Savoy Tea Co

As the weather warms, I start trending toward flavored teas for breakfast; aka “drink up all the scraps.” I had forgotten how much I liked this. Puerh and dried strawberries with chocolate—has almost a chocolate milkshake feel to it. Down to one cup’s worth of leaf now…which means I shall hoard it for months because I don’t want to let it go!

Best surprise Christmas treat to myself ever. (I had purchased a sample pack a good while ago, and it had woodged itself down to the bottom of the heap.) Unearthed it, opened it, and was transported to dark chocolate and strawberry rapture. (Or something like that.)

Has a nice thick creamy mouthfeel to it without milk. The strawberry tastes like strawberry and not soda pop syrup. Will hoard the rest and divvy it out parsimoniously over the next few weeks … Janu-weary often requires little treats along the way. This one will help beat the blahs.

This one had me at the first whiff (Savoy’s tidy little shop has a scent jar for each tea). Just smelled fruity and springy fresh. Requires a long and patient steep, 7-10 minutes, but what you get is a fruity, juicy concoction that reminds me of apple-peach cobbler. (Yes, mangoes are not peaches, but the two are awfully similar in my sensory vocabulary.)

I foresee a jar of this, chilled, in the near future.

This is a type of tea that is totally different to me. I’ve never heard of Dragon Pearls, so I thought I’d give it a go. Today, I was with my awesome, tea loving aunt(MsWhatsIt) and we ventured to our favorite tea store. Upon arrival, I was totally draw to the black tea selection. I love love LOVE black teas. Anyways, I saw a funny looking loose leaf tea that was tightly wound up into balls. I saw the the name was Dragon Pearls. I then opened the small jar and took in the aroma of this tea. Loving the smell of it, I of course bought it. It took me a while to get home this afternoon, but that’s okay. The tea was worth the wait. After tasting it, I thought it tasted a little funny. Again a tea I’m not used to trying. After a few more sips, I decided it needed a little bit of sugar, and by a little bit, I mean just a pinch. Too much would cancel out the naturally sweet part of this. I love i! It’s sweet, and tasteful. It’s got a bit of a mint undertone. Not something you taste right away, but like a little after taste. All in all, it tastes wonderful and it’s going to take all I have to not drink it all!!

Although Autumns chill is beginning to manifest, I’m still cold brewing my teas. I picked up this one up a month or so ago. Savoy Tea Company is a local supplier for my addiction and when I last fell off the wagon, this was one of their summer offerings. It smelled good and had a fun name, so I brought some home, then let it rest while I went through a series of sip downs. The theory is I bring interesting new teas home but can only open them as I finish others. The end result is I’m drinking summer teas in Autumn. Oh well…

A view of the dehydrated bits in the package made me suspect that this is another of those teas whose remains are edible. Sure enough, like the apple tea by the same company, it does appear to be the case. They’re mostly fruit bits. And yes, you can eat these steepings if you’re so inclined. I tried mine—They aren’t quite as good as Savoy’s Caramel Apple Almond, and in all honesty, I’m getting a little bored with that sort of thing, but it was kind of fun to try.

But enough of such silliness, how was the tea itself? Pretty good actually. I hate to use predictable words like “refreshing,” but this is. It’s good, watermelony—smells and tastes like the real deal only not sweet, just fruity. There are plenty of other elements at work in my cup, but they got the watermelon dead on and I liked this far more than I expected to.

I COULD sweeten it but have no really pressing urge to do so. It’s a nice, stand alone summer brew, one that resembles the fruit waters I make in the summer but in a compact form.

It’s also one of those brews I suspect would NOT be good hot. I could be wrong but doubt I am. As I consider academically the idea of trying a hot cupful, part of me is horrified at the notion.

“If you’re melon-collie cause you cantaloupe, take the banana boat and meet jungle Jim by the watermelon slide. You’ll have a grape time.”

