teataku

Oh, dear. I opened my sample bag to make a pot of this for the hubby and me, and was smacked in the nose by the smell of MEDICINE. I think it may be the rooibos and the honey together producing that smell, but I almost couldn’t get past it, it was so strong. The berries just weren’t helping enough to mask the intense medicinal scent. We let it steep for about 4 minutes, I suppose, while I stayed far away…

I gotta be honest. It may be the pregnancy doing this to me (third trimester, yay!), so while I can only relate what I smelled, it’s up to you, dear reader, how seriously you take my opinions on smell. I have noticed certain things smelling a little off from what they smelled like before, but not everything.

Anyway, more recently I have found myself liking rooiboses less and less, and so I can’t say I was looking forward to this one, but I had wanted to try it so badly, I figured I’d better go through with it now that I have it.

So, with all that said, on to the tea itself. After it cooled enough to drink, the medicinal smell had dumbed down quite a bit, which was a relief. I still couldn’t quite smell the berries. My first sip wasn’t that impressive, but after a few sips I was finding that the honey did actually cover some of the rooibos flavors that I’d been shying away from lately. Rooibos just tastes too sharply metallic for me to really get into it anymore, and I can’t tell if it’s my tastes actually changing, or if this is just a pregnancy thing. Anyway, it’s definitely a well-blended tea- the more it cools, the more hints of strawberry and blueberry I get. I’m wondering how this would do iced.

I added a little milk halfway through the cup, but the tea had cooled so much that this hardly made a difference. Might try that earlier on next time and see what happens. Anyway, in overview, I’m not saying it’s my favorite, but I can definitely tell it’s a well-balanced tea that ended up being rather enjoyable.

As a side note, the hubby suggested that perhaps I should try to get more green rooiboses, since they don’t seem to offend me (I ADORE Teavana’s Rooibos Peach Bloom). I think an experiment is in order… Anybody got any good ones to suggest?

Wow! Peach-Y! I already have a peach black tea, so when this one came in my happy bag, I wasn’t all that excited about it. However, when I opened the bag and got THAT aroma… it had my full attention. It was like someone stuck a fresh peach right into the bag with the tea. And it was clearly a WHITE peach aroma, very distinctly, which earned it extra points. :)

The brew did not disappoint AT ALL. As I was sipping, I could almost taste the flesh of the peach. The peach flavor even went through that odd morphing of flavor that real peaches do—the flesh tastes different as you travel inward from the skin to the pit. All of those nuances were represented in there. Thoroughly impressive!

No notes yet.

Tea of the morning. :) Prepared black, with a little less sugar than normal. This tea didn’t smell like it needs much sweetening.

The loose leaf is VERY marzipan! I’m not a fan of the texture of marzipan, but I love the smell, so I didn’t mind. I also smell the almond, and a little of the flower petals. My husband was very intrigued by the candied violets, which are present only sparingly in HUGE chunks. I made sure to get one of those in the infuser. :) After steeping, the black tea smell comes through to bind all those scents together. The marzipan is definitely present still, while the almond seems to have faded a little bit. Wonder if this foretells anything for the taste.

In the first few sips, YES, there’s marzipan in there all right. The candied violets are there in the flavor as well. However, I’m not getting a very almond-y taste. Despite the fact that marzipan is MADE from almond paste, it never tastes very much like almonds to me, so I guess I was hoping that this tea would have more almond flavor—after all, there are almond pieces galore, along with the marzipan. I do like that the floral notes come through; after all, the name of the tea is Amandine ROSE.

The overall effect is a very creamy, sweet brew, with a somewhat astringent aftertaste. I was hoping that this would be an adequate replacement for my ever-dwindling supply of Almond Biscotti, which Teavana has discontinued, but it doesn’t look like it holds the same appeal for me. I won’t be having this one with shortbread or scones anytime soon. I will, however, drink it when I’m looking for something sweet but not fruity or caramel-y.

Backlogging… again. I made this tisane Sunday night, per request from the hubby. The smell from the bag is a little hard to figure out. It’s DEFINITELY a rooibos, but beyond that, I can only smell little hints of flavoring here and there. There doesn’t seem to be a very even stuff-to-rooibos ratio; just a few pink peppercorns, cinnamon bits, and cardamom pods peeking out at you here and there.

