Gillyflower

I got a small tin of this delectable tea as part of a box of three sampler tins (also including a tin of Ben Shan Oolong and one of Tie Guan Yin) at the Tower of Cosmic Reflections Teahouse at the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon. Sadly, the purchase of the sampler box has given me a lot more joy than my visit to the Chinese Garden did, as I was accompanied by my parents who spent their entire visit complaining about the family we were staying with while in Portland. I love my parents, but it wasn’t easy to enjoy Portland with them. Anyway, I digress…

This is (as the other commenter noted) classic oolong tea. Though I thought the package’s recommended brewing time of 4 min. was a bit much, I gave it nearly that, in a mesh strainer in a stoneware thermos-like mug from Teavana. It smelled like generic oolong in the tin, but the brewing/brewed leaves have a rounder scent than some oolongs, with lots going on: the normal vegetal smells, but also an almost meaty, savory smell. The liquor is a medium greenish-gold. A sip reveals that the smells were not misleading: yes on the vegetal, yes on the flowery (though not much for an oolong), but also a sort of soupy savoriness. I feel like I could add vegetables and some salt and have a light dinner going! This element makes this a very satisfying tea with high drinkability, enhanced by the complete lack of bitterness.

As far as I can recall, I’ve never had this particular kind of oolong before. No idea whether this cup’s savoriness is normal for a Tung Ting. If so, I could see keeping a good example of a Tung Ting around regularly. We’ll see if/how this one insinuates itself into my current tea rotation!

I like fruit teas with sugar to sip while I’m relaxing after work: they’re a treat with no caffeine. So I ordered this one with my last Tea Table order.

Smell in the bag: fruity but not that fruity, surprisingly, since almost all there is in it is fruit. Brews up to a sort of taupey/pink color with a smell pretty much like it is in the bag. The taste is generic fruity, though, not very interesting, though I suppose I am getting some vitamin C from the rosehip peels and hibiscus.

I think I probably wouldn’t buy this again, because I have other favorite fruit teas (to mention one: Adagio’s Berry Blues) and this one doesn’t distinguish itself.

I concur with other reviewers on this tea: pretty golden color in the brew, soft/sweet green base, and not-quite-natural but not-perfumey jasmine and lichee smells/tastes. There are actual jasmine flowers in this, so I’m not convinced this has all-artificial jasmine taste, but perhaps it’s boosted artificially? Anyway, this jasmine lover is enjoying it, esp. with the lichee overtones. (We recently got a Steepery tea drink shop on State St. in Madison and I have been dropping in Tuesday nights before choir rehearsal. Once I tried the lichee jelly I dropped the tapioca boba like a hot potato. Why didn’t I ever know what lichee tasted like before? YUM…)

I also concur with the package: “A delightful afternoon tea, and sure to please tea party guests.” Not that I ever have tea parties (especially not in the afternoon), but this tea has that drinkability that you look for in something you’re going to sip all afternoon or serve to guests. As with all green teas, make sure you watch water temperature and steeping time carefully, or this could get bitter (and I don’t think it’d be very drinkable like that). But overall this is a really nice tea! Glad I bought some.

In character I agree with another taster that this is much more like an oolong than a black tea. The leaves are greenish, the scent in the leaf is light and citrusy, the brew is darkish golden and smells almost more richly flowery than my favorite Tie Kuan Yin, if maybe a different type of flower (orange? Hard to pin it down)! The taste reveals a slight darkness, though, that I wouldn’t know what to do with in an oolong. (Perhaps this is a function of the 3-min. steep?) And this isn’t as sweet on the tongue as an oolong would be. But otherwise? It’s light with a buttery quality, slightly vegetal, richly flavored, and yes, very floral. If you don’t like black tea, don’t worry, this really doesn’t resemble black tea in any substantial way. If you like less-fermented oolongs or flowery greens, you’ll like this one!

I would agree with what other commenters say, that this is not a strongly flavored tea, that it has grassy qualities. On the other hand, these are not bad things for everyone!

