magpie

This tea looks great and smells great – scrumptious blueberry aroma! It has a mellow, sweet, creamy flavor that curbs my cravings for sugar and calorie packed desserts! It is not at all sour or harsh like many berry teas. The fusion of ripe blueberry, creamy yogurt, and earthy rooibos is easy to love. It’s become one of my go-to drinks in the evening.

I like this best hot: when it cools down, the added flavors quiet down and the balance tips more heavily towards the rooibos base.

I wouldn’t have picked this one for myself, but I brewed up the sample bag one evening after a long day of traveling. Now, I wouldn’t have picked this because I’m not usually a fan of chamomile, unless it’s used cleverly within a blend.

In Savasana tea, the main star is definitely the chamomile. I like lemon balm and verbena – I even have the prior growing in my yard for steeping up in teas. Unfortunately, here I just get a cooling, medicinal-sweet herbal cough drop/Ricola sort of vibe backing up the chamomile. I can totally get how this would be soothing, but I only drank about half the cup. Once it cooled down it was too much for me.

This tea is just about perfect as far as I’m concerned! This is one of several Teavivre teas that I NEVER want to be without.

The dry leaves are beautiful. The liquor is deceptively pale for a beverage that packs so much flavor! It smells and tastes wonderful, and has a pleasingly buttery mouthfeel. Smooth and slightly sweet, with facets of chestnut and toasted cereal and a subtly grassy, vegetal side. It’s a friendly tea – comforting and uplifting – and holds up well to a second steep to boot.

This tea is a perfect 10/10 in my books! Seriously, you guys. As someone who could eat condensed milk straight out of the can with a spoon, or subsist on nothing but tres leches cake all day, this tea is a godsend. It is a boldly flavored, distinctive tea, so it’s not necessarily the tea I would pick if I had to have one “desert island” tea for the rest of my life, but if somebody told me I could never have baked desserts or candy again, I would use this tea to fill the void!

The dry leaf smell is striking. The tightly rolled, vivid green pellets have a rich sweet cream sort of smell. The buttery fragrance lets you know you’re in for a treat! The first four infusions have a luscious creaminess to them. If I steep it past the point of milky perfection, its flavor profile reminds me a lot of Teavivre’s Tie Guan Yin.

The aroma and flavor calls to mind milky candy, condensed milk, and caramel. A subtle creamy floral note perfectly marries the condensed milk flavors with the smooth, vegetal, green oolong ones just beneath them. Some people initially balk at the notion of a milky caramel candy flavor pressed up against green tea, but the flavors here are so artfully balanced that everyone I’ve offered this tea to has been really impressed. It’s delicious and deeply satisfying, but it also seems so… delicate. It’s not the clumsy slap of a sticky, oily caramel cake that just popped out of a vending machine, it’s the little kiss of a petite treat from a chic pâtisserie.

One of the best things about this tea is its full, creamy mouthfeel. A lot of oolongs have that subtly “buttery”, heavy mouthfeel, but this one is the densest feeling I’ve tried yet! Even without sugar, it’s a subtly sweet treat, but the addition of a little bit of sweetener takes it to new heights of decadence in a tea cup.

Considering how many times I can infuse this tea and still get fantastic flavor out of it, it is a wonderful bargain too. I hope I can keep my cabinets stocked with this for life!

This is my first Dragonwell tea, so I don’t have much to compare it to besides other green teas! It had a vegetable-like green flavor smoothed over with a unique buttery, roasted nut sort of feel. I liked the roasty smooth flavor. I steeped it three times, but I probably should have stopped at two for this one. The third steep lost a lot of depth, including much of the nuttiness (my favorite thing about it) and gained a bit in the astringency department.

Overall, this tea didn’t blow me away but it intrigued me. I won’t be seeking out more of Adagio’s Dragonwell but I will definitely want to try more of this type of tea from other brands to see some more variations on the theme.

Thanks teaequalsbliss for the sample!

Yum! I am not usually a fan of black teas, but this tea is something else! Bold and round in flavor, yet very mellow at the same time. It’s one of those teas that’s easy to gulp down, but you’ll miss out on the subtleties if you do.