I like a good Peach Tea and so at my last trip to Savoy Tea Co, I caught a whiff of this and added it to my purchases. It smells very nice in the package. To me, that is often a good sign. This being the hottest part of summer, I am mostly making cold brewed teas, so when I finally opened this recently, I measured a tablespoon into a quart jar of water and left it in the refrigerator for a few hours.

Cold brew can take a variable amount of time. Some of them are fine in a few hours. Others are best left to steep overnight. I let this one sit, oh, maybe two to four hours and found it disappointingly weak, so I left it to rest in the fridge for a day or so. I would like to imply here that there was method to my madness, but the truth was, I just didn’t want to drink it after finding it so watery and unassertive, so I avoided it.

When finally the hour came in which I could think of no other excuse, I poured myself a cup and found it had turned to ambrosia. Seriously, it was very very good. No need for cream or sugar or anything. I really liked it.

I don’t know how this will be hot, and I will definitely plan for a LONG brewing next time. It’s possible too that this is one of those teas that brew up better if you exceed the recommended quantity. I will say, though, that when this has a good 24 hours or more to cold brew, it’s really lovely.

I opened up the package and dumped about a teaspoon of “pearls” into my jar to cold brew. They unfurled into pretty leaves eventually and when I drank some, it tasted like…well, like green tea with jasmine.

Yeah, I’m not feeling very poetic today. I like jasmine tea. I liked this ok. I can’t think of much else to say. It was a bit astringent but not in an unpleasant way. It wasn’t bitter. It wasn’t a sublime journey to nirvana. It was neither objectionable nor amazing. It was jasmine tea. Good enough, smart enough, and dog gone it, I was ok with it.

I like to shop at The Savoy Tea Co, taking advantage of their sample jars to choose teas by scent. This one smelled really good—like roses and strawberries. I brought it home and cold brewed it, putting the standard measure in a mason jar of cold water and leaving it in the fridge for 24 hours.

With the summer heating up, I’ve been doing a lot of cold brewing. I never much cared for sun tea—it always tastes rancid to me after moldering in the heat for a few hours— whereas cold brewed tea diffuses nicely and the flavors stay clean and fresh. This time of year I keep three mason jars of cold brews in my fridge, tisane or fruit water, black or green tea, and coffee, all cold brewed and ready to drink at a moment’s notice.

So today, the selection of tea was none other than Love Song. It tasted pretty much like it smelled, like Strawberries and Roses. There was a hint of the background tea but nothing bitter or astringent—It actually had a very smooth mouth feel. I didn‘t add any cream or sugar but didn‘t miss them either, it was quite good. In fact, I decided to have a second cup.

Mmmmm Strawberries and roses…Perhaps a little overbalanced on the strawberry side. I reflected that this could do with more rose flavor, just to make it fair. Shortly afterwards, I felt like a numbskull when I consulted the package and learned that there were no strawberries at all. Ah well, I‘ve heard roses and strawberries are related. It is also possible I was fooled by the passion fruit and apple flavoring. Or maybe I was just having olfactory hallucinations.

Either way, I like this tea and look forward to brewing up some more soon. It’s a nice refreshing drink for a summer day.

I have a kind of fascination with the idea of matching rooibos up with different flavors. It’s as if I’m watching a favorite bachelor dating various women and laying bets as to which one he’ll marry. This combination looked interesting so I decided to give it a try.

It smelled good during it’s five minute steep, though my big sis’s observation that rooibos tends to crumble into tiny fragments and find it’s way out of the tea strainer and into the cup was sadly evident. I really ought to pour this stuff through a coffee filter but I’m too lazy. Oh well, ce la vie…

This blend is rather nice, actually. The lavender goes well with the rooibos and the additional coconut flavor rounds it out and gives it a little something. There’s a hint of caramelized flavor as well, as if the coconut were toasted. I’m pretty sure this one would be lovely with cream or coconut milk and sugar, but it stands alone quite nicely. I’ll look forward to more of this in the future.