This is the first tea I tried in my new IngenuiTea tea maker, and I have say parenthetically that the IngenuiTea is the best invention since the mesh ball—and easier to use! I highly recommend that anyone who loves tea, get one! Anyway…

In my first brewing I followed the directions on the sample package: 2 min., 180 f., just over a teaspoon of leaf (though these are such long squiggly leaves dried, that it’s tough to measure in any meaningful way). I found the resulting light golden brew to be, well…acceptable. The flavors weren’t strong, but they were: grassy, buttery, a little mineral-y. Like a combination of white tea and lightly fermented oolong, but at an inoffensive and almost insignificant level of flavor. Yet I didn’t taste wateriness, leading me to believe that this was not strictly an understeep or too little tea for the amount of water; this is just not strongly flavored tea.

In the second brewing (a couple of hours after the first, though I don’t know if it makes any difference) I kept the temperature of the water the same, but steeped for radically longer: six minutes. Wish I could claim this was some important insight on my part, but what actually happened was that the phone rang right after I started steeping. I was worried this brewing would be lost to bitterness, but it seems low flavor also means low bitterness in this case: at six minutes the brew is more flavorful but otherwise unchanged, as if to say, “No, really, I am an everyday type of tea in every sense of the word; you can’t get me wrong.”

I’ll remember to steep longer in the future because with a longer steeping, even on a second brewing, the flavor is really nice; the butteriness is more pronounced and there is almost a clean, though not at all watery, quality to it. The grassiness recedes to the background, and overall, it becomes very drinkable, if still rather inoffensive. Is it possible the 2 min. recommendation is some kind of typo on Adagio’s part?

Probably I won’t buy this again; there are lots more interesting and tasty teas out there than this one. But I’ll finish the package probably over the next couple of weeks at work, when things will be quiet and I’ll be looking for ways to stay alert! For the price, I do recommend it to anyone who is looking to try (or to help someone else try) green tea for the first time. It may not be remarkable, but it is still head and shoulders above what you might get in any American grocery store, and balanced enough in flavor that anyone who thinks green tea is too grassy, vegetal, sweet, or, well, too whatever, will be pleasantly surprised.

Steepster was misbehaving and wouldn’t let me post tasting notes the evening I tried this, so I’m posting now from memory. I should also mention that I did the conventional mesh-ball brewing on this, not gongfu, so I might have different things to say once I’ve gotten around to doing it “right” (is any way really “right” if it yields a great cup of tea? Anyway…)

I have pretty high expectations of everything I buy from Verdant, and this one met them solidly, if not spectacularly. The leaf is neat-looking, as others have mentioned: very dark green and obviously hand-flattened, so each leaf is sort of bladelike. Some are very long (I had to break three or four of them to fit them in the mesh ball). The inside of the bag is covered with beige fuzz, which must have come from the leaves, but there doesn’t seem to be fuzz on the leaves—interesting. The smell in the bag is rich and vegetal.

This really does brew up into an almost colorless light-yellow brew, so don’t make the mistake of over-brewing trying to get some color into it! I let it cool a little too long while I answered the phone, but maybe this gave the flavor a little time to develop. Flavor: light, refreshing, perhaps more like a white tea than a green tea, but with a pronounced gyokuro-style brothiness that is really satisfying, and a consistent undertone of rich veggie-like flavor. This is not a strongly flavored tea, and I didn’t taste any bitterness. Just good flavor and that brothiness that I like.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this were a dud as iced tea, but I guess stranger things have happened. Anyway, I don’t try everything iced, because I have other cold beverages I enjoy (and in any case I live in Wisconsin, where at this time of year, one increasingly enjoys one’s beverages hot!).

Definitely, I’m glad I bought this, and will enjoy it every time I drink it, but it’s not the life-changing brew that my first Verdant Tieguanyin was.

Fruity refreshment, great hot, will have to try it cold sometime! While I can smell the rose a little bit sniffing the dry tea, it really recedes into the background when brewed. This is a hibiscus-heavy tea (you can tell just by how red it gets in the cup…VERY red) which works well with plenty of sugar to cut the sourness, but I haven’t even bothered trying it without, since I know it will be too sour for me. Hibiscus provides lots of Vitamin C, so I plan to drink this a lot this winter!

I picked this up at the Bobalicious near Denver, on my way to the airport after an SCA event. (The tea smoothie with boba was to die for, BTW, and as they had just opened for the day and the mall area was still deserted, the nice man behind the counter talked with me about tea for half an hour!)

Let me say that I am not really a black tea person. I don’t mind it if it’s the only tea available, but I don’t tend to buy it. As a result I’ve never been into chai, but I do like the various spices and flavors often added to chai. Bobalicious had three different chais, and this one smelled the sweetest and most interesting to me. So I bought it.

