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This is the tea that I keep bringing back. We’ll get rid of it because we aren’t drinking it, and then I’ll get a sudden craving and have to have some. But when I needed something hot and spicy and comforting, it was the perfect cup.

I think I’ve had this one sitting around in a Ziploc a bit too long. I was very disappointed in this cuppa. The first sip was surprisingly flavourful, almost like a blend instead of a straight tea – reminded me of Christmas. That taste quickly settled into a sort of musty flavor, faintly vegetal, very flat and uninteresting. Sad.

This is a pu’erh. It’s lightly flavoured, sort of a faint potpourri of floral notes and a bit of sweetness from the sugar. It’s not bad, it’s not great. It’s very forgettable, unfortunately – but looks very pretty, very twinkly.

The whole world (of Steepster) has heard my wife’s story about my mother and “orange you glad” puns, so I won’t repeat it. What I will repeat is that this tea is fucking amazing. Like just unbelievably good. Like . . . I just don’t have the words to adequately express that this tea completely surprised me in a very good way. We’ve all had orange pu’erh before. It’s a good combination of flavours – the sweetness and tartness of orange, the dark chocolatey richness of the pu’erh. But this is like a sweet tangy herbal perky punch, but with that dark undercurrent of pu’erh. And caffeine. Don’t forget about the caffeine. I just had to keep smelling it. So good. Sooooooo good.

I’ve had this tea for so long that the chocolate chips have all bloomed. Still tasty! Underleafed, though, that was a mistake.

Sipdown of the tiny amount of this I had left at work! It was so cold today – so very cold – and I spent probably the first three and a half hours of my work day in the warehouse, so I needed something warm and spicy. But mostly warm. Waaaarm. This definitely hit the spot. It’s a nice blend, sweet and spicy and not overwhelmingly rooibos-y. Should have reached for something more caffeinated.

I work with a lot of Jewish people.

That isn’t really relevant to my review, but my manager was pretty sure I was Jewish for a while because I was drinking this and knew the names of a bunch of stuff like the shofar and mezuzah (spoiler alert: not Jewish, just a nerd). I just love this tea. It’s so sweet and creamy, a little bit of cake and a little bit of marshmallow. I was feeling lazy today at work and didn’t use the kettle to boil my water, I used the boiling water tap on the coffee machine – but after a two-minute steep, it was neither scorched nor bitter! Yay! I think a shorter steep time would benefit it, though, leave more of the creaminess in there.

By the way, I review so erratically and unevenly, but I do keep a running list of teas I’d like to review at some point. Unfortunately I’m a little backed up. In the queue:

Elf Help
Coconut Oolong (Spice & Tea Exchange)
Santa’s Secret
Osmanthus Oolong (Teavivre)
Strawberry Oolong + Milk Oolong (both Teavivre)
Hand-picked Autumn Tieguanyin (Verdant)
Orange Ginger Oolong (Whistling Kettle)
Stormy Night
Ceylon Star
Mango and Bergamot (Whittard’s)
Eight Candles (Della Terra)
Peppermint (Tim Horton’s)
Lemon Grove (Tea Haus)
Alpine Punch
Yellow Dragon
Candycane Lane (Celestial Seasonings)
Honey Ginseng (Celestial Seasonings)
Spice is Right
Eggnog
Genmaicha (Whittard’s)
Coconut Oolong
Seven Legends (River Tea)
Gingerbread Rooibos
Mint to Be
Earl Green (Tea Haus)
Apple Custard
Maple Sugar
Bubbie’s Baklava
Cool Cucumber
Anti V-Day Treat (Della Terra)
Alpine Punch

Four for you, David’s, you go David’s. Knocking it out of the park with these oolong blends. I mean seriously. Oolong blends tend to run in a few generic lanes: lemon, orange, ginseng, honey, maybe some of the mellower fruits like pomegranate and fig. But then Bubbie’s really blew it up with that sweet blend more like what you would find in a green.

And then Yogi Berry. It was love at first sniff. Totally juicy, very refreshing, just a little bit of earthiness from the oolong. Beautiful tea. Beautiful. Definitely going to be stocking up on this one, and sneaking some out of the house to join my stash of tea at work.

After our huge gorging on Chinese the other night, I felt a little greasy, little icky. So of course I had leftover Chinese for lunch the next day and immediately regretted it. I have reams of straight oolongs in my tea drawer at work, but this just hit the spot. It’s lemony without being tart or overly sweet, and when it starts to cool it turns to a great mellow oolong.