This tea is rich and malty with bready tones, and a very pleasing aftertaste. I’d like to say it calls to mind caramel and cocoa, but that’s not necessarily a very accurate descriptor. It has the gentle, comfortable characteristics of caramel and cocoa without being very sweet about it. Even though it’s not exactly a flavor descriptor, I’d like to say that this tea makes me feel cozy. It’s yummy alone or paired with desserts! Resteeps well at least three times, and it tastes great even if I forget about it and steep it a bit too long. It never gets overly aggressive or tannic! Excellent! Now that I’m out of my sample, I find myself remembering it fondly and craving more.

There’s nothing wrong with these jasmine pearls, but there’s nothing here to WOW me either. It’s not as intensely heady and floral as the unlabeled jasmine pearls I have from the local Asian market, and it’s not as buttery and nuanced as the jasmine pearls I just tried from Teavivre. However, it’s still good enough to be the flowery fix I needed tonight!

A gentle, mellow jasmine aroma jazzes up an easy-drinking, vegetal green tea. There’s no mistaking this for anything other than a jasmine pearl tea, but the flavor has a delicate, restrained quality. No intoxicating bouquet here, just a delicate sweep of flowery flavor over a balanced green base. There’s no bitterness, sharpness, fishiness… nothing I could pin down as “bad” in any way, but honestly, this tea feels a little bit flat and 2-D to me. There’s very little in the way of a lingering aftertaste. I would not recommend anyone to seek it out above other jasmine pearls, but if somebody handed me another cuppa I’d drink it cheerfully.

Thank you teaequalsbliss for the sample. :)

Thank you teaequalsbliss for the sample! When I saw this tea I immediately wanted to try it… Christmas in July? ;) Haha. Cough. Anyway… this tea excited me when I saw it, with the slivered almonds and what I thought was saffron, but later realized was just safflower. It’s a pretty blend and sounds like it would be right up my alley.

The flavor is pretty good too, spicy but soft and comforting. It definitely makes me feel nostalgic for the winter holiday season. Warm cinnamon flavor tinted with a baked, roasty, nutty almond tone jazz up a fairly dry-tasting black tea base. The desserty, cookie like flavoring is distinct but not overly sweet. If anything I would have turned up the volume on the almond – I’m crazy for almonds! I will happily drink the rest of my sample but I won’t go hunt down more of it. The black tea tastes pretty bitter up-front, which keeps this from being a great tea for me.

Thank you so much to Angel for the sample of this tea! I am really impressed by the generosity and social networking/tech savvy of Teavivre. But I won’t let that color my rating and review too much – my first exposure to them was some tea I purchased myself. :)

Anyway – Tie Guan Yin. A quintessential oolong! This example is just lovely, with a balanced flavor and nuanced character. I drank this all day, steeped and re-steeped all kinds of ways, to get a better understanding of it. This tea holds up exceptionally well to multiple steeps, making it a great value.

Early steeps at low temperatures yield a pale celadon-spring green liquor with a dainty aroma, best taken by itself, with no additives or food on the side to muddy the flavor! I got a sweet, floral impression – echoes of orchid and jasmine-like flavors – laid over a pleasantly vegetal green taste that has a pleasantly full-bodied mouthfeel.

Subsequent steeps at higher temperatures and longer brew-times result in a golden colored liquid and a more robust taste. Though the first steeps I prefer to take alone, the next few pair well with a variety of foods, making this a great choice for a tea taken before/during/after a meal or snack. The floral sweetness mostly fades out, and the vegetal green notes, accented with a touch of that cool “mineral” flavor, deepen. The mouthfeel and aftertaste are exactly what I want out of an oolong: it feels somehow round and buttery-smooth. I think this is a great choice if you’d like a green oolong in your cupboard.

I went through the better part of a pound of this stuff! What can I say, I’m often powerless to resist the siren call of a good deal on Amazon. Ahem. Anyway, I was happy to drink this tea up. I drank so much of this last winter and fall – because it’s a rooibos blend, it’s a great go-to drink on a chilly night. Even though it’s very warm and summery now, I’m sipping on one of my last cups – I’m down to just a few more servings. I often drink this tea straight, though now and again I will add a splash of creamer (preferably almond-coconut milk) and/or brown sugar.