I had to make this one to go, because I had a class to go teach that evening. After sipping it a couple of times in the car, I pondered that I couldn’t really detect anything ‘tropical’ in this tisane. I wanted to… but it wasn’t strong enough. I can see in the ingredient list that it’s got some orange flavoring, but I didn’t get it at all. The flavor of the rooibos—which was good quality rooibos, don’t get me wrong—just took over everything, even the peppercorns. I did get a hint of cardamom, but not enough for me to call this a chai flavored tisane. The name sounds fascinating, but the flavors just aren’t there, and I’m afraid I don’t like just straight rooibos flavor enough to give this one a very high rating.

Tea of the morning backlog. I was looking for a chai, and we’re running ghastly low on my favorite chai, and plus, this chai had been on my shelf for a while. Apparently, it had been there too long, and I, having not stored it properly slaps self on wrist didn’t help.

So, long story short, it didn’t really end up tasting like chai. It didn’t even really taste like a decent quality black tea, sad to say. I noticed, as I was putting it in the infuser, that it was a CTC type black, so that probably had something to do with it. I more than half blame myself for this bad experience, firstly because I didn’t drink it as quickly as I probably should have, and secondly because I didn’t take care to store it properly. However, some small part of me thinks that it should still have tasted more like chai than it did. Like, the piece of king cake that I had this morning as part of my breakfast tasted more like cinnamon than this tea did. Anyway, meh. It served its function to a certain degree, in that it did keep me warm on the drive to school this morning. :)

All right, I’ll admit it, this tea is nothing special. The aroma of the steeped tea is very much like Lipton’s orange pekoe, although, being pregnant, my sense of smell may be off. Can’t really smell any of the green or oolong at all (even though I can VERY clearly see them in the tea bag—one thing I do have to give this tea props for is making you visually aware of what’s in it, if that counts for anything). However, the teas that they included in the blend must either be not very fresh or not very high quality… or both, I suppose. I tried to steep it at a lower temperature this time, to see if the green/oolong flavors would come out a little more. I gave it a scoop and a half of sugar, but nothing else.

As it cools, I do begin to smell a little of the green tea. Still no oolong.

In the first few sips, I get a bit more of an English Breakfast instead of orange pekoe flavor, with some Dragonwell-like astringency in the aftertaste. I’m glad that it doesn’t taste as Lipton-y as it smells, because I would probably throw it out if it did. As it cools, I can detect a few whispers of oolong here and there, but not enough to say that it really becomes present. It’s kind of like the middle child of the three—surrounded on both sides by the tasty and lovable youngest and the responsible, take-charge eldest. It can be hard for the middle child to get noticed sometimes, and I sympathize completely. However, these teas didn’t blend themselves, and since the middle child is actually my favorite of the three… I’d like it to shine a little more.

Since this tea was a Christmas gift from some cousins of mine, I’ll definitely drink it without complaining. Overall, it’s a rather satisfying, if rather run-of-the-mill, experience. Sometimes I’m not picky about complexity of flavor or quality, and when those moods strike, this will be the tea I go for.

Backlogging, again.

The hubby and I decided to experiment with making hash browns from scratch Sunday morning, and since I did a lot of the cooking, he picked the tea to go with breakfast. He selected this one, which I would never have thought of as a breakfast tea. Surprisingly, I liked it very, very much! We had sausages with the hash browns, and so it was the combination of all those savory/smoky flavors with the earthy sweetness of this tea that made breakfast a complete success!

I honestly don’t get the butterscotch flavor unless I’m really looking for it (which isn’t a whole lot of the time). However, the caramel is there in full force, and the pu’erh is a complex enough flavor that I don’t mind not having the butterscotch. I don’t miss it. It steeps to an interesting reddish color, with hints of purple/magenta, especially when milk is added, which I did (that’s just how we do it—if it’s a black tea getting drunk for breakfast, it’s going to have milk in it). Anyway, been a while since I had this tea, and I’m glad the hubby dug it out! :)

Backlogging from a couple of mornings ago. My mom got us this tea as a part of her present to my hubby (which was a cast iron tea warmer ^_). We tried it one evening and liked it pretty well, but I always give a tea at least two tries before I pronounce a verdict, just as a failsafe. (I probably should give it more trials than that, but I’m not sure I have the patience or perseverance.)

Anyway, I was very enticed by the smell of the tea—I love sour cherry, and this tea smells pretty much exclusively of that flavor. While I am generally, on principle, opposed to one-note-flavor teas, I was intrigued about the bamboo and decided to look for it more this time (I hadn’t known it was in there the first time we tried the tea, and so I wasn’t looking for it).