I boiled water, steeped for 4 min., and came up with something that isn’t really to my taste black, but I could see how a chai afficionado would enjoy it. I then added a generous amount of half-and-half and some sugar—what I’d been intending all along—and NOW I have something tasty. Not really a latte; this is actually how I like my brewed coffee when I make it at home.

This has a smooth feel to it; the spices are there, but not overwhelming. Mainly I taste ginger and vanilla, with aftertastes of pepper and just a general impression of everything else. Maybe it’s the vanilla, but it took the sugar beautifully. Rather than tasting exotic, it’s kind of a comfort cup, for me anyway. I would make this again.

Actually I’m hoping to make an iced chai latte sometime this week, maybe with cooled double-strength Vanilla Chai mixed with milk/sugar…but my fridge needs some non-expired milk for that!

Another Teavana problem tea. I’ve had it a few times and, as another reviewer commented, this is an uneven tea, perhaps because there are so many elements (different fruits, white tea, mint) that depending on what you get in the spoonful you scoop up, it could be overwhelmed by mint, heavy with sour fruit, or just…blah.

Today, I brewed for 2 min. in a mesh ball in one of my favorite large mugs. The liquid is a brownish-purplish color that promises “strong”, but a taste brings nothing big; just a hint of mint and a slight sourness from the fruit. Yes, maybe I should have brewed longer, but Teavana says white/fruit blends get 2 min., so 2 min. is what I gave it. I added a couple of teaspoonfuls of rock sugar and now it is mildly fruit-flavored sugar water with an aftertaste of mint. In no way do I taste white tea, or any type of camellia sinensis whatsoever.

I’ll continue sipping the mug until I get an idea of what I want to drink next or until it gets cold, whichever comes first.

For no reason I could tell, my last shipment from Teavana included TWO packages of Scarlet Cloud rather than the one I ordered. So, I threw out the packet from today, the one that’s been open for a couple of months, in case it had gone stale. At some point maybe I’ll open the extra one. Maybe.

Note: one taster below seemed to think this has rooibos. It doesn’t.

When I sleep until noon on a Sunday—especially now that I’m getting middle-aged and my sleep patterns are changing—I have a lot of trouble getting to sleep on time Sunday night. Hence my zero caffeine policy on Sundays, which makes me a little sad because Sundays are when I have time to sit and sip tea and ponder what kind of tea I’m craving (generally oolong or Youthberry or the Taiwan Red Tea I got at Jade Mountain, all with caffeine).

So Sundays I tend to bring out my tisanes and other non-caffeine drinks, and this one is a winner in my book. I set my electric teakettle to boil, and steeped for 8 minutes (the package says 5-10 min.), and was greeted by a deep pinky-purple brew. I added copious amounts of rock sugar—3 tsp.? Not sure, I’m a sugar addict—and let the sugar melt for a minute.

The result: fruit perfection. It is definitely the chunks of real fruit in this that gives such great fruit taste, though my chunks were not HUGE as one reviewer’s were! You can’t go wrong with apple pieces in a fruit tisane, and there are lots in this. And I did see a few petals of hibiscus, but not tons, so you don’t end up with something unbearably sour (though I can’t vouch for what this is like without sugar).

With the sugar this might as well be fruit juice, with a deep berry taste that really satisfies. It’s warming and richly flavored hot; bet it would be amazing cold! I’ll have to try that next time…!

Like so many of Teavana’s blends, Peachberry Jasmine Sutra (and we have a WINNER for Stupidest Tea Name of the Year!) is dominated by its artificial flavors. This can be a good thing—I can’t be the only person who tried Youthberry and decided she never wanted to be without it. Or it can be a bad thing: Snow Geisha anyone? Or it can be just a ho-hum disappointment.

I was so hoping for this tea to taste as good as it smells. You are probably all familiar with the canister-top-waving selling technique at Teavana, and this one got me: a soft, fruity, sophisticated bouquet. I brewed it using a mesh ball, 175 degree water, for 2 minutes as the package recommends. At that point I sniffed: mmm, smells nice. And I looked: deep purple color. And I tasted: hot water with a slight perfumey taste. Dammit.

