Della Terra Teas

As I would expect from Della Terra, this tea tastes exactly like name suggests. It’s quite lovely. I’m still a much bigger fan of the complex flavors and textures of a high quality pure tea, but lately I’ve gotten more into flavored teas. This tea was done well. Nothing artificial tasting about it.

It’s such a beautiful day here today, nice and sunny with Carolina blue skies and a slight breeze. We had lunch at The Secret Tea Room and it was wonderful, as always. They have the best coconut macaroons and I ordered some to bring home. I would love to take a nap right now but need to go walk my mom’s dogs and check on the kitties at Petsmart. And we’re going somewhere to watch the basketball games tonight. I am hoping this tea will wake me up a little!

This tea smells like sweet marshmallow. I can smell it before I even open up the package! The flavor is malty with a sweet chocolate finish. There is a rich aftertaste of s’mores – the taste of it is dead on with an actual s’more. I really love that you can taste the malty, somewhat strong black tea at first and then there’s the sweetness of the s’mores flavor left lingering at the end. With a little milk and sweetener this becomes a silky smooth cup. I am seriously loving this tea right now! This is every bit as good as David’s Toasted Marshmallow, if not a tad bit better because it doesn’t seem quite so artificial. My fiancee is sitting right next to me, happily sipping away also, so it’s a winner for both of us!

Good thing I love this tea – I just received a swap package from whatshesaid and forgot she was sending some of this, and I also ordered it as one of my try-me packs. It will probably all be gone tomorrow! Thank you, whatshesaid! :)

-Dry blend has medium black tea leaves and twigs with small marshmallows, small chocolate chips and fine graham cracker crumbs.
-Dry leaves smell like sweet marshmallows with a hint of chocolate. Tea liquor aroma is of black tea, marshmallows and milk chocolate.
-Tea liquor is a cloudy medium brown color.
-Malty flavor with a sweet chocolate finish. Rich s’mores aftertaste.
-Best with sweetener. Milk optional.
-Excellent tea. A silky smooth cup of sweet marshmallow and chocolate.

Tried this as a cold brew…still no thanks. It was really floral and if i want to drink flowers, i’ll go find a garden. happy enough to have been able to try this and cross it off my list though.

hmmm yeah this is not the tea for me. I suspect it’s due to the flowers that are in it but then again maybe not. This is like a weird tasting green soap flower almost berry tea. Ick. I’ve tossed the rest of it into cold brew for tomorrow to see if maybe that will bring out the berry flavours. If it does, this might be ok for a summer tea but otherwise…no way.

I was looking for something like an almond joy. This is pretty close. The aroma is chocolatey almond with hints of coconut. The flavour is a little more like chocolate covered almonds. Good dessert tea.

Sample courtesy of DTT. Thank you muchly, DTT!

I really like this one. The dry leaf is very heavy on the strawberry. Very tart, like strawberry candy, but in a good way. You just know that there’s going to be a ton of flavour once you smell it.

Steeped, it is pleasantly strawberry-ish. The base is there, fresh and green, but it doesn’t get in the way or go unnoticed at all. It’s a nice balance between the two flavours.

Is there creaminess? Not really, but I don’t really care. I just may order this someday. I bet it would make a killer iced tea.

I’m not sure if maybe I oversteeped it or the water was too hot, but this didn’t really make me think of white chocolate. It did remind me of DavidsTea’s Cookie Dough so I guess that makes sense, but this was slightly bitter. I’m happy I was able to try it, but I think I’d order one of the other chocolate teas instead.

Thanks JennyFur for the sample!

It’s Autumn next week. Yay! So I decided to have more of this (it is part of the Harvest Collection).

I’m drinking this while watching an episode of Star Trek- The Next Generation. Somehow, I don’t taste much pumpkin anymore. It tastes like spiced chocolate pie with maybe a pumpkin cookie crust. So I need a Star Trek uniform and replicator rations for a pie.

This was my bonus sample.

It smells so good! Like spicy Autumn chocolate. The flavour is a delicious blend of pumpkin pie and chocolate. Well… mostly pumpkin pie with chocolate shavings. Which makes me want pie.

Finished off my last bit of this tea this morning, since there is more headed my way this week. It held up quite well for a couple steeps, but the third was a bit weak.

My throat feels like razor blades, so I’ve been drinking tea like crazy today. But too lazy to post as I’m drinking it… sigh.

