Sarah

Update: Okay, the more I drink this tea the more I like it. I think it’s earned a spot in my permanent tea collection.

That said, I REALLY want to cold brew this, but each time I try results are lackluster. (That goes for this AND every other tea I’ve tried cold brewing.) I can make a killer sun tea but the cold brewing method is eluding me. Grr. #firstworldproblems

Thank you for the generous sample, Teajo Teas!

Although black teas aren’t my favorite, there are a few fruit-flavored black tea blends that I really enjoy. I was very excited to try this tea – Tropical Mango with an Assam base. Sounds promising!

As soon as I opened the sample, I was greeted with a strong but pleasant fruity smell. I don’t know what mangoes smell like, but I thought this tea smelled like a peach.

After brewing, this tea still smells very strong and fruity. It’s a strongly flavored fruit tea with a smooth and malty black tea base. I could easily taste the black tea through the flavoring.

This is a high-quality tea, but unfortunately it’s not for me. I would prefer it more if the flavoring and black tea base were more subtle. It’s possible this tea would be more to my taste as an iced tea. I’ll try it that way next month!

Mmm…I adore this tea! The dry leaf smells fruity and sweet. The tea leaves are a lovely dark green and I appreciate how much TEA is actually in this blend. This blend is mostly tea with a sprinkling of fruit pieces.

Once it’s steeped, the tea smells much like the dry leaf, only more subtle. It brews a pale yellow-green (almost clear). The pineapple flavor takes center stage with delicate notes of coconut and grass in the background. The fruit flavors taste very natural and work well together.

I drank this tea hot with no additions. It’s wonderful that way, although I look forward to experimenting more with it as an iced tea and with sweetener.

Della Terra has created yet another great tea blend. I’m partial to green tea, so I love that this has a green tea rather than black tea base. It definitely tastes like walnut with notes of caramel. Such a sweet, light, yet flavorful tea. It’s definitely a dessert tea that I look forward to brewing.

I love oolong tea and I love jasmine, so I had high hopes for this tea. Perhaps I was expecting too much because it was simply ho-hum. I brewed my first cup at 195 and the second one at 185 for 3 minutes. Both times I got a full-bodied jasmine flavor followed by a bitter aftertaste. Weird. I’ll stick with jasmine green tea for now.

This is a great herbal tea. I’ve had it two nights in a row, and now my sample is depleted. Time to order more! Enough about that, though.

I’m always on the hunt for a soothing nighttime tea with an interesting twist. This one fits the bill. It calms me after a hectic day and soothes my stomach. It’s a mild tea with subtle notes of ginger and chamomile…and something else. I imagine I’m tasting the ginseng, but I’m not sure what ginseng is supposed to taste like. Oh well. It’s a pleasant taste, and that’s all that matters.

This tea is so good! I’m on a green tea kick and this is by far the best one I’ve tasted. It’s light, crisp, sweet, refreshing, and smooth. Oh, it has a definite mineral quality to it – amazing. I’ll be ordering a tin of it soon. (Thanks for the sample, Angel!)

This tea is incredible! It’s fresh, sweet, floral, and creamy. I brewed it gong fu style for three people – one of whom had never seen loose leaf tea before, let alone a gaiwan. (She converted to loose leaf tea after drinking this – yay!)

The tea brews up golden and smells a lot like honeysuckle. Drinking it brought back memories of tasting the sweet nectar of honeysuckle for all of us. I look forward to future gong fu sessions with this vibrant tea.

This tea is really interesting – green tea, mint, berries, and citrus are a lot of flavors in one tea blend. Somehow they all come together smoothly, creating a truly refreshing cup of tea.

I’ve tried this both hot and iced, with no additions. Although it smells like it would make a great iced tea, I actually enjoy it most as a hot tea. The gunpowder green tea and mint flavors come through the strongest. Sweet and tangy notes of berries and citrus come through subtly toward the end of the sip and in the aftertaste. I’m going to try another steep tomorrow with some rock sugar. This is such a fun blend to experiment with!

A wonderful tea, both in aroma and flavor. I drank two steeps and thoroughly enjoyed both. It tasted mainly like caramel and toasted rice. Ever so slight grassy notes from the green tea peeked through at the end of each sip. The tea base was hardly noticeable.