I added a little bit more hot water and gave it another 2 minutes, and tasted again: slightly sour hot water with a slight fruity/perfumey taste. What a disappointment. I was hoping for tea with an actual distinctive taste. Instead I tasted the insipid flavor of the green rooibos (I kind of don’t see the point of green rooibos; if I’d known this blend had so much of it, I wouldn’t have wasted my money), the artificial flavors, a slight sourness from the fruit, and that perfumey quality that might be the jasmine, or might just be more of the artificial flavor. I don’t taste green tea in the slightest. Am I crazy to have expected a little bit of green tea or jasmine flavor in a green jasmine blend?!

I then added copious sugar in the hopes that would bring out the flavor; what it did was obliterate all the flavor that wasn’t artificial. So now I’m drinking something that Victoria’s Secret should bottle and sell: hot sugary fruity perfume drink!

Sheesh. I had such high hopes for this one. That’ll teach me not to do my homework where Teavana teas are concerned. Next time I’m tempted to go to the mall and spend too much money, I’ll check Steepster.

Thanks David, for the wonderful sample of Laoshan White you tucked into my most recent order! Bonnie mentioned how cute this is dry: like little ringlets of green leaves. I picked up a pinch with my fingers and it clung together in clumps like hair. Very fun.

I did a regular brewing with this (my gaiwan needs washing) and it’s just as wonderful as the previous reviewer says. I used filtered water and got a sort of greeny-gold liquor; the first taste yields sort of the hearty/vegetal taste I associate with gyokuro (or the yummy Laoshan Green I got in the same package from Verdant), but it goes on from there: lightness, coolness, expansiveness, and then maybe a little bit of astringency, which I admit may have come from my western-style brewing; I’ll have to try gongfu with the last of the sample. There is a sweetness all the way through the cup that is sort of vegetal (sugar snap peas? I dunno, I’m not fond of them, but I can kinda see where that description comes in) but reminds me more of the taste of fresh air after rain, if that makes sense. All in all, this has aspects of the brothiness of gyokuro or Laoshan Green, but without any heaviness.

This is really unlike any white tea I’ve ever tasted. I normally expect white tea to either have very little taste, or to be kind of a “lite” version of a black or green tea. This is not “lie down and be submissive” tea; this is white tea that can hold its own without extraneous flavorings. Laoshan White grabs the taste buds, yet it’s very, very drinkable; I could see drinking this all day and feeling not that I’d been drinking something on autopilot, but that I’d had a really nice day!

It being summer, I wish I could try this iced; I think it would probably not change in character (hard to say—I hope not, anyway), but it’d be VERY refreshing. Unfortunately the price of this, and the fact that I just spent too much money on two really lovely teas from Verdant, will keep me from ordering again anytime soon. But at least I can share my impressions so others will hopefully want to try this. It’s absolutely worth it.

This is a medium brown brew, with a lightly fruity and characteristically honeyed fragrance. I added honey, which didn’t seem to make much of a difference (this is fairly sweet on its own) but was tasty. If I seem underwhelmed, I am. Teavana’s Vanilla Honeybush is the quintessential honeybush to me; maybe I shouldn’t have tried this one so soon after having enjoyed the vanilla one. Or maybe I just don’t appreciate mangoes as much as I’d like to (to be fair, I don’t think I’ve ever had mango, so it could just be that I have no reference point for the taste).

That having been said, this was the kind of inoffensive, moderately tasty tisane I like to keep around for late nights (which was when I drank it this time) or times when I don’t know what I’m in the mood for. So I think I’ll keep this, but probably not re-order it.

Drinking my first cup of this at a friend’s house during our big 50-hour Trivia contest. Not being able to bring all my tea accoutrements, I basically used a Rishi fillable tea bag, large teaspoon of tea, and white John Deere mug + tap water which I warmed in the microwave. So I’m refraining from judging this until I can try it under conditions closer to ideal.

I will say it has a yellow color in the mug, vaguely brothy brewed smell/taste, and does not really partake in the characteristics I associate with gyokuro: vegetal taste, green liquor. Basically it tastes like bright-ish green tea and not much else, though this does mean there isn’t any bitterness.

For the moment, when I just needed some liquid that wasn’t tap water (someone stole my bottle of water out of my bag out in the garage…grrr) and had some caffeine (18 hours left to go in the contest), it goes down pretty easy. But I’d like to revisit this with better circumstances.

