Blackberry Sage

The best thing about this tea is the smell. Really great blackberry aroma comes wafting from the tin and the brewed liquid. I tried two cups using my fancy new water kettle my gf just got me (kept the water warm for me!). The flavor seems to be more on the sage side than the fruity blackberry side. But I’m still not getting much from it. First time I tried about 4 mins steeping, then 4:30 the second time…not much difference. I feel like flavored/fruit teas have a hard time meeting my flavor expectations and continually come in below where I’d expect. Maybe I’m not as big a fruit…tea drinker as I thought ;)

Blah. Must be picking the wrong teas tonight. Great scent of blackberry but not much taste. Not smelling or tasting any sage. I think I will treat myself to some hibiscus tea that I love since I’ve had two mediocre cups.

My Wednesday night was the beginning of my climb out of a work-week funk (kicked off by the drive thru lady at Wendys accidentally giving the bf and I four chocolate frosties instead of two, and followed up by a good UTIOG sesh the next morning on the drive to work) I felt compelled to buy some tea while grocery shopping – just to celebrate. Keep in mind, the only loose leaf there was Twinnings – but RoT’s bags of blackberry sage sounded compelling!

As with their Vanilla Almond, the aroma right out of the can is powerful. The berry leads the way with the sage following softly behind it. Funny though, as soon as I start steeping, the roles reverse and it’s the sage I can smell quite distinctly with berry in the background.

Sipping, I get less black tea flavor than I was hoping for. All the flavors seem a little faint until the tea begins to cool. Then the berry is a very soft background flavor, the sage isn’t forefront, but kind of balances the tea by being everywhere in every sip at once – but not in an overwhelming way (though it does linger longer in the aftertaste than I’d like). It’s like when you’re cuddling up in a big down comforter that you’ve got all to yourself. It has that comforting, enveloping way of cozying up to the tea, rounding out the entire flavor – making the mouthfeel a little bigger and softer of a sensation than you may expect from a drink who’s liquid is comprised of only H2O. I like when a tea can do that. I just wish I could taste the actual tea […more].

The Republic of Tea has done a nice job of packaging and marketing. I do wish they would do more with loose tea tho. I might consider adding them to the vendor list. I frequently have customers mentioning their teas.

For a bagged tea the aroma and flavor is quite nice. I do get the sage. It is definitely a good combo with the fruity blackberry.
The brewing instructions on the can recommend 3 to 5 mins.
I used 1.5 and got the best flavor. IMO. Bagged teas with the small pieces of leaves infuse so quickly it is practically instant tea.

I got this in a swap from Ellen.

I love blackberries. This is the best time of year, because they tend to be “in season” in the grocery store.

The dry tea bags definitely smells like blackberries. More on the tart side. I don’t smell any sage.

The brewed tea smell reminds me of sweet tarts. Definitely get that not quite ripe blackberry taste.

The liquor has that kind of sweet tarts taste. There is sage in the background. There is a sweetness to the tea, but more of a tart sweetness than a sugar sweetness. Mostly, you can taste the black tea base. It is a bit artificial tasting.

This tea was on my shopping list for a long time, so I am happy I had the chance to get it in a swap. Thanks again Ellen.

I’m very familiar with The Republic of Tea tea bags, having tried a slew of different varieties last year before I entered the wonderful world of loose tea. I enjoyed all of the ones that I bought. I was anxious to see how the loose leaf versions compared.

I steeped the Blackberry Sage tea for five minutes at 212 degrees. The brewing aroma was incredible. It was very (or should I say, “berry”?) sweet and fruity. I couldn’t wait to see if it tasted as great as it smelled!

The brewed color of this tea is a golden amber. The flavor is fabulous! My first sip reminded me of Knott’s Berry Farm shortbread cookies. The taste is sweet and fruity without bitterness. The tea flavor undertones are subtle and supportive. A very nice aftertaste also lingers on my tongue. I imagine that this blend would also be terrific iced.

This is a very nice black tea. It isn’t the boldest black blend that I’ve tasted, but it really doesn’t need to be. The flavor is full and steady and delicious. That’s all I require for my afternoon black tea fix!

For once, a fruit tea that is not overwhelmed by hibiscus. I honestly like this. “Soft” is a good descriptor for the blackberry flavor. Its not biting me with berry flavor, but its there. This was better without sweetener. After adding agave nectar, it took on a fake candle wax kind of flavor.

