Original Blend

This is so ubiquitously available in other parts of the world, I have felt a need to try it just so I can say I did. Thanks to Spencer, I have now been initiated.

And pleasantly so. Gave it a good long Monday morning I-don’t-wanna-deal-with-the-world steep. Side by side with a bag of Lipton, I’d say it’s a bit smoother, a scootch less acidic. Tried this cup straight up, but a little milk would be a nice accompaniment.

Though it isn’t easy to find in this part of the Midwest, it gets a vote here for “good pantry tea.” Hope yours is stocked well.

This tea is getting me through a cold commute and the unpleasant process of defrosting my car.

As a kid, I used to drink Lipton only when I was sick, or on rare occasions doused with sugar. My Grandpap reintroduced me to tea many years later, drinking Lipton, and occasionally bringing out Canadian Red Rose tea he would get when visiting his cousin in Toronto. He claimed that the Canadian Red Rose tea was better than the Red Rose sold in the US. So we would drink it, and I must admit that it really is better. So we would talk about almost everything, and he would play his Big Band music, watch British comedies and mysteries, and we would drink this tea. Paps is no longer with us, but I will always cherish the memories, and his influence on my life—and the tea!! :))

I usually drink this tea plain and steeped at 3:00-3:30, it is rather smooth, but bland when compared to better grades of tea. As an off the shelf supermarket tea, it is my favorite. If I steep it longer, sometimes I’ll add a dash of milk to soften it a little. I still drink this tea on occasion-once or twice a week sometimes-and remember Paps. Tonight I added a little bit of sugar like I used to years ago.

Tea drinking is an experience that should be fun and relaxing. If I rate this tea based on that and all the great memories, I’d have to give it 100. Based on flavor, it is about 61 to 64.

During the Holidays, however you celebrate them, remember to have a special cup of tea with loved ones, and create new memories; but, also try to remember all the positive people and memories that have influenced your life! :))

Cupped: Wed, December 14, 2011. Reviewed: Thu, December 15. 2011.

Pretty standard and not much to say other than a black plain bagged tea. It’s not unpleasant and doable in a pinch. It’s just not memorable or very bold or special either.

Haha restaurant tea….sigh

At least I found a place here in Toronto that brews marriage frere so that’s on the list of places to go soon :)

The August Tealog Catchup ! [23 tealogs remaining]

This tea was noticeable worse than Liptons to me. I don’t know why my Dad got this instead of his usual Liptons that is all he always drinks. Maybe they were out. I finished my cup but I decided not to drink it again anymore.

My boss drinks this by the bucket full iced, and it’s agreeable. He gave two boxes of this. Although, they were opened but full, so I have to wonder if he’s collecting the included seasonal figurines that are inexplicably absent. =D

This is a bit of a backlog from this morning.

Ok, so I got storm stayed without the tea. I know. Super horrible. I did have an emergency stash of tea at work, but I ended up staying with a co-worker who did not have any tea. I almost did not make it, I needed tea so bad.

So after having the shakes all night (ha ha), I went for breakfast at a restaurant as it was still storming and the roads were still closed. I got bacon, eggs, and potatoes – the best comfort food I could think of, and I ordered tea. I did not have high hopes of what I was going to get for tea, it ended up being the usual Canadian standard, Red Rose.

I had been tea-less for so long, that I gulped down the first cup. I just needed to get it in my system. I savoured my second cup over my bacon and eggs.

I would have wished for any other kind of tea, but I am glad I was able to at least get a cup of something. Looking back it was quite over steeped as the waitress put the tea bag in the pot before she brought it to the table. So it was pretty strong and thick, but still palatable. But at the time, I thought it could have been the best cup of tea I had ever had.

I am back home now, enjoying my endless cupboard of teas.

Red Rose Orange Pekoe and Pekoe Cut Black Tea really should have been the first tea that I reviewed here, since this was the tea of my childhood.

—Childhood? you ask. Just how young was I?

There’s a funny story there. It started with my first job: I spent the summer I was fifteen working for my aunt who owned a stable. The trainer, the barn manager, and all of the other stablehands were adults, and they all drank coffee. Since I was a young’un, they’d rinse out the coffee pot, refill it with plain water, and point me at the small stash of cocoa in the back of the office. Unsurprisingly, this was a real pain for everyone, and eventually I just took a cup of coffee, dumped in terrifying amounts of sugar and non-dairy creamer, and decided that it tasted pretty much the same (the water had never gotten particularly non-coffee-flavored) so what was the difference, right? And hey, I was a teenager, and if all of that caffeine made me jittery, nobody noticed a thing.

And then, at the end of summer, I left on vacation with my family. First day of vacation, we’re at the beach, of course it’s awfully bright. Second day, still bright, the headache is really setting in. I’m gulping lemonade by the bucketful and trying desperately to explain this agony to my mother. My mother, the caffeine-drinker of my immediate family, recognizes these symptoms. She extracts the story of the cocoa-coffee from me and suggests I go cold turkey. I explain the agony a little more. Since it is a shame to waste a vacation on withdrawal, she brews me some coffee. Third day, I spend the morning bounding gleefully across the sand dunes, then seek out my mother for another caffeine hit.

Let’s try weaning you off slowly, she suggests, and makes me tea. This tea, in fact. I doctor it up like the coffee with sugar and actual milk and am amazed to discover that not only does my headache go away, but this tastes good. I keep drinking it.

We get home from vacation. I keep drinking it.

(I go to college and shift up to coffee, then to expresso beans, then to caffeinated water. I don’t sleep much.)

In grad school, I return to my tea. I have, by that point, had many teas on many outings, but none of them are morning tea. Morning tea is Red Rose with milk and a bit of sugar.

Eventually, as I dropped out of grad school and began commuting to an office in the mornings, I let go of my childhood morning tea. But still, I remain fond and nostalgic. In my mind, this tea is served in at the kitchen table in a brown ceramic mug with the string of the teabag wrapped once around the handle; it’s milky smooth, not too sweet, extremely tasty, and just the right sipping temperature the entire time.

And yes, I still have fifteen or twenty of the ridiculous figurines. Somehow, more than a third of them are polar bears. Make of that what you will.

So I bought a box of this tea since I had only tried one teabag in the past. I actually really like this tea. It brews nicely and doesn’t get bitter. My husband particularly likes this tea. It doesn’t taste like lipton’s cardboard. It tastes somewhat different.