flowering

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This has a stronger smell and taste than I’ve come to expect from Bigelow’s bagged teas, a pleasant surprise! (Of course, I tend to dislike Bigelow.) It reminds me a bit of nuts or rice, and perhaps because of that drinking it feels very filling.

I don’t think any pears or evern pear-like substances were involved in the making of this tea. The dry leaf doesn’t smell like pears, the tea doesn’t smell like pears, and there’s certainly no taste of pears.

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The scent of this one is promising: distinctly rose, without being overwhelmingly perfumy. It’s one of those teas where if you could drink the smell, it would be perfect. The true taste, however, is a disappointment: the black base is weak and unremarkable, and the rose flavoring is hard to detect. It’s simply not very interesting. The label suggests sweetening it, and I quite agree that it’s an improvement that brings out the rose taste… though I wish I could enjoy it just as much without sweetener.

That said, I’m a huge fan of the scent and taste of roses, so I can’t hate this too much. My mission when I picked it up was to make sure that I had at least one rose tea around, and in that sense it succeeded. It’s very much drinkable and I’m sure other fans of rose tea will find it satisfactory, but there are certainly better options on the market.

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This one was available at work for some reason, so I gave it a try. It’s not as flavorful as the other rooibos I’ve had, and therefore not as interesting… I might recommend it to new drinkers, but nobody else.

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No idea if this has any of the health benefits it promises, but even if it does I’m not sure it’s worth it. The taste is impressively medicinal for something that’s just a bunch of herbs.

I seriously need to start paying more attention to water temperature and steeping time when I make this. When they’re perfect, it’s AMAZING… and I never remember what the perfect combination is.

This is one where the packaging doesn’t lie — it is indeed a basic green tea that tastes somewhat nutty. This was one of my first loose teas and while it’s nothing special, it was a good introduction.

To me, this is a tea for blending: by itself, it just makes me wrinkle my nose, but it makes an interesting addition to some of my other teas. This time, I added a pinch to my second steeping of Teavana’s MateVana and found the combination pleasant, though I can’t say exactly why.

It’s interesting how the chocolate and nuts can’t be tasted individually but instead make a flavor that’s very reminiscent of coffee. I always take this one with sweetener (just like I do with coffee) and I wish I had some milk or cream to make it a bit thicker.

I can’t think of any way to describe this besides “that coffee tea”, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing — I love the taste of coffee but not the way it makes my stomach feel or the over-the-top kick of caffeine it tends to give me. A good pick if you, too, want the taste of coffee but the effects of maté.

This is what I drink before bed when I’m not feeling well, and it legitimately seems to not only help my throat but make me feel a little bit better (and sleepier!) all over. The downside? The taste is VILE. I admittedly can’t stand licorice and it’s very prominent in this, but I can’t imagine anybody finding the flavor anything more than tolerable. I put in lemon, a generous amount of honey, and a cough drop, and it’s still kind of gross.

I probably oversteeped this, but I don’t taste any difference from the other times I’ve had it. The rooibos base isn’t bad, but the mango taste is pretty much non-existent. Drinkable, but disappointing… which is how I felt about all of Adagio’s flavored rooibos sample set, really.

This one’s just all right. It smells nice before its made, but the flavor is unimpressive — you can’t taste the peach! I keep it around for when I’m not feeling well and want something with ginger.

This one was a gift from my boss at my summer job — he bought some random cheap teas to figure out possible ways of making tea sorbet and completely rejected it. I have very low expectations for teabags that are this cheap ($2 for 20), but this one is surprisingly tasty! I haven’t tried any other teas with rice in them, but I certainly want to.

I haven’t had this one in a while, and it’s better than I remember it being. The second infusion tasted almost as strong as the first!