Well, I couldn’t find the bamboo. I’m not certain bamboo even has a flavor when steeped in hot water, so I couldn’t really be sure… but I know what bamboo tastes like, so I was sort of looking for that woody, mildly celery-like flavor, and I couldn’t really find it. Nor could I find any of the other fruits mentioned in the ingredients, except the cherries. Not even the hibiscus, which is a fairly familiar flavor to me, as it’s in lots of other teas I have. As far as the flavor of the tea goes, I could tell that there was a middling-quality green tea in there, but that was about as far as it went. I’m not saying this tea was a let-down, but it probably won’t turn into a favorite. It’ll get drunk, but probably not re-bought. I think I will give it another trial, since I was on the fence about it the second time around. More to come.

This tea is by far the best blend of spicy and fruity I’ve ever found. It gives the impression that you’ve popped a Red Hot, candied ginger, dried pineapple, and maybe a couple of other dried fruits into your mouth. The ginger flavor is really what ties it all together for me. Delicious. :3

I’m so sad that Teavana has discontinued this tea. If there’s anyone out there who knows of a tea that’s similar to this one, please let me know! I don’t really have any other options for spicy and fruity at the same time (besides blending teas, to which I will have to resort if I can’t find a substitute for this one when it’s gone).

Mmm, a great tea to finish the day with. I’m sticking to our tried-and-true teas more and more nowadays, because I just don’t have time or energy to devote to trying new ones lately. I do have a few new ones to try, courtesy of IrishBreakfastLass and darby, and I will get to them, but for now, with as cRaZy as life has been, it’s enough for me to just make the teas I know I like. I feel like sticking to something familiar will help me deal with all the crazy. :) Like the mound of research papers I have to grade before the night is out. Onward and up!

My husband broke this one out last night when we arrived home from singing in a Christmas concert. We were both exhausted, but not quite ready to go to bed. This tea was pretty much the perfect ending to a not so perfect day. (I came home and discovered that my cat had peed on my tree skirt. Instead of being greeted by the briskly inviting smell of pine needles, I got hit in the face with the aroma of cat pee.)

This tea is both invigorating and calming at the same time, which is fairly typical of green teas. I believe my husband said this was the fourth or fifth infusion that he’d done with these particular leaves (and it may have been higher than that, I don’t quite remember). Anyway, this tea is great for multiple infusions, as anyone who’s familiar with it will know.

Got this in a swap from darby. :) So glad I did! My husband made this for us when it was rather late, and we wanted something to sip while watching a movie. I think what I love best about this tea is how powerful each flavor is! The brew smells mostly of ginger, but as you sip, you really do get the flavors in the order they’re in in the title—first the kiwi, very juicy, then the lime, and then the ginger, making a tangy finish. I love it, even if I’m not sure I’ll be in the mood for it all the time. Again, I’m very grateful for a chance to try it! I’ll be logging this one again. :3

No notes yet.

Thanks to IrishBreakfastLass for this little tidbit! I was honestly expecting this to be a black tea, so much that I didn’t realize it was a rooibos until I was actually steeping it. It turned out to be an extremely pleasant surprise! There wasn’t much pumpkin flavor, I’ll be honest, but it wasn’t quite just a spice tea, either. It was somewhere in between. I’m quite okay with it not being a very pumpkin-y tea. The rooibos filled in some flavor where the pumpkin notes were missing, making it taste more like a pecan or walnut spice tea. Very delicious, and I will be looking out for this one to see if maybe I can snag some at a store somewhere!

Thanks to darby for this tea! Got it recently in a swap, and I was excited to try it.

The loose leaf smells very much like raspberry, but the full spectrum of the raspberry flavor doesn’t really come out in the brew. Most of what I get is a tart sensation laid over some decent quality black tea. Perhaps I needed to sweeten it more… I will try that next time I make this. Not saying I like it, not saying I don’t, just reserving judgment. :)

I had rather a bad morning, gastronomically, so once it looked like the worst was over, I made myself some of this tea with a half scoop of dried spearmint. I drank it unsweetened, and it turned out to be a pretty good balance. I couldn’t really speak to the quality of this tea by itself, because, well, I haven’t really tasted it by itself yet. That’ll be another tasting note on another day. I have quite a bit of this, because I bought it in a package of three teas that were all on sale, and all of the tins were filled to the brim (altogether, this is probably around 6 oz. of tea, which means I’ll have plenty of opportunity to play around with this one!). The spearmint did help my stomach, which was what I was going for. Verdict: success!

I went to this tea again this morning, ‘cause I wanted something that would give the illusion of a flavored black tea but not actually have any distinguishable non-tea flavor. (After rereading that sentence, I realize that it doesn’t really make much sense, but that’s the best way I can think of to explain my mood… xP) I just wanted something not quite so heavy as a straight black, but I wasn’t ready to commit to any one (or even two) flavoring(s). Even Earl Grey Creme, my dearest morning friend, smelled too strongly of cornflower to me. (I guess this is what pregnancy does to you… makes you lose your blinking mind.) So anyway, this tea fit the bill, unnecessarily long story short.

