Wild Sweet Orange

This herbal tea was available at the conference when they set out the coffee/tea, so I decided to give it a try. Um… no. Just no. It tastes like orange-flavored Tums, complete with chalky mouthfeel. I’m not even sure how that happened, based on the ingredients list. I was nervous about the licorice root because I don’t always love that ingredient, but I can’t even taste/feel its presence. Just tart, orange-y, vaguely chalky unpleasantness.

Sipdown! (2 | 191)

Cold brewed.

This is… interesting. I’ve been feeling slightly under the weather for a couple of days, so I’ve been taking Emergen-C vitamin C chewables. This reminds me of those. Very acidic and tart fake orange. Definitely tasting the citric acid.

It’s not completely undrinkable, but not something I would want to have again either.

Another tea from Amy, a little bit a celebration tea (I have “celebrated” with Classic Black by Battler) Thank you! And now I bet you are wondering why I am celebratin. No, it’s not birthday… that’s in 10 days. But I am celebrating that I have passed last course and now only finals are remaining! They will be held in February 2023, a little postponed from June 2021, I know, but I am glad I can go there. Postponed because my unsucessful exams before… but now I have everything done, but defending the thesis (it seems its ages since I wrote it) and the oral finals.

But back to this tea… I am puzzled to read such a negative tasting notes. Yes, when dry the bag smells bad. Indeed artificial, medicinal, “tang” like, and overall not so pleasant. But when brewed, and I think I did longer than 5 minutes as on the outer wrapping, it delivered pretty nice hot orange drink. I never had orange from wild, so not sure if they (but surely they do) do taste different than store-bought oranges. It was quite mouthcoating and mouthwatering taste. If I could reproduce this tea with its flavours as ice tea, it would be great (although today we had only around 22°C (72°F) with strong wind gusts). I am quite happy with this tea…maybe they tweaked the recipe?

Sipdown (1688)!

So, one of the hotels we stayed at in LA had this sort of “Tazo Tea Bar” in the hotel rooms with some different Tazo tea bags. I obviously brought all of my own tea with me for the trip, but I realized there were a couple flavours in this bar that I hadn’t actually tried and so, being the good tea taster I am, I pocketed one of each that I had yet to taste.

Queue a few night ago, when I steeped this one up. It was on the same day that I drank the cold brewed Tea & Toast from Bird & Blend, and if you’ve read that tasting note then you know I was experiencing some pretty major congestion related issues with tasting. So, I sipped on this cup and I could VERY FAINTLY taste hints of orange and the sweetness of the licorice root in the finish but it was very much just a shadow of what I’m sure the tea should have actually tasted like.

So, my efforts to build a more comprehensive familiarity with Tazo’s selection were a little bit for nothing. I will have to try to find another tea bag to pocket elsewhere and taste again in the future…

One of my favorites from Tazo. Have been drinking this for years. Is incredibly potent both hot and cold. Orange essence and rind with tangy hibiscus. I buy this in bulk.

I love this tea. I love the tartness and strong orange flavors. A wonderful staple in my pantry every winter.

This tea is extremely strong, in terms of the citrus flavor. The name is accurate— the orange in this is pretty wild! The tea is fairly sweet, rather than tart. I am not a fan of this as a hot tea, but it is ok when cold-brewed and sipped cold on a warm day. It does have almost a cleaner-like taste to it, probably because the citrus is so overpowering. There is also a somewhat bitter aftertaste, almost like what you would get if you bit into an orange peel.

Tazo! What the devil! If they ever reformulate this to omit or substantially reduce the citric acid, we’ll talk again, but for now I’ve got to condemn this. What a baffling choice to include that stuff. There’s hints of genuine sweet and bitter citrus notes, and this smells like orange zest, but it tastes like someone found a way to re-purpose the sour ‘sand’ that inevitably falls off of sour fruit gummies and collects in the corners of the bags.

Tazo’s Wild Sweet Orange tea is delightfully sweet, tart and astringent. Whether hot or iced, it is one of my favorites.

This tea is clearly a controversial one given its less than nice reviews. I’m going to start by saying that I’m really not a fan of this tea, especially not hot, although I feel like some kind of iced tea would be cool. This tea steeps obnoxiously quickly. I literally had it in my cup for less than a minute and it was already too sour. Going by the ingredient list, this tea has a lot of stuff I like in it, like licorice root, lemongrass and rose petals, but the combined sour and bitter tastes from the hibiscus and orange essence make the citrusy bitterness so overpowering that the subtly of the other ingredients get completely washed out. In other words, it’s not a subtle-tea (haha I’m funny). But yeah, I think I’ve mentioned I’m not a huge citrus person, and this is a prime example of a tea I would not go for. I think the idea of this tea is nice, but they super overdid it on the orangey flavours and it didn’t give the other flavours a chance to work together. Literally it would taste the same if you just steeped a really unripe orange, peel and all, in hot water. eeugh. So yeah. this tea was a disappointment, not because I don’t like it, but because with a little tweaking I probably could like it.