Drunk by itself, Fireside Chai is really autumnal, making me think more of mulling spices than an Indian market. The cinnamon and clove pop out first on the palate, along with a suprisingly prominent orange note! The orange peel plays well with the smooth, slightly sweet rooibos holding the tea together. Ginger and cardamom are just present enough to keep this thing tasting like my notion of a masala chai, but the real kick here is provided by black pepper. The longer you steep, the more intense all the flavors get, but especially the pepper! Honestly I prefer my chai to be heavier on the cardamom, so I won’t be replenishing my huge stock of this tea once I sip the last of this. However, this is a very good bet if you want a caffeine-free or rooibos-centered chai and would appreciate an orange-fruity and spicy black pepper bent!

I bought tea advertised as “Osmanthus Oolong” by Tao of Tea, but the leaves I got are definitely a green oolong, not like the picture of the more deeply oxidized leaves! Mine are tightly rolled green leaves sprinkled with dainty little osmanthus flowers! I drink this pretty often since I got a big sack of it. I’m pretty relaxed about steeping times and temperature – I give the leaves a quick rinse to open them up, but then I use water that’s been boiled and has cooled off for a bit.

The first infusion, predictably, packs the most osmanthus flavor. The osmanthus combines with the oolong to create a bright apcricot inflected brew, with a sweet, fruity sparkling citrus quality and a lightly green floral tone. The apricot flavor reminds me more of dried than fresh apricot. It has a slightly astringent, sort of sour aftertaste, but that’s not necessarily a strike against it, as it seems in keeping with the fruity osmanthus flavor.

Subsequent infusions lose a lot of that sparkly quality and steer closer to the smoother, rounder flavor profile of a typical green oolong, but with a lingering fruity-floral finish. I usually get a good three or four infusions out of this tea before I move on! I like this tea in the mornings because of its refreshing, sunny flavor.

I have plenty of dried mint at home, but if I’m at work and manage to overeat, or eat something that doesn’t agree with me, I can easily find a bag of Mint Medley, and then I’m on my way to relief. There’s nothing fancy frou about a straight-up mint blend like this one, but does there need to be? This is more spearmint than peppermint, but both are present in this cooling cup. The only twist in Mint Medley is a light hit of that tart, quintessential ‘sour red herbal tea’ flavor from the rosehip and hibiscus – but it’s very slight, and if you’d rather not experience any of that in your mint tea – that tart flavor virtually disappears under the power of mint if you steep it for a bit longer.

This tulsi blend is a total staple in my tea cabinet, and at the prices available online, a total steal. You have no excuse not to have a bag full of tulsi in your kitchen! Right now I am sipping on tulsi I steeped with some lemon balm from the garden, and a little squeeze of extra lemon! I usually mix in some other things with my tulsi, because it is kind of plain by itself, and flavor lends itself exceptionally well to blends. You can drink it by itself, though – it has a smooth, mellow herbal character with notes akin to mint, clove, maybe a hint of pepper with most of the bite taken out.

The leaves and bits are fairly finely cut, but my usual tea strainers handle it just fine. If I’m drinking it straight, I usually use a heaping teaspoon per 8 oz. and steep for up five minutes. If I leave it in longer (some say the longer you steep the more you’ll get out of it), a bit of dull bitterness starts to come through.

I usually try to rate teas based on the quality of their flavor without any added mix-ins, but I have to give this herb extra points because of its fabulous medicinal/tonic properties. Tulsi promotes an overall sense of wellbeing, particularly mentally. It’s soothing and balancing. Great in times of stress, or for every day.

They only teas that my current workplace provides are Bigelow brand, so I’ve been revisiting the ones I’m familiar with and trying a couple new ones. Orange and Spice sounds like something I’d like, but the flavor if this is frankly, well… dreadful.