I don’t care much for black tea or black tea blends, but this is one of the rare few that blows me away.

The dry leaf smells like a Green Apple Jolly Rancher. I couldn’t detect a floral smell at all, even though rose petals are an ingredient.

After I brewed this tea the apple smell was less intense. This tea definitely tastes like an apple in the first steeping. Thankfully, not in a “Jolly Rancher way”, but a “natural apple way”. The black tea is mild and smooth in the background.

In the second steeping, the scent and taste of rose petals comes out. The apple flavor is more mild than before, but still present. I enjoyed the second steeping most since I LOVE rose. Apples, rose petals, and black tea make a winning combination. I’m so glad I tried this tea.

Lavish Lavender tea is one of the most soothing teas I’ve ever tried. The dry leaf smell is complex – I can’t think of a good way to to explain it. Once the tea brews, however, the scent is heavenly and I can easily smell a combination of lavender, raspberries, and citrus. Yum! This tea tastes as good as it sounds. All the flavors come together nicely and make for a smooth drink.

I’ve had several cups of this tea since I received it last weekend. It’s not going to last long at this rate! Anyway, here’s what I’ve discovered. If you drink this when it’s piping hot (but not tongue-burning hot), the tea is very tart and somewhat harsh. If you wait for it to cool down a bit, you’ll be rewarded with an amazingly flavorful brew that just melts on the tongue. Also, I’ve enjoyed the second steepings of this tea more than the first. With the second steep, the raspberry is more mild and the taste of the oolong peeks through more. It’s practically a different experience altogether – both of which are great.

I’m giving this one a rating of 100. It’s just that good! Plus, I’ve searched far and wide for a caffeine-free dessert blend that I would like to have around at all times. This one is it!

It’s a delightful smelling tea. It also looks good enough to eat. In fact, I ate a small bit of the tea right out of the package. I’ve never done that before! It was good. Anyway, the brewed tea has a wonderful nutty and creamy flavor. I didn’t get “almond” from it, but I did get nutty. It’s really just a melt-in-your-mouth kind of tea. I could sip this all evening and not grow bored. Well done, Tiesta!

I think I could just smell this tea all day. The aroma is amazing. The taste is incredible. I’m a huge fan of white teas and floral teas, and this one blew me away. I brewed it gong fu style and drank 6 steepings of it in one sitting. I probably could have coaxed more steepings from the tea, but I was fulfilled by that point. I’ll be ordering much more of this soon.

This is THE tea that I can’t live without. I can get two great steepings from it, which makes it an even better value. The Bao Zhong base perfectly complements the coconut flavor. It’s truly a delightful mix of fruit and floral flavors. I’ve only tried it hot. It might make a nice iced tea, but I have to wait until it’s much warmer to try it out.

This is a decent tea. I drink mine hot with nothing added to it. Although it smells just like apple cider, it tastes mostly like black tea with just a hint of apples and spices. Appropriate, sure, but I think I was hoping for more of a cider-y flavor. That’s not really the tea’s fault, though.

It’s more subtle in flavor than the scent leads one to believe which is why I’m planning to take the flavor up a notch in the future. I have two ideas: (1) brew this tea in a large batch, then add mulling spices and simmer; (2) swirl a cinnamon flavored honey stick in the cup. Oh, I should probably see if I can add more apple flavor somehow – possibly a splash of apple cider or juice? We’ll see.

Long story short: As long as you don’t expect the intense flavor of apple cider, you shouldn’t be disappointed with this tea.

This blend smells amazing before it’s brewed. So much so that I’d consider buying it just to take a whiff of now and then. It has a delightful coconut-floral-grassy aroma. In that order. It yields a dark golden infusion that smells strongly of coconut but tastes like a pure jasmine tea. The taste of the tea was both vegetal and grassy

If you steer clear of jasmine teas because the floral taste is too strong, you might like this one. It’s the most subdued floral jasmine tea I’ve tried. It was a nice change to taste more of the green tea than with typical jasmine teas.

Although a pleasant cup, I would love to taste more coconut flavor. That said, I’ll take a great jasmine tea that smells of coconut over one that does not.

I’m drinking this tea as I type. It’s about 9:45 p.m. and I have a strict no caffeine rule after 6 p.m.

