Suzi

I brewed the last of my 2 oz. bag this morning, and I was surprised because Anjou Pear-adise hasn’t made much of an impression on me, so I was sure I hadn’t drank it more than once or twice.

It isn’t amazing, but it isn’t terrible. Just a nice, light tea that verges on the generic and unmemorable.

I got a sample of this in Lupicia’s latest newsletter.

The scent as I prepared this tea was of a very buttery caramel. It seems very autumnal to me; I can’t help but think of colorful dry leaves (which we don’t really get in California) and smoky fires. It’s not that these are part of the brew, but back when I worked at Bath & Body Works one of the seasonal Halloween fragrances was “Creamy Caramel” – and the association of that smell with fall has become permanently affixed to my memory.

I ramble.

The tea is sweet. The rum note is quite strong, and grows more noticeable as the tea becomes cooler. Although I am not drinking this with milk, I can definitely see how the creaminess would complement this tea.

Very seasonal and appropriate tonight, when the first bit of winter chill has appeared.

Pleasant, but not a particularly outstanding tea. The raspberry is light and fragrant, more of an afterthought on the tongue than in the liquor itself.

Oops.
I oversteeped this one this morning – or maybe I just put too much tea in the pot – because it’s a brilliant red instead of the normal pinkish color.

Still tastes great though!

Interesting; I had no idea that Teavana changed the name of this tea! I finished the last of my stash of it off today, and I must admit that this tea improved over time. I don’t know if I simply got better at figuring out how much tea to use, or if my steeping times were more accurate.

It’s a very sweet, lemony blend, but if you get it just right it tastes like the zippy first breath of spring. Refreshing and relaxing and oh-so-wonderful!

Continuing my exploration of grocery store iced teas with another can of Arizona. This time it’s the classic Raspberry flavor.

The second ingredient after ‘black tea’ is high fructose corn syrup. “Raspberry flavor” doesn’t appear until the very end of the list. This must be why the drink feels so heavy and sticky on the tongue. It isn’t so much a refreshing drink as a cloying one. It’s rather concentrated, so I imagine it would taste a lot better with some ice cubes tossed in. But that would require getting ice, and then pouring the drink into a glass, and meh. Too much effort.

At least this tastes like a tea, albeit a not particularly great one. The “Half Iced Tea & Half Mango” drink I tried yesterday barely had any tea flavor at all, although it had plenty of mango juiciness which made it, overall, more pleasant than the Raspberry.

I can’t believe I used to drink these every few days one summer a few years back. How did I not gain twenty pounds from all the sugar?

Sometimes you just aren’t in a place where you can brew a soothing pot of quality tea – or it’s too freakin’ hot to be bothered with all that work. That’s when you have to turn to prepackaged tea to satisfy your craving for something delicious and refreshing. It’s been several years since I last picked up a can of Arizona’s highly sweetened tea, but I’m sure that the basic formula hasn’t changed: tea, sugar, and more sugar.

Yup, the second ingredient after ‘black tea’ is high fructose corn syrup. And boy, can you taste it. If I wanted to describe the mouthfeel of this drink, I’d definitely go with ‘sticky’. The tea flavor is barely there.

But hey, I can sure taste that mango!

As far as ‘tea’ goes, it’s a stretch to call this a tea. But if you’re just looking for a cold bottled drink under a dollar, it’s not bad at all. Tastier than soda pop, for sure!

I am struggling to find a balance when I steep this tea; too short and the flavor is weak, too long and the sharpness of lemon takes over the rest of the fruits. The fact that the tea is nearly colorless doesn’t help – it’s hard to gauge steepage when the water doesn’t turn yellow or green or amber!

Anyway, this is one of those teas that smells better than it tastes. Not that it tastes bad…it reminds me of those cans of fruit cocktail you can buy at the grocery store. A little zesty, a little sweet. Not terribly exciting, though.

