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A note about smell first, I guess. The dry tea leaves have a slightly fruity smell, but the brewed tea doesn’t smell like much of anything. Doesn’t really bode well for the taste, but I could be wrong.

Tasting it really hot, it doesn’t taste like much of anything either. It’s got a slight berry flavour, but I think it’s more from the leaves of the plant than the fruit, it’s got that sort of taste to it. I really wish it were a stronger fruit flavour, it’s bearable but not really much of anything as it is. I’m going to wait for it to cool off a little bit and taste again and maybe the flavour will be stronger. Mostly it just tastes like mediocre black tea right now.

Cooled down, the flavour is slightly stronger, but still nothing to write home about. This one might be better sweetened and iced, for those who like iced tea (I don’t). The berry taste seems to stand out more the cooler it gets. Still not as strong as I would like though, and the leaves carry more strongly than the berry flavouring.

Now this is really quite good, especially for being a tea with hibiscus in it. The orange flavour comes through clearly and it is only the smallest bit tart, easily taken care of by a bit of sugar or honey if you like that (which I do). I’ve liked quite a few of the teas I’ve gotten in this most recent Della Terra order. A good start to a relationship with this company, which seems to get good reviews all around.

Back to the tea, this is the best blood orange tea I’ve tried so far, much better than my previous try of the Adagio tea, though I’ve still got an entire 2 oz of that left. If I am in the mood for orange tea the next time I’m ordering, this will definitely be on my list.

So far I’m waiting for this to cool down to drink but so far it smells very appley. I’m a bit wary of this because I haven’t met a green tea I’ve liked yet but I keep trying.

This tastes extremely appley but I’m not really picking up any chocolate at all. I can taste the green tea though and although I think it accentuates the apple flavour well, I don’t quite like it, it leaves a strange, unpleasant taste along the back of my tongue and I still have a cup and a v=bit left to drink of it in this steep. One of the hazards of my new tea maker is that I csan only make a minimum of 2 cups worth at a time and I made 3 this time. I did make this with sugar but no milk for this cup and I think I’ll try with milk this next cup.

Making this as the first thing I’ve made in my brand new Breville Tea Maker! Which I will review when I get a handle on what it can do. Ahem.

When I was sipping this when it was really hot, I didn’t get much flavour except the black tea out of it at all, but as it has cooled, I’m getting much more chocolate with a bit of fruitiness which I guess is the raspberry. If you had asked me to name which fruit this was in a blind taste test, I don’t think I could have told you that this was raspberry, but it’s nice nonetheless.

I did add milk to this, and I think that next time I won’t because I think it’s dulling the flavours I get. Milk is always a crapshoot, I’m finding. Sometimes it enhances flavours and cancels out bitterness and sometimes it dulls everything until it just tastes like barely flavoured milk.

The only thing that is disrupting my tea experience right now is the fact that one of the cats is attempting to bring up a hairball a couple feet from the table, very loudly. But I won’t hold that against the tea :)

First off, I have no idea how long I steeped this, but the mug was still pretty hot when I remembered I was drinking this tea so it can’t have been for too too long. At least it’s an herbal, right? I also added more than a bit of sugar to both counteract the dreaded hibiscus and also to hopefully mask the rooibos taste that I really don’t like very much except for very specific instances. I’m currently hugging the tea mug because it feels very nice and warm on my hands and the building is cooler than normal here at work. I broke my purse today, the handle ripped out, so I’m hoping this tea is better than I’m anticipating, to make up for my cruddy day.

Drinking this, it isn’t horrible. There’s still a yucky rooibos undertone that I don’t like at all, but the fruit flavours are pretty strong with the sugar added and tart and fruity like they are supposed to be. I can definitely taste the cranberry and there’s some pomegranate in there too. I don’t think I’d like this tea at all without the sweetener.

This thing is pretty awesome. It heats up water quite fast and then it sings a little song when it is done. You can have it turn off for up to 10 hours and then it heats right back up automatically. I do wish that it had a longer standby setting than 10 hours (14 or something) but I’m glad it has one at all.

I put only filtered water in this and I think that’s what it says in the manual, not that I’ve read the manual in a really long time. You should rinse it out on occasion and that’s a bit of a pain to do, but this is otherwise a pretty fantastic water heater.

I’m so excited! I live in the Amazon Fresh delivery area around Seattle and this tea maker was there at $100 off! Just $200! I was so excited that I bought it even though I was just shopping for cheese logs and tomato soup at the time. By 9pm tomorrow, I will have it!

Smelling this dry, I get the chocolate and the strawberry, which smell very nice, but not much of the tea base. The wet leaves have a stronger smell of black tea as well as the chocolate and strawberry being a bit more subtle, but they aren’t mixing well in the smell, if that makes any sense.

Drinking this, I can taste the strawberry strongly upfront but not really any chocolate at all. It definitely tastes good, but more as a strawberry tea than a chocolate covered strawberry tea. I can taste the black base alright, not too strong, not too weak, definitely not bitter or astringent. I did add sweetener.

Overall a nice tea but I’m looking for more of a chocolate flavour than this. The rest of my sample is going in the swap pile.

This is definitely a sipping tea. When I sip it and let it linger on my tongue before I swallow, this is the most delicious of the chocolate teas that I have tried so far. A definite dark chocolate flavour with notes of vanilla in it. I did let it cool quite a bit before drinking and I only let it steep for 3 minutes so not all of the chocolate melted so I’ll try another steep after this. I did add a bit of milk.

The tea did taste weirdly bitter if I drank it at large swallows. I don’t know, the pace of it flowing across my tongue made it bitter or something? And the aftertaste was bad too. Dainty sips for this tea, definitely.

ETA: Second steep, added a bit of sweetener this time to see if it made a difference in the ‘drink fast’ taste and it did! Now it’s super delicious. A very nice dessert tea.

I was a little hesitant to try this first thing in the morning. I like sweet things all day long but I just drank a cup of hot chocolate (a little morning ritual) and eating some sweetened oatmeal and I was worried that the tea would be too bitter compared to that. To counteract that, and also bring out the caramel creaminess of the tea, I added some milk and sugar.

I can definitely smell the caramel in the brewed liquid. It’s quite strong actually and nice, ‘darker’ if that’s the word, than a little cube of caramel so I think that’s the black tea.

This tastes like burnt caramel, especially the aftertaste. The black tea base is quite strong and I can definitely taste it although it is an eensy weensy bit bitter, although that might be because I steeped it on the high end of the steeping times provided on the package. Altogether I like this tea enough to drink the rest of it, I think, but I probably won’t be getting it again.