“Teabags” you say? Yes, I thought I’d review a tea I had a couple years ago. “How can you remember what a tea was like two years ago?”. Well, I can’t remember every subtlety, but since I have purchased this tea several times (and don’t plan to purchase it anytime soon), I’ll give it my best shot.

The aroma of blackberries—and to a lesser extent sage—fills my sniffer with wonderful sensation. Even in the cup the aroma is very apparent. It is a good, decent cup of hot tea, with the flavors more pronounced as the tea cools. To my palate, the fruitiness of the blackberry is more noticeable, while the sage never lets you forget it is there. It’s kind of like the demure lady I notice at a party… me, trying not to stare, but at times unable to avert my eyes. It is a very compelling, delicious tea. I just wish there was a stronger sense of the base tea in this blend.

For hot tea I use one teabag per 8 oz cup, at 212 degrees for five minutes. Hot tea rating: 70. I use this tea mostly as a delicious iced tea using twice the amount of tea following the preparation below. As an iced tea I give this one a 75.

Smells very strong of blackberry. Much more mellow taste but still the main flavor. Initial blast of berry quickly gives way to a rather bland tea/sage combo – not sure how that is possible. Then the the syrupy berry aftertaste kicks in and lingers and lingers. Number 2 of 6 RoT’s to try. Hope they get better.

Stuck at work. Feeling pretty bleh about being at work and the long night of work ahead of me. Had a sample bag of this and gave it a whirl. It smelled great: strong blackberry fragrance with a touch of sage. Then, I got to tasting it….bleh. All of the flavors are very weak, including the underlying black tea. It isn’t offensive, but it has nothing to offer me either. I will not be buying this one. Alas, back to…you guessed it….work!

The aroma coming from the bag and the cup is great, but the flavor is disappointingly weak. I added cream, sugar and honey, which brought out the flavor some. It is especially disappointing because I like the idea od blackberry and sage together, and the what I can taste tastes natural. I just wish there was more of it. I don’t know if the problem is that they put too litlle tea in the bag, or too little flavoring, or if the tea base is inferior grade tea.

I’ve been drinking this tea for a few years now, I like it pretty well but I just finished the tin and I don’t intend to run out and buy any more soon. I am used to drinking my tea strong so I normally put two teabags in a cup. I like the balance of flavors here between the blackberry, the sage and the black tea. Not at all tart and also no hibiscus because it’s really not a favorite of mine. Sage is supposed to be good for people with asthma so I got it for drinking during the winter season.

If and when I am in precisely the right mood for this tea, it’s perfect. Unfortunately that moment comes across maybe once every couple/few months at best, and the rest of the time I really want something with more kick. The fragrance is amazing, truly lovely. Warm, earthy, summery, and sweet, it’d ROCK if only the flavor came across so well. I’m incredibly tempted to try this this in an ice tea blend with some lemonade. If I manage so and it’s any improvement I’ll have to update.

Lemonade update (random yes?): Flavor DOES seem improved upon with the addition of a lemonade. The tannins became more obvious, so used a higher ratio of lemonade to tea to compensate. Agave helped, but made it too sweet for me. Not so sure about the pairing, I think the lemonade trick probably works best with something like passion fruit. Worth a shot though.

I had this tea for breakfast this morning, with cream and sugar, and was quite happy with it. The scent of the tea is strong out of the tin, but brewing it tends to produce a mellow blackberry taste — not tart, but more like the flavor and sweetness you’d get from a blackberry pie rather than a fresh blackberry. The sage is a really lovely addition to the blackberry flavor. I don’t get a strong black tea flavor — and that’s just as well, since it turns out I don’t really like most black teas.

In the past, I’ve experimented with a range of brewing times — everything from swirling the bag until the water takes on color (say 1 1/2 minutes) to letting the bag steep until I’m done cooking breakfast (at least 8 minutes, probably more). It definitely gets bitter with longer steep times; I think a good steep time for a stronger flavor without the bitterness is probably around 3-4 minutes. I try to keep it to that time if I’m adding anything like honey, cream, or sugar. If I’m drinking it straight, I keep it to 2 minutes. I’ve also tried this tea iced, and I enjoy it that way.

I’ll probably continue to stock this tea for a long time, because it’s a comfort tea — perfect for me on my groggy, slow mornings or when I just need to curl up in bed with a book during a rainy day. Like most comfort foods, it might not be the best quality or have the most robust, complex, delicate flavors — but sometimes you just need a reliable, homey stand-by.