It smells odd. A bit like a craft store in October. Tastes spicy, but the orange fruitiness comes off as strangely medicinal. Now that I’m looking at the ingredients list again, I think I can safely say that I should probably stay away from any teas with chicory in them, and it’s probably unfair of me to go on here and rate any chicory tea. I’m hard pressed to describe the flavor of chicory because I hate it so much.

Earl Grey is a classic – for years it was my favorite type of black tea. :) The refined but uplifting citrus aroma of bergamot really plays beautifully with black tea.

In my opinion Bigelow makes one of the most dependable bagged Earl Greys. Their version is not my favorite Earl Grey in the world, but it’s everywhere and it’s often the best offering available when you’re out and about, in some tiny store or a hotel. Nothing revolutionary here, but the bergamot vs. black tea balance is just right. The tea is not too harsh, the bergamot is not too soapy. It’s just yummy, slightly floral, dandyish (bergamot just makes me think of Victorian gentlemen, haha) lemony sweet bergamot blended into smooth black tea. Easy to drink, and makes me feel a bit nostalgic. I may be biased, because I had this tea pretty often when I was a child.

For once the name of a product tells you everything you need to know. This is incredibly sour, incredibly strong lime. It has a dry, slightly bitter aftertaste. I find it impossible to drink on its own! I don’t mind some sourness – I’ll squeeze in some lemon or lime to unsweetened tea, and I can drink most hibiscus teas without sugar – but this super lime is on another level.

I could imagine this would be a very convenient tea for fans of lemon or lime flavors, as there is no need to cut open a fresh fruit. With some added honey, sugar, or other sweetener, this would be quite therapeutic hot, and very refreshing iced. However, I can’t help but give this a pretty mediocre rating, because it fails as a stand-alone beverage.

Black Raven tea… conjures up a moody, mysterious sort of image, doesn’t it? This tea delivers on its promise, but truth be told, lighter, more delicate teas are more my speed. This tea is dark, dark, dark!

It’s full-bodied and deep yet brisk. A two minute steep is plenty. It doesn’t get too bitter or astringent unless I forget about it and let it steep over five minutes. The deep tones of robust black tea are dyed even darker with the indigo purple blackcurrant flavor, which is added at pitch perfect levels – prominent, but restrained enough to leave the character of the tea leaves in the spotlight.

Now, my boyfriend thinks this smells a bit like cat pee, especially the leaves before they are steeped – but he says the same thing about almost every other blackcurrant flavored or fragranced thing. I can overlook that, having been exposed to blackcurrant flavor in teas and and jams since childhood.

Eastern Shore Tea company suggests that you steep this with a whole cinnamon stick and sweeten with brown sugar, and in fact, I can’t think of a better way to drink this tea. The warm and woody spice of good, fresh cinnamon adds extra depth and the richness of brown sugar takes it over the top. Perfect for a dark, stormy night… if you work nights and don’t plan on sleeping, that is. Maybe it’s the placebo effect of the intense flavor, but this seems to pack enough of a caffeine wallop that I prefer drinking it when I need a serious energy boost!

Chocolate Hazelnut… fabulous flavor combination. Who doesn’t love some Nutella? But this isn’t nutella… it’s decaf black tea. Hmmm. A lot of chocolate teas suffer from a weak flavor or an identity crisis.

The good news is that tea does not skimp on the flavor. The sweet hazelnut-vanilla-chocolate flavors impart a surprisingly creamy impression to the underlying black tea all by themselves, but this cup just begs for a splash of some milk or alternative creamer. The initial impression is intriguing, but then the lingering flavor feels more than a little artificial, like I liberally poured some flavored coffee creamer into my cup of black tea. I can imagine people who love flavored coffees lapping this one up with enthusiasm, but to me this just tastes a bit… trashy. Like the tea equivalent of junk food.

Organic Lemon Ginger Green tea by Stash is a cheap and convenient fix for your on-the-go ginger tea needs. Lemongrass is here to add lemony cheer, and there’s just enough green tea in this blend to soften the edges considerably. The ginger feels energizing with the bright lemony notes and smooth, subtle green tea finish, and then warm and soothing in the aftertaste – no overwhelming ginger punch to the face here. I’m surprised by some of the strongly negative reviews – there’s nothing revolutionary here, but a lemon ginger tea is a classic staple in my book, and this one works!