I disagree with most other reviewers: although I can smell the peach in the leaf, I’m not tasting ANY peach at all in the brew. That having been said…

This is an incredibly floral smelling and tasting tea once brewed. I brewed for 2 min. (while the package said 4 min.), but I’m used to gongfu brewing with the oolongs I’ve had, so I still thought 2 min. might be too long. Not at all , as it turns out. The golden liquor smells and tastes gardenia-like, and the floral taste lingers in your mouth for a couple of minutes. This is brightly flowery with a very slightly vegetal underpinning, and not a trace of bitterness, nor any peach that I can taste. This is my kind of tea! I’m going to have to force myself to stop at one cup tonight.

Now I’m wondering if there’s any peach flavoring added at all, or if it’s just so juicy and flowery that someone decided it tasted like peaches and decided to call it that without adding any flavoring at all…? Going back to the kitchen to smell the package…tawk amongst yourselves…

I’m back. Okay. I smelled something sweet in the leaf, but now I’m doubting that it was actual peach. I think my nose interpreted the sweetness as peach because I expected to smell an artificial peach flavor. I think I’m just smelling the strong floral sweetness of the tea. It’s a different flavor than the eventual smell of the brewed tea, but really, when is that NOT the case with tea?

Weird thing though: I looked at the post-brew leaves, and saw what I think are added flowers (or just the middle of the flowers). They’re wet and don’t hold together well, but they’re kind of cream-colored and as far as I can tell are not tea. However, I can’t find these in the pre-brew leaves. Are the flowers rolled up in the tea and released in the brewing? What kind of flowers are they? Are they maybe…PEACH flowers? (Is there such a thing?)

Well, I admit to still being confused, but whatever this is, added flavors/flowers or not, it is absolutely delicious. If you don’t like flowery oolongs, this is not the tea for you, but I’m really enjoying it. Score two for Butiki (I also liked the Gyokuro sample I got from them, though I didn’t like the fact that it was completely crushed, and that there was barely enough for one cup). I think tomorrow I’ll try the Purple Pu-erh I got from them and see if we can go three for three!

This was a (rather scanty) free sample from Butiki with my recent order. I do appreciate free samples, esp. since they e-mailed me to offer me two of my choice right after I placed the order—at 10:15 on a Sunday night! Fabulous customer service. But this sample was barely enough for one cup. I’ve gotten a lot of tea samples and none were this small. It didn’t smell like anything in particular in the little ziploc bag, either.

This gyokuro makes up for my tiny sample by being really flavorful. It’s not as violently green as some gyokuro I had at a local teahouse; this is more of a sort of golden jade color. The smell in the cup is more spinach-y than the tea’s ultimate taste profile. The flavor is dry-ish (could be perceived as bitterness, but it fades so quickly that I don’t taste it as bitter), bright, and finishes with a wave of brothy/vegetal goodness typical of gyokuros. This “umami” flavor may be something you either like or hate, but I like it, and I was glad this sample had the typical flavors of this tea.

One issue I had with this tiny sample is that parts of it were crushed almost to powder (and I don’t believe it’s supposed to have extra powder in it, as some Japanese green teas do). This meant that using a regular mesh ball, I ended up with lots of dark green tea flecks in the bottom of the cup. With gyokuro’s strong flavors I would worry that this would influence the flavor even after I stop steeping and remove the ball, but I didn’t really notice that happening. Still I get the feeling that either the sample was taken from the bottom dregs of a larger container of tea, or the sample bag was crushed in shipping, breaking the tea quite a bit. Or maybe gyokuro is just very fragile, I don’t know. Whatever happened, I would think that Butiki would want to present this tea in its best light when sending it as a sample, but that’s not how it arrived.

I wouldn’t mind making gyokuro a permanent part of my tea cupboard, but I need to shop around a bit and decide what’s the best value/taste ratio. This one is $16.00/2 oz., which is not a deal-breaker but a tad expensive for my stash. I’ll continue my research to learn what is considered a good price for this type of tea. If you have a very very favorite gyokuro, feel free to communicate it to me!

There is a lovely woman who goes to a three-day camping event that I attend every year, puts up a canvas wall tent, and sells iced teas of 7 or 8 different types. I like a lot of what she brings; she obviously knows her tea and knows how to brew it and keep it tasting good in the plastic dispensers. Also it’s usually hot as hell and just about any drink tastes good when you need it that much.

