tea in my baby bottle as a infant, it’s been around that long.

This tea is by far the most delicious pre-bottled tea you can get your hands on. The fragrance is strong and the taste is full, but isn’t drying. It goes down very smooth. The bottle just isn’t big enough!

Rose Hips, you say? Silly person, roses don’t bear fruit. Why yes, they do and boy is it tart!

If you don’t know already, this tea is from the fruit of the rose bush and these little berries have loads of vitamins (A, C, B) essential fatty acids, and antioxidants. They also look very pretty in the wild.

This tea takes a while to steep if you’re not boiling it (again, impatience will be the death of me) and the brew color is a light golden yellow. It’s got a tarty taste that is slightly watered down (think Tang with a few drops of lemon juice and a tad too much water and you’ve got it). It opens rather suddenly on the palate and has a drying effect on the tongue in the final few notes.

Personally, I prefer to brew it with hibiscus and really get into the fruit punch realm, but that just might be me.

This tea is a little meh, there is a lot of Keemun in the blend mixed with Ceylon. It also has a sharp note on the palate that leaves the mouth high and dry. It’s upside is that it brews dark like a true breakfast tea.

ITS GOLD! Liquid gold I tell you!

This has got to be some of the purest Chrysanthemum on the market in LA, it’s organically grown and the tea is the whole flower; not just the petals. The flavor is full and surprisingly sweet and goes down smooth without drying the palate. My secret is to boil the heck out of it for a few mintes, Chinese style (they boil all herbs from what I’ve been told).

So, a strong black tea and a lemon tea walk into a bar. They go to a hotel, have a great night and bask in each other’s glory. The lemon tea decides he wants to marry the black tea even though everyone knows that bergamot and black tea are actually soulmates. They have a baby together. However, they didn’t know that they were in fact, brother and sister. This tea is that mutated baby.

“It can’t be that bad” you say. Oh, but it is!

It’s got a strong lemon taste; and no, i don’t mean bergamot. This is black tea if it was garnished with a 10-day-old lemon with a zester. The brew is so pathetically bland, underbodied and unbalanced that I might have to say that the great Disney powers that be blended this with the intention of pissing people off.

Bleh. Considering a toss out to the bin.