It’s very nice with milk and a little sugar (the usual amount, two of Teavana’s “tea spoons,” which are not real teaspoons but rather about 2/3 tablespoon).

No notes yet.

I’ve been avoiding this tea for a while. Not sure why, just haven’t been in the mood. I tried it once after I bought it, and I dunno… the flavors just didn’t quite sit right. I think this tea and I are a better fit now. We’re both a little older, more experienced… xD

The pineapple flavor has definitely mellowed since it was fresh out of the package. It’s very light now, and the cake-y flavor can come out more. I like how somehow there’s also that hint of caramelized cherry in there. I don’t think it’s my imagination, either.

I tried it sweetened and unsweetened this morning, and I like both! The fruit and cake flavors do come out more in the sweetened one, but that’s to be expected. I’ll know to go unsweetened when I’m looking for mostly green tea flavor with a hint of fruit and flavoring.

Overall, this tea is perhaps not for everyone, especially not if you are not fond of pineapple. The sencha is pretty good quality, and the pineapple does not take over everything else, like I’ve seen it do in other teas. Probably won’t restock this one, but hey, then I can move on to some of the other teas on my wish list… :D

This is definitely the tea I wanted this morning! Normally, I get up and have to ponder and sniff and deliberate before I find a tea that I am in the mood for. Today, my palate said “That one” without even having to start that process.

This tea is just so pleasant and chocolatey. It’s a little chilly in my house this morning (outside it’s in the 50s, which is a very nice surprise, considering where I live), and this beautiful black tea warms me from head to toe. I decided to have some bacon to go with it, which may have been a mistake, since it was peppered bacon and the pepper is kind of taking over my mouth right now… but it’ll pass, because bacon doesn’t last long in front of me. I decided to add some honey and cream to the tea(I know, it’s a Chinese tea, I just really like my black teas British style… sue me). It’s very malty and like drinking very high quality semi-dark chocolate… which is making me want to go to World Market and get some. Might have to make a stop there today sometime…

Having this tea this morning with some wheat toast and blood orange marmalade. :) The vanilla flavor comes out more than the pear, I’m afraid… but I could probably guess that pear is a difficult flavor to detect anyway. I love eating the fruit, though, so I was really excited when I saw this tea in a sampler pack from Harry & David. Omg, that store makes me poor. D:

Anyway, it definitely is a wonderfully light black tea (despite the fact that I steeped it a bit longer than I meant to), with some delicious fruity notes that I suppose could be the pear. It just doesn’t scream “I AM A PEAR TEA” at me. Still tasty, though. :3

In my latest bagged tea drinking endeavors, I came across this one when my husband and I were about to leave the house but we wanted something to take with us. I asked him what he was in the mood for, and he said, “Surprise me.” So this tea came out. I brewed it, added sugar and milk, and then let him smell it. He wanted to try and guess what it was. I was expecting him, based on the kind of tea it is, to mistake it for chai, but surprisingly, the pumpkin flavor and aroma was enough to distinguish it (which I found out immediately after by smelling it myself).

I really like the pumpkiny-ness of this one, even if it may be a little artificial. I didn’t get a big artificial vibe from the smell and the taste, so it didn’t bother me. It tasted like pumpkin, the stuff from the can that you get in the grocery store. Some people might prefer it to taste the way fresh pumpkin smells, but I actually am not as fond of the smell of fresh pumpkin. I am, however, fond of this tea, and I will probably bring it back out sometime in the near future… if I can get over whatever pregnancy funk is preventing me from wanting tea right now. This being my first pregnancy, I don’t know how long this nausea thing is supposed to last, but whenever it wants to quit is fine with me. xP

I’ve actually had this one for a while, but I have been sorely neglecting my bagged tea stores for quite some time. It’s just that my loose-leaf ones are so much tastier, that I tend to gravitate toward them, understandably. Still, my boxes and boxes of tea bags are taking up space in the hubby and I’s new apartment, so I have vowed that I will focus my attention on them until I’ve at least drunk our stores down so that they will all fit on the bottom shelf of our tea shelves.

In my browsing of our 30+ boxes of tea, I came across this one. I know, I know, it is not winter, and I am not ill, but that doesn’t mean I can’t drink spiced tea or chamomile—and this one happens to be both. I have liked this tea for a long time—it being Twinings makes it hard to dislike—and am glad to have rediscovered it. :)