Smells delicious. Tastes like water with some lingering sweetness aka tastes like nothing. I can’t say for sure what kind of sweetness comes up. This isn’t tart or strong like most other fruit teas, which is a good thing since I don’t particularly like the strong tart tastes…. and I usually don’t like fruit teas. This one isn’t bad. It is very faint, and it is early morning and I don’t want to think. But I need to. Let’s see if this tea is enough for today! I have to work this Sunday! Nonetheless, I wouldn’t buy a can of this.

I actually had this last night but forgot to log it. The first time I had this tea hot, it was okay but nothing amazing. I decided to try it again, but iced to see if it was any better. What was I thinking? I should have remembered that there was a slight “off” taste to the hot version that turned into bitterness when chilled. I should also have remembered that adding sweetener does not help with the “off” taste but makes it a big stronger. So, I made this extra strong, added a bit of clover honey, and poured it over ice. It was probably one of the worst iced teas I have ever had in my life. I think it may be the sage in this blend that is responsible for the strange taste, I’ll have to remember not to select teas with sage in the future.

Every time I’ve considered getting something from The Republic of Tea I’ve looked at the price then recoiled from sticker shock. The only reason this tea made it into my cupboard at all was that I saw it while on vacation and shopping with my sister. For some reason, my usual penny pinching instincts went out the window and I started spending like a sailor.
This variety is only so so when served hot but I love it cold brewed. I like it straight with nothing added to sully it’s clean, refreshing, summery goodness.

I drink the majority of my tea cold brewed. Method: pretend you’re making sun tea, but instead of placing the jar in the sun, place it in the refrigerator instead. It diffuses nicely over the next hour or ten (depending on how strong you like it) and doesn’t get that nasty rancid taste that so often happens when the sun tea sits out in the heat.

I love Blackberry sage brewed this way. I like the scent, the way the sage keeps the blackberry from becoming too cloying or koolaid-y. I especially like that it’s an unusual combination and different from anything else in my cupboard, so it’s a great change of pace.

There’s a jar in my fridge and I’ve looked forward to it all morning. I finally poured myself some just before writing this. Ah, good things come to those who wait…

Adorable packaging but bland flavor. It’s a very basic black tea similar to any bagged tea from the grocery store. Almost impossible to find much flavoring otherwise, especially in the berry and sage department. Too weak for me to rate it higher or suggesting to purchase it. It does, however, have a cozy smell. For a memory recall, I first found this over 12 years ago now when working as an eighteen year old at Books A Million. I love their iced Blackberry Sage Italian Sodas with whipped cream and from working there began to get drawn to hot tea.

No one liked this tea… five people, all blech, and we tried it multiple ways—first exactly as instructed, then different steep times, sweetened and not… it just was a big cup of bleh to us. It was so sad, because it smells like it’s going to be great then ends up being an aromatic cup of bittersweet—literally a bit of bitter and a bit of sweet, almost muddy flavored water. The faint berry taste seemed very fake and candy-like… not in the good spicy candy taste that happens when vanilla and spicy chais mingle, either. It’s just bad stuff for us. Glad we got it on sale when a store was downsizing the shelves of tea for summer; otherwise we’d be out a lot of $ for what ended up being given away (none of our guests would go for it!)

Playing catch-up with my adventures in tea-scribbling today. Steepster, my dear, my dove, my duckie, why can’t you let us post-date entries?

Blackberry Sage was an experimental purchase for me. After thoroughly enjoying this very same tea at a restaurant — in iced tea form, which is important to note — I was determined to have it for myself. Home-steeping resulted in two observations: one, this tea is surely better iced, as icing tends to make flavors more subtle and sweet, and two, the blackberry flavor of this tea is a little too artificial for my taste. In a flavor nutshell, Blackberry Sage is more akin to drinking blackberry fruit juice than, say, drinking a black tea with an infusion of blackberries — and thus, as a hot tea, it’s not quite a favorite. The hint of herbal flavor here is a nice touch, though. I often wish I could use such notes in my own blends. (Alas, alack, a tea business I do not have.)

That being said, this can be a very nice choice when prepping one’s morning commuter mug. A workerbee can mug it up with this tea, add more (cold) water later in the day, and then enjoy a refreshing berry-flavored water. Thank you, muses of strange beverage ingenuity!

And now, my near-compulsory tea haiku:

Warm blackberry juice?
Summer can’t come soon enough.
Word to iced mother.