Anyway, this is a good tea. It’s the perfect blend of orange and mint. Tea Forte did well striking the balance without this tasting artificial. Here’s the thing: mojitos are my favorite mixed drink. I would LOVE to try this tea with lime rather than orange. Although I enjoy oranges and mint on their own, I don’t adore the combination. It’s not bad. It’s just not fabulous. I’m glad I tried the combination, though.

The fact that this is a reasonably priced fair trade and organic tea is a huge bonus. It’s also a nice change to the chamomile and peppermint teas I normally drink at night. This is worth a try if you’re considering buying it.

Oolong teas are essentially uncharted territory for me. Since I’ve only tried two varieties of oolong, it was time to expand my palette. The Tea Merchant sells an oolong sampler that sounded too good to pass up – so I didn’t pass it up. :)

This tea was a hit with the first steeping and a miss with the second steeping.

The first steeping reminded me of Salada’s Asian Plum white tea. This tea is much better, however. It had a noticeable plum flavor that didn’t overpower the oolong tea. It was a sweet, slightly tart cup of tea that was pleasing in every way.

The second steeping came out very tart. I couldn’t taste the oolong, only the berries. It reminded me of hibiscus. I’m not a fan of hibiscus.

Both cups were smooth, light-bodied and brewed to a dark golden hue. I enjoyed the first steeping of this tea enough that I’ll probably purchase it in a larger quantity. I wish that the second steeping was to my taste. Maybe I can fob it off on my husband and then not feel like I’m being wasteful. Does that make me an awful person?

Okay, I’m drinking the 2nd steeping of this tea. Oh. My. Goodness!

I was delighted to find that the leaves retained so much of the smoky aroma and taste after the first steeping. This time around I tasted more of the black tea than before but less of the smoky flavor. It was a different experience altogether with slightly sweet and nutty notes. Yum! After each sip there was a pleasant tingling on my tongue. I’ve only experienced a “tingling” aftertaste with a couple of teas now and I love it.

*According to the Whispering Pines website, the tea should brew for 6 minutes on the second steeping. I brewed it for 5 minutes – oops! No matter, it was still a great cuppa.

This tea has an incredibly spicy aroma. I identified the cinnamon and pumpkin notes, but was unable to identify the other spices. (It turns out cloves were the only other spice in this blend.) As with many flavored teas, I could smell the spices/flavorings but not the tea base itself.

When I purchased this tea, I was hoping to notice the pumpkin flavor. This full-bodied blend does not disappoint! It has a distinct pumpkin flavor that is enhanced by the cinnamon and cloves. With each sip I took, I noticed the black tea come through in slightly bitter and subtle malty notes.

This type of tea is not something I normally go for – my favorites are light-bodied, floral teas where I can taste the tea itself. That said, I’m glad I tried it since I LOVE pumpkin. It’s definitely a blend that I’ll only drink during the fall. The lingering spicy aftertaste wasn’t a surprise, but it sure made me thirsty! I had to chase down this tea with a glass of water.

Wow. This is an amazing black tea. Here we go…

As soon as I opened this package, I was transported to a campfire in the woods on a cold night. (Yes, I’ve been known to camp on cold nights…brr!) The tea leaves give off a subtly smoky aroma, like the charred ashes of a dying fire.

Although I love that smell, I wasn’t sure if I’d like to taste it in a tea. Sure enough, I do! The smoky flavor of the tea is delightful. It really warmed me up inside, making it perfect for cold weather days. I thought the tea was a touch bitter, which is something I come to expect and enjoy in most black teas. It leaves a smoky aftertaste. I’ll be ordering this smooth, rich blend again.

SerendipiTea’s Rose Alongi is a blend of organic Chinese green tea and rose petals. The tea leaves on their own smell grassy. After it’s brewed, the tea smells like fresh roses with a definite (and pleasant) undercurrent of green tea.

This is a smooth and slightly sweet tea. It’s light-bodied and leaves a wonderful lingering clean/fresh taste. I think it makes a great afternoon tea to share with a loved one!

This tea has became one of my favorites and I drink a few of cups of it each week (usually paired with dark chocolate!).

It tastes best when prepared according to the package directions: warm up the teapot with hot (but not boiling) water and pour out, sprinkle bottom of pot with tea, pour in water, brew for 3 minutes, enjoy.