But next time I brew this, I’ll be using a darn coffee filter.

I chatted with one of the owners at the Savoy Tea Co store about cold brewing and this came highly recommended. “It gets better the longer it brews,” he said. Since I like my teas cold brewed and am apt to leave the jar steeping in the fridge till I get around to drinking it, (which can sometimes be as long as a few days) this sounded like my kind of tea. I put a generous measure in a quart jar of water and tried it after a few hours. It smelled great, very tropical and fruity. Since I’m allergic to pineapple, it’s nice to have a tropical blend without this ingredient for a change.

This tea is very mango-ey. Enough to stand alone as a good, solid, fruity tea. I’m sure it would be great with coconut milk and sweetener (I doubt a splash of rum would hurt it any either), but it’s a tea that doesn’t need “help” to be good, which is the sort I’m most inclined to drink. All by itself this is pleasantly fruity and just the thing if you like mangoes (If you hate mangoes, maybe not so much.) Since the weather here is a bit wintry, I’ve taken a few cups of this cold brew out of the fridge and heated it in the microwave, and can say it’s quite good warm too.

There’s supposed to be rooibos in this one, but I’m not tasting it. I’m not sure I mind, though. The fact that a blend contains rooibos and I can taste ANYTHING ELSE seems a tentative step in the right direction… :)

Good stuff, especially for those of us in the middle of the country experiencing winter and beginning to tire of cold weather. It’s making me dream of tropical vacations.

I think Jamaica in the moonlight. . .

I decided to try this on Christmas day. It tastes. . .well. . . it tastes like. . . Rooibos. . .sigh. And maybe it should but I’m growing bored with rooibos blends. Regardless of how they are made, they all seem to be tasting more or less the same to me lately. I think the roibos tends to overpower every ingredient added.

This has vanilla, almond, and walnut added, but all I seem to notice is rooibos. So I tried it with coconut milk and sweetener and it’s a lovely dessert tea . . . Just like all the other rooibos combinations.

I want to say this tastes like cookies but it doesn’t. It tastes like rooibos and vanilla. I’m not catching any of the almond or walnut at all. It’s nice as a dessert tea and amiable enough if you like rooibos and don’t mind pouring it through a coffee filter to get all the tiny bits out of it. As far as cookies, though, I think they missed the mark.

Eat an almond, then go try something flavored with almond extract. They’re both nice, but they aren’t the same. The scent of this tea is kind of a parallel to this phenomenon. I like pistachio nuts and I like this extract but it’s a different animal, more like someone’s fantasy of what pistachio ought to taste like than the real deal.

This tea has a lovely scent, but no real flavor. It would make a lovely bubble bath or extract for cookies (where all that sugar would no doubt “bring out” the flavor), but I take my tea without cream or sugar most of the time and expect it to stand on it’s own. It does not. As a stand alone tea, it lacks something and doesn’t really meet my standards. I love the fragrance that comes out of the bag when I open it, but this tea always disappoints me.

Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all.

Now if you like a dessert tea with cream and sugar, you’re in luck. These “bring out” the flavor. Indeed, I’ll likely be finishing this batch that way, and will no doubt enjoy every drop. However, I probably won’t be buying it again because I cannot afford the calories necessary to make this tea worth my time.

Your mileage may vary. J

An appropriate sipdown after a damp, raw, wind-cutting-right-through-your-jeans afternoon running the last gift shopping errands. Was hunting for a classic children’s book for a friend who’s a new granddad (in other words, a package full of bonding time). But mercy—which one? One Fish, Two Fish? Goodnight Moon? Little Critter? The Runaway Bunny? A Fly Went By? Between overthinking a simple purchase and wistful nostalgia for a cuddly toddler to read aloud to, I’m now mentally and emotionally wrung dry :)

Savoy still carries this…a black tea counterpart to CS Candy Cane Lane. Even though I was down to the dregs of the packet, there’s still plenty of vanilla-minty goodness for one last cup.

