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Meh, more general herbal flavor, not bad but not noticeably helpful either. I suppose it doesn’t help that all these teas are so old, oh well.

Pros: The taste here isn’t so cloying as the Throat Coat. It just has a general herbal medicine taste.

Cons: It’s pretty obvious that Throat Coat soothes throats, at least temporarily. I never noticed any effect from this one. Didn’t do anything for my congestion.

Blech, so sweet. Way too much licorice root in this tea, at least flavor-wise. I don’t know if licorice root has a medicinal value?. Of course no one is drinking this for the taste anyway. It definitely took some of the pain out of my sore throat.

It didn’t fend off my cold, but points for effective symptom relief.

This actually tastes good today, which is the final proof that I have an official cold.
Seriously, how am I supposed to NaNoWriMo with a cold?

I received a sample of this in my last order, and there was enough to do about four steeps with it. I think the tea itself is good quality, but this particular sample was jinxed. The first cup was delicious, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to how I made it or the particular flavor notes of the tea, I was too deep in Terry Pratchett’s Equal Rites. Overall it seemed like a good full-bodied ceylon with a few interesting side notes – maybe something a little eucalyptusy, but I can’t be sure at this point – and a teensy bit of astringency, but nothing unpleasant.

The other cups all got contaminated or oversteeped. I made a really strong herbal in my steeper, and even though I washed it out, I could still taste its influence when I made my next cup of ceylon. I tried it again a few days later and got called away as soon as I poured the water, so the poor tea sat there for 20 minutes. To top everything off, a BUG flew into the last cup, so that was the end of that.

I’m going to have to get another sample before I’m really sure about this one, and then I guess I’ll have to do some kind of voodoo on it to protect it from whatever is lurking out there trying to spoil perfectly good tea.

I picked out this tea because the combined flavor notes sounded delicious — papaya, mango, & ginger — but somehow nothing in this cup is coming together properly. It’s a bit on the astringent side. It has an odd sour note, not the kind of sourness I associate with fruit. I taste the ginger, but it’s just not working well with the other flavors. Experimenting with the steeping parameters might help, but right now this tea is just so-so.

Another sample tea. This would have been delicious if it weren’t for the COMPLETELY MISPLACED BLACKBERRY LEAVES. It was just totally at odds with the apple flavors, and the apple was strong enough that it did not need the blackberry leaves to back it up.

Tastes like alcohol and wax. Dumped the cup.

Got this as a sample pouch. The dry leaf smells delicious – like butterscotch cake – but steeped up, the tea has so many weak, competing flavor notes that it’s just confusing. There’s something buttery and something vaguely fruity — I guess it COULD be the maraschino cherry, but really who knows? — and maybe something that’s coffee-ish, but nothing’s working together. I think this would work a lot better if the buttery note was turned up. As it stands this is just vaguely sweet, muddled tea.

This tea falls right in the middle of the black tea spectrum. It’s not at the gut-punch strength of a breakfast tea, but it’s a lot more flavorful than the ‘light’ afternoon teas. I think I like it better than the Crimson Ceylon that was my go-to whole-leaf black tea before I tried this one — but unfortunately I don’t have any of that in the house right now so I can’t do a steep-off. Anyway, this is nicely balanced and has a smooth finish. I think I could actually serve this to anyone because it has such a ‘classic tea’ profile — good quality, but nothing fancy or weird that would scare off a novice tea drinker.