I love chai. I love chocolate. So why is this tea such a disaster? This does not have the flavor profile of any chai I’m familiar with, and it does not taste very chocolatey to me either. It’s not that I don’t like cacao nibs, which have a unique, raw, almost wine-like quality – in fact, I buy cacao nibs in bulk because of how often I use them.

The cacao and chai overtones are there, but the spices are skewed towards an odd curry-like savory direction. Vague, sickly sweetness and chicory root overpower a thin black tea component, and the whole thing has an oddly musty, dirty sock/fish vibe. There is no sweetener or creamer that can redeem this. This tea has been on the shelves for a while, so somebody is clearly buying it and enjoying it. I just tell myself that I got some crazy dud, because it disturbs me to imagine that somebody out there would have been depraved enough to enjoy the cup that I poured down the drain.

I love the balance, stress relief, and general sense of well being I get when I drink tulsi. While tulsi’s smooth minty-clovey herbal flavor is vert agreeable by itself, it’s not flat-out delicious. However, it lends itself exceptionally well to blending with other herbs or teas.

While at home I prefer to mix up my own tulsi blends, I actually bought a bunch of this particular “signature blend” to have some tulsi on hand when I’m over at my boyfriend’s place. I’m happy with my choice. He likes this tisane too, though to him it just tastes like tea. :)

The tulsi is still at the heart of the “signature” blend, but it’s blended with a cooling dose of mint, brightened up front by the lemony taste of lemon myrtle, and deepened in the lower register by a warming spicy flavor, mostly the ginger with a lingering bite of pepper especially prominent in the aftertaste. The contrast of the warm spice with the cooling mint might sound a bit odd, but it makes perfect sense tied together by the tulsi and lemon!

When I forget to bring tea from home, sometimes I find myself perusing the tea bags available to drink at my workplace. This is the one option for green tea. A lot of people say that they just don’t like green tea, and since this one is on the better end of the spectrum for the cheap bagged green teas widely available in grocery stores, I can understand why.

It’s a serviceable tea, not actively unpleasant. I drink it mindlessly if I’m desperate for a green tea fix, but sometimes I think I’d be better off drinking water. The flavor is a run of the mill vegetal green tea, but flat, dull. A dried grass sort of flavor, with little nuance, but none of the offensively fishy flavors that I get out of lesser bagged green teas. As long as I keep the steeping time short (the bag recommends 2-3 minutes, but I pull it out just shy of 2) I can avoid the dirty/stale/bitter flavor that comes out when it’s oversteeped.

I bought this tea without realizing that it was full of chamomile. I actively dislike chamomile! However, despite the chamomile blossoms scattered fairly liberally throughout this tea, they blend in to the mix rather subtly. It compliments the fruity added flavoring, but I think I’d like this better without the chamomile add-in. Sometimes I even pick out the chamomile before I brew this tea.

This green tea, like many others, is prone to getting really cooked-greens like if you make the mistake of using water that’s too hot! Even with quite cool water I still get a bit of that spinach-like tone, but the vegetal flavor makes perfect sense mixed with the peach flavoring… a cup of summer-time. The peachy flavoring is sweet and pleasant if bit artificial tasting – like peach candy rather than real ripe peaches. The fruit flavor is on the lighter side – which I prefer. It’s basically gone after the first steep.

I don’t care for it all that hot and without additives. However, with a bit of honey, a squeeze of lemon or lime, and some fresh ginger, it makes an easy-drinking iced tea. I’ll use up my stash of this over the summer, but I’m not interested in restocking.

This is a weak tea – if you’re using one bag, go for a 6 oz. cup, not a big mug! It steeps a pretty pale pink color, but the paleness is telling. The berry aroma is perfectly pleasant, but the flavor is light, more of a washed out rose hip/hibiscus/berry combo with a greenish-peppery-herbal tea underpinning. Not my favorite from this brand, their signature herbal blend does not seem to mesh particularly well with the tart flavorings here.