Red Vineyard Peach/Strawberry

Thanks for this one, too, Amanda!

I was overly intrigued about this one because of the ingredients!

black tea, freeze-dried red/yellow peach crunchy (concentrated peach puree, tangerines, concentrated strawberry juice, concentrated black carrot juice), freeze-dried strawberry pieces, safflower.

At first I didn’t really know what I was smelling but I knew it was nice and pleasant and fruity! The flavor was very nice…strawberry and peach, mostly. Once it cools a bit I could taste the tangerine more, too.

sidenote…I would love to try a black carrot flavored black tea…or maybe white tea???

Anyhow…the flavor in this one was really REALLY tasty on my tongue. I would love to try this one again and maybe even purchase some for my tea cabinet.

Juicy! YUM!

I had been drinking this last night, I did a lazy cold steep on it. Some is still left so I’m eating a real peach with it. I saw something last night say refrigeration makes them less tasty, which I think is a lie. This one is tasty, really juicy, and oh they are so much better cold.

So anyway this tea is odd because it doesn’t have peach in it, it has “peach crunchy” according to the bag. It’s made from pureed peach, tangerine, strawberry juice, and carrot juice. It still pretty much tastes like peach though, maybe a lot sweeter. Then the other strawberry pieces also help with that. There’s a bit of a berry flavor, but it’s mostly peach.

This bag got pummeled pretty badly by UPS, who made it look like the box was dropkicked by an elephant. I’m confused because Teavana sends stuff UPS, and I’ve never gotten a box that looks so horrible, and they’ve dented a few of my DavidsTea boxes but not to the point of causing damage. Both of those companies ship from further away than ESP Emporium. It’s so weird. It seems there’s more dust than usual because of it, so I’ll really probably be sticking to cold steeping this one. It’s perfect for iced tea anyway.

Thanks to momo for this sample!

I initially got a whiff of a grapey aroma from the dried leaves (which made sense as it has “vineyard” in the name, but it doesn’t much taste like grapes… and I see they aren’t even an ingredient, haha. Once I get past the lack-of-grapes bit, though, I can taste quite a nice fruity tea! The primary flavour I’m getting is peach, I think, not really strawberry, but it’s fairly good. Very little black tea flavour, other than some astringency, but that may be because I used a pretty short infusion time.

While this tea is pretty tasty, unfortunately it’s reminding me too much of some sort of alcohol (no idea what, though), and I’m finding that offputting enough that I wouldn’t pick this up myself. Not so offputting as to not finish the cup and later, the rest of the sample, though!

I want to like this. I want to like this so much. momo who sent this to me in trade seems to, as does the other reviewer and yet while I do kind of like this in some ways, other ways I really do not.

If I sip this slowly, lukewarm, this tea isn’t too bad. Taken one sip at a time, just at the tip of my tongue tasting it before I swallow, this tea is pretty nice. Very peachy and a bit of strawberry.

On the other hand, when my tea gets this cold, I tend to drink it much faster than that, because I need the use of my hands and can’t be holding a tea mug for a long time at a time so I gulp it, and that’s where it gets not so good. When I drink this fast, there is such an artificial aftertaste left behind that I just shudder. It’s completely a turn off. I don’t like it at all. Of course, this tells me that I should just sip it slowly to drink it, but I’m much more impatient than that. I’ll sip a little and gulp a little and it takes me about an hour to get through a mug of tea even with the gulping so just sipping would take all day and I don’t have time for that. There’s other teas to drink. So I’ll give this a middle of the road rating and see if it catches my fancy to drink again some time or if I’ll give it away. I’m so conflicted.

A nice tea, tasting mostly of peach. A slightly bitter (black-tea) aftertaste, maybe I steeped it a titch too long. But some other aftertaste, too, that I can’t put my finger on – a little tart, maybe the hint of tangerine.

I followed the package instructions, which say 1 HEAPING tsp per 6 oz (versus 1 level tsp, as written above) — and that’s a big difference — so maybe I made it a bit too strong.

Anyhow, I found it was good, but not a favourite.
(Thanks, Starfevre!)