But the one I keep coming back to is her honeybush tea, and now—ta da!—I think I’ve found it! (Or rather, my friend Sarah found it for me, and gifted me with it today, along with other yummy stuff in a gift bag. I adore Sarah!) I can’t recall if “The Tea Lady” at my camping event uses vanilla honeybush or just honeybush. But I know she sweetens it slightly, and it’s just perfect on a hot day.

Having just discussed happy memories of iced honeybush, here I am drinking it hot. It is January 1st in Wisconsin, after all. It’s a lovely surprise to find it’s good hot too! I have a spoonful or two of Teavana’s sugar crystals in it, and (because I’m kind of a sugar fiend) it is really tasty, but I tasted it before sugaring it and it was very good that way too: smooth, sweetish, slightly woody. The pre-brewing leaf seems to have a lot of woody-looking bits in it too, more than I remember seeing in other honeybush teas, but then maybe I wasn’t paying attention.

I can say that the honeybush teas I’ve tried in pursuit of the lovely, sweet, resinous taste I get in that wonderful Tea Lady’s iced tea, have been a disappointment. This one: not a bit. Can’t wait to try it iced when springtime comes!

Okay…this is SO bitter and undrinkable that I’m sure I must have done something wrong. So I’m not going to rate it at this time, until I can tweak some things and try again.

Hmm…I wonder if having this at work is truly representative. I don’t have my gaiwan or my teapot—I’m just using a mesh ball (which I filled only halfway, when I know oolong expands way more than that). And the water here doesn’t taste great. But surprisingly, this is a friendly little tea that seems to be working within my limitations!

Smell in the bag is pretty average oolong: green-ish, fruit-ish, vegetable-ish. (And rather fresh-smelling, which speaks well of Culinary Teas; this is my first order from them and already I’m impressed.) In the mug, the brew is a dark gold verging on light brown; I have little tea dusty bits in the bottom, which I am a little surprised at because I haven’t noticed that sort of thing with other oolongs. There isn’t enough of them to continue brewing after I remove the mesh ball, anyway, which would have changed the flavor.

There is no bitterness to this at all; it has a nice sweetness that lasts all the way through the cooling of the mug (I am notoriously slow to drink tea). The flavor is smooth, green-y, and unobtrusive. It’s simple enough in flavor, in fact, that I’m wondering if I should have steeped it longer than three minutes. The package said 5-6 min., which (for an oolong) sounded like somebody’s wildly incorrect guess to me, but perhaps I should try this with a little more time and see if I can get more flavor, or at least more complexity, without courting bitterness. I am usually SO careful to avoid bitterness that sometimes I think I am not getting everything I could out of teas in terms of flavor!

At any rate: this seems like a promising tea for those times when I want something fresh and tasty but not demanding of my attention. But it’s hard to tell at this point. I will try it with a longer steeping time and see what happens. I’ll also bring it home so I can try it with my wider range of brewing options (teapot? Teapot? Baby, I miss you…) and see how that changes things. Wouldn’t surprise me if the tap water here at work is just messing the whole brewing process up.

I’ve actually tried this tea several times (I got mine from the Tea Table, which must share a tea source with Metropolitan Tea Company) and not logged it, for which I apologize.

This tea has too much hibiscus for me. It means the tea has a lovely pink color, but it also means a sourness that is quite hard to overcome. If you like tart herbal teas, this is great, but I don’t (and I have GERD, which means too-tart liquids are a bad idea for me in general, especially right before bed…and when am I drinking no-caffeine teas? Right before bed). The fruitiness is not obscured by the tartness; it’s definitely there all the way through, in leaf scent, brew scent, and brew taste. When I am constantly adding sugar all the way through drinking the cup, though, that’s just too tart for me.

It’s possible the 5-10 minute steep listed on the package is too long. I want to say this has been less sour with shorter steeps in the past. Last night’s steep of 7 min. was FAR too long, apparently.

But I don’t want to rate this tea down purely because of my own preferences. In ingredient quality, scent, fruitiness, etc. this tea does really well. So I’m giving it a decent score even though I don’t seem to be able to enjoy it. Try it for yourself. It’s way better than CS’s Zinger teas if you like hibiscus.

I kind of feel bad that I brewed up my small sample without checking Steepster first to see what the best brewing method would be. Instead I just used my small teapot/strainer and punted: 185 degrees, four minutes. What I got is still delightful: a sort of mineral cleanness, light sweetness, like I imagine sucking on a cloud would be. At the end of a mouthful I get a small amount of bitterness—nothing I can’t deal with, and probably only because of the long steep time. (I’m sorry…I’m SORRY…) This is earthier than the whites and greens I’m used to—yes, even discounting that the cup smells like clay. The earthiness sort of grabs onto my taste buds and won’t let go. Very tasty!