This is a lovely fruity tea. Don’t ask me which fruits because I really can’t say for sure. Rather berry-like, I think. Maybe raspberries?

Although it is a black tea, it tastes green to me; can’t put my finger on why. Maybe my tongue is just out of whack since I haven’t been drinking a lot of tea lately. (Correction: I have not been reviewing tea lately, so my critical thinking in regard to flavor is off.)

Quite a lovely, sweet tea. Perfect in the evening, when I can’t have caffeine.

Drinking this is like drinking pure honey. But I’m not talking about that weak, almost watery honey that comes in the bear-shaped bottle. This is that richer, dark-colored honey that you buy at the farmer’s market. Mmmm. Since I’m a honey fiend – the sort that makes Winnie the Pooh look only mildly interested – this is a Very Good Thing.

It is very sweet, though. There’s cane sugar as well as honey in here, so I definitely get a bit of that sticky, unclean mouthfeel after drinking it. Not exactly refreshing, if you know what I mean. And I’m not sure that I can really taste the tea, although the lemons are barely there, keeping the honey from going into overdrive and into cloying mode. But it’s definitely not a balanced flavor.

I saw this at the grocery store and thought I’d give it a shot, since it was $2 and the glass bottle looked like it could be reused for a drinking glass. (Ah, remember when POM teas used to come in glass bottles that could be used for that purpose?)

I love mojitos, but this tea is one of the nastiest things I have ever tasted. It’s not like a mojito at all! When I first opened the bottle, I thought, “This stuff smells like marinara sauce. WTF?” But I still had hope that it would taste OK.

Not at all. The moment I tasted it I wanted to gag. It’s sickeningly sweet, like there’s waaaaay too much cane sugar in it, but also sour. The mint flavor, which I hoped would dominate, is almost missing – the only hint of it comes from the slightly minty aftertaste, but this too is dulled by the sticky-sweetness. It’s gross!

Sniffing it again, I’m wondering if “marinara sauce” isn’t quite right. It reminds me of something thinner…like the sauce in canned Spaghetti-Os. Either way, NOTHING about this drink makes me think of mojitos!!

This is a chunkier matcha than any other blend I’ve used. There’s always at least one largish lump (bigger than a pinhead, smaller than a pea) floating around in the tea, no matter how much I whisk away. I usually just end up fishing it out, but I’m curious why I can’t seem to break the darn thing.

The balance of strawberry and green tea is nice; the bitterness of the tea still comes through pleasantly, and the strawberry adds a sweet note that isn’t cloying or overwhelming.

The flavor is generally weaker than the Strawberry Matcha au Lait blend from Lupicia, which is how I usually get my Strawberry Matcha fix, and in color Frank’s tea is a much yellower shade.

It’s been a couple of years since Teavana discontinued Rose Marzipan Delight, and alas, the tea leaves are fading. It still tastes good, but it’s not nearly as glorious as it was a few years ago. The sweetness is slowly fading away, and there’s nothing I can do to arrest it.

When you smell the dry tea leaves, the spiciness of this tea doesn’t really make you think of pumpkin pie. It’s very ginger-y and clove-y, not so pumpkin-y. But that’s just the leaves. Surely the tea will taste different?

Eh. Meh. The cinnamon’s stronger in the tea, but it’s still a very spicy tea and not at all pumpkin-like. Oh, wait – I can sorta taste the pumpkin at the very end, almost in the aftertaste, but I’m not sure if it’s actually there or if it’s a phantom created in my mind. Hmmm.

It is a nice spiced tea. It’s warming and pleasant. But as a pumpkin-themed tea, it just isn’t working for me.

I never thought of honeydew melons as being particularly Californian, so I was surprised when I saw “Golden Honey Dew” as one of the exclusive, California-only blends at my local Lupicia store. But sure, why not? I’m Californian and like honeydew, maybe it is ‘our thing.’