I’ve only got one cup of this left, and I can’t believe I hadn’t logged it yet. I think that’s probably because I really can’t tell the difference between this one and Oatmeal Raisin Cookie.

They are both cinnamon-y and sweet and very tasty, but there’s nothing about them that really stands out. This one is currently unavailable anyway, but I don’t think I’ll be missing it too much since I have Oatmeal Raisin Cookie in my cupboard, and DavidsTea’s Glitter & Gold. It IS yummy, though. And the smell is fantastic.

What an exciting day today has turned out to be! This morning my very first Della Terra order came, and I am super excited to try all of my new teas! I ordered two of the try me packs (these are great!!) so I have 10 new teas to try! I was hoping my order would arrive today, so that was very exciting when it did.

The next thing that happened was completely unexpected. I was in the shower and as soon as I turned off the water I heard all of these squeaking sounds. I just assumed that the cats had knocked something off the counter and were playing with it, or that it was one of the dog’s squeaky toys. I casually walked into my bedroom while brushing my teeth and about died – my cats had a mouse cornered and it was him who was squeaking away! One of my cats was pretty terrified of the mouse (they’re indoor cats) and the other one was sprawled out and just keep pushing him back towards her with one paw when he would start to run away (but not hurting him). I quickly scooped him up into some tupperware. I think he’s pretty young – he’s so tiny and scared. I gave him some bread, cereal and water and a toilet paper roll to hide in. People think I’m crazy, but I just can’t kill him. And I couldn’t let my cats kill him (if they even would, I doubt it!). So he’ll rest tonight and then we’ll let the little guy go tomorrow. And we will also be dealing with the door tomorrow – we got a new glass screen door just put on last week and they didn’t replace a certain part of the door frame and there’s a big gap at the bottom. Lo and behold that’s where the tiny mouse came through. We’ve lived here for 3 years and have never seen a mouse inside, so it has to be the new screen door. It certainly added some excitement to my day (and the cats thoroughly enjoyed themselves as well!)

On to the tea . . . Things have finally settled down so I can try my new tea! I picked this one to try first. When I was smelling all of them today this one lingered in my mind and I was thinking about it all day. The dry leaves smell like sweet cinnamon and raisins, and the tea has a spicy cinnamon and cookie aroma. There is a brown sugar and cinnamon flavor with a really nice aftertaste of warm oatmeal raisin cookie. You can tell this is a well blended tea because all of the flavors mesh together and complement each other without one standing out too much.

Ok, I just poured the rest of the tea that had steeped longer out of my little teapot into my cup and the flavor is SO much better. It’s everything that I noticed from the first cup but stronger. That just upped my rating. :) I feel like here is the amazing Oatmeal Raisin Cookie that everyone’s been talking about. Yay, I am very happy with this tea!

-Dry blend has medium black tea leaves and twigs with raisins and pieces of oatmeal.
-Dry leaves smell like sweet cinnamon and raisins. Tea liquor aroma is of spicy cinnamon and cookie.
-Tea liquor is a clear golden yellow color.
-Brown sugar and cinnamon flavor with a warm cinnamon finish. Sweet oatmeal raisin cookie aftertaste.
-Best with sweetener. Milk optional.
-Very good tea. Oatmeal raisin cookie flavors blended together very well. A smooth and comforting cup.

I had a cup of this tonight and i am now decuboarding it to add it to my swap pile. Again, not because i hate the tea but because i have outgrown it. I like the addition of the vanilla with the mint, but i’m growing tired of Della terra’s incessant need to add coloured crap to all their blends. my infusers says…NO MORE! so into the swap box it goes!

Had this in latte form and it was deeeeeelicious! I think i am finding that the way to drink up my minty/vanilla teas is in latte form. Apart from the wird red ring i get in the cup from the stupid sprinkles, this was super tasty as a latte :)

i had this one in the morning as well :) i don’t mind this one but i likely won’t re-order it once it’s gone.

SIPDOWN! just wish i was more tea productive today. Sadly i’m still at work because of issues. my other half even came all the way down to meet me after work so we could go out tonight. and now….he’s left because i’m stuck on a stupid call with technology because yes folks… MORE PROBLEMS! i swear to god it’s like no one knows anything. so i’m sitting here….drinking my tea….hungry for dinner….wishing i could go home. oh and i’m on call all weekend in case we have more issues…and i have to be on a call at 5am on monday. woot woot

It’s a good thing this tea is tasty enough to cut through my wonky tastebuds today ‘cause it’s a good cuppa at the moment.