I can’t see the color of the tea because I’m using one of the small egg-shaped inside-glazed clay teacups I got in Turkey (the pottery shop served us apple tea in them, and I fell in love on the spot), but reddish-brown is the general impression I get.

When I am done drinking the hot (now warm) tea I’ll put the rest of the teapot’s contents in the fridge and see how it tastes cold in the morning. Probably it’ll be only okay, but I hate to waste the rest of the pot due to my own carelessness.

You know what this means, right? Right? I’m going to have to order some of this stuff and do it RIGHT next time. (I believe this is exactly what samples are supposed to do. Good marketing strategy, David!)

Stolen from my hotel room in Istanbul two days ago. I felt like I wanted some “turkish tea” to wake myself up the first day back, so I found this bag in my luggage and brewed it in a half-full teapot. The result: rather tasteless actually. Deep brown color, but that’s all it’s got going for it. Sugar didn’t help either. I’m realizing that what a person really needs to do to have real turkish tea (besides bringing home some tulip-shaped glasses to serve it in, which I did, but they’re in the dishwasher) is to use loose tea and the double-decker teapot method. (Haven’t found the tin of loose tea in the luggage yet…and I’m working on getting a double-decker teapot, but it’ll be awhile!)

I have had this a couple of times, once while camping and once for choir. The convenience of the pour-a-packet-in-a-water-bottle beverages cannot be overemphasized here, because lord knows I didn’t drink this for the taste. Basically, when dissolved in a bottle of water, the water’s texture thickens slightly and you get a little tiny vegetal green tea taste that you almost feel you might be imagining. The water turns sickening green and murky, but the taste is quiet enough to be almost unnoticeable. Quite frankly, the price ($9.99 for ten packets; the Matcha packets are twice as much) combined with the lack of flavor puts this out of the realm of re-buying possibility. I love Rishi and I think they have some of the most forward-thinking teas and tea products out there today (AND they’re a Wisconsin company). But this particular idea? Fail. I’m giving it the points I am because it doesn’t actually taste BAD per se.

(And I’m bringing a few packets with me to Turkey just because they’re interesting, and maybe I can bond with some fellow tour members by giving them a packet for their water bottles!)

I bought a box of this in Jerusalem several years ago, and it’s been at my workplace ever since (I’m trying to get my work tea collection into Steepster as I use them). As I was adding this tea to the database, I discovered not only that it isn’t made anymore, but that before it was discontinued, lemon verbena was added for awhile, or even replaced all the other ingredients (searches yield contradictory info). The ingredients on my box/teabag covers are:

Rosemary, spearmint leaves, sage leaves, peppermint leaves.

Which is what this tastes like to me. The brewing time given below yields a dark brownish-green brew that tastes of peppermint + cooking herbs, which is pretty much what it is. If you like peppermint and peppermint blends, this is something you’d like, but since it isn’t made anymore, good luck with that.

I do want to point out that although Wissotzky teas (watch out for the misspelling Wissotsky—there is one tea listed on Steepster under that brand) are from Israel, the package I got in Jerusalem—and all the other packages I saw at the grocery store where I got this—does have ingredients/nutritional/volume information in English. You just have to kind of look around the box until you find the English characters. The rest of the package has Hebrew writing, which (unless you were really, really good in Hebrew school as a kid) is not possible for an English/Romance speaker to read and interpret on-the-fly. I count on figuring out foreign food packages if there is French/Italian/Spanish/Portuguese somewhere on the label, since I was a French major, and I am enough of a foodie to know many Romance language cognate words for food types and ingredients. I even know (by ear) some Hebrew food words I’ve picked up over the years, being Jewish. But I didn’t go to Hebrew school, and my trip to Israel taught me that on-the-fly interpretation is not so easy if you can’t read the script the words are written in!

On a related topic, I’m going to Turkey on vacation in two weeks, and I thank G-d and Ataturk that Turkey started using Western script during the 20th century. Turkish may not have a lot of cognates with Romance languages or English, but at least I can memorize a word so when I see it on signs or boxes, it rings a bell. There’s no way I could have done this if they still used Arabic script!