I can’t remember if I’ve had ‘green rooibos’ in any other blends. The liquor still turns out a deep reddish-orange, like regular ‘red’ rooibos. I can’t taste much of a difference, either, but that could simply be because the melon flavor DOMINATES this tea. It’s the first thing you smell when you open the tin, and the scent of juicy honeydew floats over the teacup. It’s very sweet and refreshing – definitely worth checking out if you’re in the Bay Area and want to try this regional tea blend from Lupicia.

Pssst.
Just FYI.
Half and half didn’t work so well in this ‘matcha au lait’ mix.

I thought I’d try it out, just for fun, and it’s not a winning combination. The cream overwhelms the strawberry, and gives the green tea a cheesy quality. Not good!

A relatively mild, pleasant breakfast tea. I bought this at the Twinings store in the UK section of Epcot, because my boyfriend and I woke up one morning in our Disney hotel and realized that Mickey doesn’t provide teabags for his guests. How lame is that? The hotel had a hot water heater and plenty of coffee, but not a single tea offering!

Anyway. So this is a great morning tea when you don’t want the forcefulness of English Breakfast or Earl Grey, but still want a properly ‘English’ sort of tea. Tastes very good with milk and sugar. I had the bagged version and it was lovely; I bet the loose tea is even better.

I wish I still had some of Lupicia’s regular Earl Grey blend, so I could compare the two teas. Off the top of my head (tip of my tongue?) I can’t say for sure what the difference is. I think Earl Grey had a stronger bergamot flavor than the Breakfast blend does but that is based on a fuzzy memory.

This is a gentle, more sedated Earl Grey. The bergamot is definitely there, but it’s very balanced with the black tea. Just the sort of thing you want in the morning, when you are just waking up.

I just don’t get candy apple from this blend. Specifically, the apple is lacking. I can taste something sweet, like maple or caramel. It’s a heavy, sticky sort of sugar layered over black tea. But never apple. I wonder if milk would enhance the flavor and bring out the latent fruitiness?

I received this blend in teabags (Stash also sells it loose, I believe) and what can I say? It’s a pretty standard jasmine tea. Tastes like flowers.

It’s worth noting that I was able two great tasting steeps from the teabag, and a third mediocre one. I rarely seem able to get more than one decent tasting brew from a single bag, so three seemed pretty neat.

I’m not big on spicy, but my boyfriend bought this for me for Valentine’s Day (aaaaaaaw, how sweet) so I felt obliged to drink up.
I’m not a big rooibos fan either, although I tolerate it when I can’t have caffeine.

It’s kinda neat looking at the dry leaves and seeing all the spices mixed in, especially the big pods that I think are cocoa kernels.

So this blend is pretty much what it promises to be – a spicy hot chocolate-like drink. Unfortunately that rooibos flavor is there, too, so for me it doesn’t work as an actual hot chocolate substitute. Also, ginger dominates the spice flavors. Definitely not a flavor combination for me.

Interesting.

I don’t drink many savory teas; I tend to like my tea sweet enough to rot your teeth out and fruity like Carmen Miranda’s head gear. But I made it a goal to try all of Lupicia’s matcha latte blends, and this is the fifth and final flavor.

It’s a nice blend. There’s a nice toasted element thanks to the soybeans, similar to genmaicha. Roasted soy beans and powdered green tea. It’s good mixed into hot water, but mixed with milk it’s even better. The creaminess of the milk makes roasted flavor even more prominent.

I really didn’t think I would care much for this blend, but it’s pretty nice. I’d buy it again.

This is probably my favorite holiday tea. (I’ve never cared for ‘spicy’ cinnamon or chai teas, so that tends to eliminate about three quarters of the holiday blends out there.)

The word that comes to mind as I drink this is creamy. Apricot flavor can go one of two ways: it can either be sharp and tangy, almost citrus-like in its intensity, or it can be very soft and mellow. This apricot definitely falls into the latter category. I’m guessing its the influence of the white chocolate, which I don’t really taste otherwise. I get the tiniest hint of vanilla, too.