I love chewy oatmeal cookies, but the texture of baked-in raisins weirds me out. However it’s a personal mission that any cookie-flavored tea must be tried (or cake or cupcake or pie…you get the picture).

At first this just tasted like a mildly spiced black tea, until I added milk. Aaand there it is! Instant liquid oatmeal cookie (without the squishy raisins). Yum yum. I’ll definitely order this one. Thank you Emily M for including this in our swap!

(I just checked and they are sold out. Whew…I’m sort of relieved. Well not really, cause I know when I place my next order it’s going to be GINORMOUS)

Wow, I sure burned through my 1 oz quite quickly. In just twelve days or so. I guess that’s what happens when you cold steep all of it.

Will I miss it? Not really, but it was definitely better cold steeped. Kind of like a vanilla caramel.

DTT order #2 has landed. Still searching for the perfect vanilla black.

The smell of the dry tea is a soft, creamy vanilla. It smells like quite a natural vanilla, not at all perfumey or like overpowering factory-made vanilla icing.

But unfortunately, the taste lets me down a little bit. Too much sweetness and not enough vanilla, in my opinion.

I wonder if it would make a good cold brew? Like a sweetened black iced tea. That just may work.

PS: Had a jug of this cold steeped waiting for me this morning and I was right, it’s much better this way. It’s creamier and more flavourful. It tastes like vanilla toffee.

I polished off my sample from JennyFur today. I absolutely adored the first half of this sample. The marshmallow was oh-so-awesome and the graham cracker and chocolate were beautifully blended together to give me s’mores in a cup.

Imagine my surprise when I took my first sip and all I tasted was soggy graham crackers and nearly no marshmallow (despite seeing a fair number in the sample). Oh man, this is bad. I brewed the same amount of tea for the same time at the same temperature as the first. The only explanation I can possibly offer is that I added slightly too much water. I usually brew about 14 oz. at a time. My cup looks a bit fuller than usual, so my guess is that there’s 15 oz. in there.

I’m dialing down my previous rating a little, because I don’t think such a slight increase in the amount of water should make a tea taste so terrible. I definitely recommend adding extra tea (or using less water) beyond what you think is reasonable when making yourself a cup of this.

I must say I’m impressed. I usually find Della Terra’s black base to be a bit weak, but this was truly great. The marshmallow flavor is the most prominent, but I also taste hints of graham cracker and chocolate. I may just have to order some of this in the future!

Thanks to JennyFur for sharing!

Sipdown! 783. The rest is off to Sil and Indigobloom!

It’s such a shame that the flavour of this one doesn’t match up with the crazily delicious aroma, although this tastes infinitely better when sweetened. It’s kind of a burnt, malty flavour, that unlike the natural burny/malty flavours in some black teas, really doesn’t taste great unsweetened. Ah well. Interesting enough, if nothing else!

Another sample from whatshesaid :D Thanks!

So I can definitely see what everyone means about the wet-looking leaf… that is really odd. It’s weird to scoop it up too, because it’s kind of stickyish, almost. Anyhow, this blend smells pretty good, definitely malty and tasty. The aroma from the brewed cup is very much like malted chocolate balls, which I am SO SAD I haven’t had any of in ages, because I failed to purchase myself any malt eggs. Boy do I love malt eggs.

Anyways. While the smell is pretty good, the flavour definitely leaves something to be desired. Yes, I taste maltiness, but I expected more chocolate, especially since a) I saw chocolate chips in there, and b) Della Terra is usually reasonably good about making blends taste chocolatey, even if it’s a bit fake-chocolatey sometimes. There also isn’t any sweetness to this blend, really, which makes me sad, especially after having my cup of Blueberry Crumble! I think I will try my second cup of this with some sweetener, as I feel like that may make a world of difference here, but I’m certainly not unhappy that I didn’t purchase this blend, because I don’t like to have blends around that don’t taste great without sugar!

ETA: Added diluted honey to the last of my cup to sweeten it, and it was much preferable that way. Tasted much more like malt balls. I did successfully re-steep this one, but don’t entirely remember how it was. Decent enough that I drank and didn’t dump it! Didn’t sweeten it, either.

Sipdown! 965.

Oh, I will miss this tea. Such a delicious slightly blueberry, very sweet mapley aroma. And sparkles. I recall the flavour being not quite as good, but I will enjoy this farewell cup nonetheless. The rest is off to *Indigobloom*… finally!