Woke up with a crazy craving for this…it had bubbled up to the top of my half-drunk-up basket when I was rummaging yesterday. Vanilla mint. It still doesn’t make me think of candy canes, but it’s sweet and perky. (This morning I am neither of those…must do it artificially!)

Good black tea with a ton of vanilla-mint flavoring. Reminds me more of wedding butter mints than it does candy canes, but a very pleasant and sweet tea. (It was my out-the-door steep this morning, but I think it’d be better for an afternooner.) Looking forward to trying it with milk to bring out the creaminess.

Incidentally, Savoy Tea has a nice little website up and running now: http://www.savoytea.com/default.asp Looking forward to a trek down there sometime during Christmas break!

Some weeks ago, I went to Savoy Tea Company in search of autumn blends. One thing I like about the place is there are little “sample jars” of each tea to sniff and examine to aid in the selection process. This is so much more helpful than merely looking at artwork and ingredient lists on boxes.

This variety was dark in the container with little orange bits and smelled wonderful, so I grabbed a package to go with my other autumn selections.

The directions on the package called for a five minute steep! I was a bit surprised at the notion of such a long one but . . .ok.

When the water hit it, this tea smelled like Christmas to me. I stood over the steaming cup reminiscing about sweet winter spices and the fresh oranges I used to find in my Christmas stocking. Finally, the timer went off and I got to sample it.

The tea was strong and sweet with cinnamon and a good tea base which didn’t seem to mind the long steep at all. The orange was less strong after brewing but still a good balancing presence amid the background flavors.

A word of warning: This is NOT a subtle tea. If you favor delicately scented, poetry-in-a-cup sort of blends, do not waste your time with this tea. It is strongly flavored with cloves and cinnamon. If you hate red hots, this is not for you. I’ll admit to some hypocrisy here—I’m the one always griping about the chia artists who get heavy handed with the cinnamon oil—yet strangely enough, I really like this variety. Perhaps it’s because I’m not terribly subtle either.

This stuff was very spicy, a little stingingly so. It made my beloved Celestial Seasonings Mandarin Orange Spice seem like kids stuff as this packed a much bigger punch. I found it a good morning blend. With a nice bite from the spices and a good kick of caffeine from the black tea, it certainly woke me up!

This always reminds me of my mom’s fruitcake (erase typical Christmas fruitcake preconceptions): a light brown-sugar fresh apple cake with a little extra candied fruit added in.

When one is writing one’s umpteenth review of the same tea, one is hard put to to find an umpteenth-and-one way to say mmmmmmmm. This is is just fruity, sweet, and lip-licky.

This one is earning a place in my heart for “favorite flavored green comfort tea” (as opposed to “favorite unflavored green comfort tea” and “favorite comfort tea ever” and… Now that you think of it, I don’t believe I want a tea that I can’t consider a comfort tea.)

The green tea basket in my kitchen gets the least traffic—-so it’s always a happy surprise to paw through it and discover something I forgot was there.

I’ve written about this one several times; if you had to roll those tasting notes into one, it would boil down to this: the sweetest, most dessert-y green tea I think I’ve ever tasted. Syrupy and fruity and pleasant on what’s turning out to be a chilly June afternoon.

White cake with key lime frosting only makes this betterer. (Not a typo. It’s worthy of the extra er.) Sweet, authentic-tasting fruit flavor against the green tea. Sooooo good.

Ahhh! Now this is plausible cherry flavor, still a little sweet and syrupy, but the dried pineapple balances it nicely. And whaddya know? Son who calls tea “water with aftertaste” actually had a cup with me. That alone makes it worthwhile.

(I think I’m turning into the mommy from “Love You Forever” when the son grows up.)

Happy surprise: liked the sample so much I got a 4 ounce pouch when we were in NW Ark. at Christmas—room for great big blobs of dried pineapple and (I think) the cherries that weren’t in the teeny packet.

Gooooood stuff.