Neapolitan Honeybush

I first drank it iced with cream and sugar The cream and sugar wasn’t needed, and actually made it dull to me. I prefer this tea naked. This tea has a nice creamyiness to it on its own

I can get a hint of each flavor, the chocolate comes out nicely the most. I would liked more vanilla and strawberry. Still, wonderful iced.

So good! The taste of the vanilla is sweet. Great treat.

This is my first time ever drinking something from 52teas. I’m halfway through my first cup of Neapolitan Honeybush and I can hardly imagine a better welcome to their teas than this.

Even before I opened the bag, I was grinning like an idiot at all the cacao nibs and huge strawberry chunks I could spot among the sea of tiny honeybush particles. The aroma after I tore it open was far more rich and heady than I was expecting; almost like the top notes of a decadent perfume rather than a favorite dessert (albeit not in an unpleasant way at all – as a fan of vanilla notes in my perfume, I rather wish I could bottle the scent :-P).

Once I started steeping, the richness of the scent began to mellow somewhat, but even as I drink it now it’s still there; a deep, potent vanilla tempered with a sweet and fruity finish. After a six-minute infusion, I tried a bit before deciding whether or not to add anything. I was already very impressed with the flavor, but knowing my own tastebuds, I immediately knew I would like it even more with a touch of sugar. And oh my, did I ever like it better. While I often drink my teas plain, I think the sweetener in this case really elevates the flavors to another level entirely. For me, this tea starts off with a beautiful synthesis of all three featured flavors, before shifting to a brief but robust influx of fresh strawberries, and finally finishing with that same luscious vanilla I so loved upon first catching a whiff of this lovely blend. I think the last part is my favorite part of this tea. The vanilla is so delicious and almost candylike, really; reminiscent of toffee, caramel or brittle.

If I had to criticize anything, I suppose it would be that the chocolate notes are not as noticeable to me as the strawberry or vanilla. But this tea is so delicious that I don’t find myself missing it all of that much anyway.

Bottom line: I’m tempted to go and prepare myself another cup, and as I’m typing this, I’ve only just finished the first one! It’s been quite a long time since a flavored blend has impressed me quite like this. :-)

One of my older 52Teas packets (a 2017 reblend, I believe). I’ve been missing my Chocolate, Hazelnut, and Strawberry Honeybush and figured this would probably be similar, and it is, minus the strong nutty flavor. I get the strawberry note, and a cocoa flavor, and even a subtle nuttiness that I’m assuming is coming from the honeybush. I’m not really picking out a vanilla note, but admittedly, that can be a hard flavor for me to peg with stronger notes in a cup. It’s very sweet and pleasant on a very rainy day that has flared my migraine head up terribly. I’m just happy it tastes so much like the tea I was craving so badly and scratched that itch for me.

This one is similar to the strawberry/chocolate/hazelnut honeybush that I know and love. The cocoa is sweet and flavourful, a little bit rich (especially with the freeze-dried strawberries in there). I don’t get as much vanilla as I would have liked, but I really can’t complain for a caffeine-free tisane with strawberries AND chocolate in it. The honeybush is amazing, as always (those honey notes are perfect for a dessert blend).

Loved this mix of strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla with lingering vanilla cream. And now it is gone.

And it’s a sip down!

Sipdown 77
(17 of 2019)

I remember trying this as an iced SBT many years ago and thinking that it was just ok, especially when comparing it to the Rainbow Sherbet, which I loved to pieces. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t work for me. The Neapolitan flavours in here are weak to begin with; the chocolate is weak while the strawberry is both weak and slightly artificial. The vanilla is hardly detectable. I normally like honeybush more than rooibos, but I’m not a fan of this one, especially when comparing it to the recent rooibos blends I’ve had from 52teas. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I find this base to be a little on the sour side. Yet I’ve had great luck with some recent honeybush blends, so go figure.

LOOOOOOVVE this dessert-y evening tea. It’s smooth. It’s mellow. It’s caffeine-free. And I swear the dry leaf smells like the chocolate/strawberry/vanilla of neapolitan ice cream. I barely have a sense of smell (which is a huge step up from the ZERO sense of smell I had before the aspirin desensitization at the Mayo Clinic) so if I can smell this, just imagine how lovely the scent would be for you!

As a side note, I haven’t had a 52Teas honeybush I didn’t like. Work today was a disaster. Really, a bad, bad day. First, I have an abscessed tooth. I’m scheduled for a root canal, but meanwhile I suffer. Second, my boss gave me a talking to. Not undeserved, but hard anyway. So I am so pleased I have lovely tea to come home to.

Sipdown (181/187)!

Thanks VariaTEA for the sample! This was on my wishlist, so it’s awesome to be able to cross it off! You always have so many 52teas blends to share; I greatly appreciate it since they can be so hard to get a hold of.

The first thing I notice about this one is the peppery honeybush base; it’s a flavour I really only get out of the base Frank uses and while I don’t dislike it I do find that it can be rather distracting from the other flavours in the tea. After the peppery base, I get a creamy strawberry and a chocolate flavour: but it’s weird because they don’t mesh with each other that well and they definitely don’t mesh with the base so the flavour notes of both are very fleeting and I can’t fully focus on them at the same time because there’s this huge line of distinction. As for the vanilla, it must be contributing to the creaminess of the strawberry; otherwise it’s pretty lost.

So this was a fun experience and an interesting tea to try; but it’s not something I’d want a whole pouch of (in fact, I’m probably content not trying it again) because it’s really not something I could sit down and relax with: all the competing flavours and the base are just much too distracting.

So this has been steeping for over an hour. In fact, it steeped for so long, my whales went back to black :(. Unfortunately, this can be oversteeped. It is coming off peppery in this cup, though that is a result of my prep and not a reflection of the tea. Nonetheless, I still have a lot more of this to prep properly so thank you Dustin!

In other news, how is it that when you cross the border, fat free whip cream goes from being 30 calories to merely 5 calories?