Teaopia

The only other person on the site to try this tea gave it a pretty dire review so I was understandably a bit trepidatious about drinking it. However I didn’t find it to be that bad at all – it might have helped that I steeped this tea like a white tea rather than a herbal tea, even though the actual proportion of tea leaves in the mix is pretty small. The flavour is distinctly herbal but it’s accompanied by a slight sweetness that makes me think of freshly mowed hay.

It hasn’t made me gorgeous yet unfortunately, but maybe it’s a cumulative thing. ;)

I just wasn’t enjoying this tea and in terms of medicinal value I use other herbs (echinacea, white horehound, licorice root) so I didn’t really need to keep the tea for that purpose (after this long I’m not even sure if it still retained its medicinal properties anyway). So instead it got made into tea compost for my garden. I hope my veggies enjoy it more than I did.

The first time I came across this tea it was in my aunt’s tea cupboard – she had the whole dried stalks of the plant rather than the coarsely ground pieces that are in this tin. I seem to remember that the flavour of her tea was more lemony as well. This is more herbal than anything else with a distinctly woodsy aroma and flavour and a slightly bitter aftertaste. It needs a little honey I think, otherwise it’s too medicinal to drink for enjoyment.

Thanks to Christina for the sample!!
I quite enjoyed this one, as I love the combo of red berries with green tea. There is just something soft n fluffy about it.
Normally I dislike sencha teas but here, its great :)
The green tea blends well with the fruit, creating a nice light tea that would be great iced. Hot, it is still very good, but I need to try it both ways! Good thing I have some left :D

This tea smelled so lovely this morning I had to try it out. The name fit too since it is a nice spring morning today. I am enjoying this tea. It’s a bit antrigent with light fruity strawberry notes. The fruity flavouring is done nicely, not too strong. So subtle – it blends perfectly.
Thanks Christina for this sample. I can see why it was one of your favourites.

Just wanted to add that as this tea cools the strawberry notes really come out. I bet this makes an awesome iced tea.

A wellness blend I would highly recommend if it was still around. Packed with vitamin C, but what I particularly appreciated is that it is primarily Raspberry Leaves. Meaning what? Meaning it is GREAT for menstrual cramps. The blend was great on it’s own, but I made it iced with a touch of squeezed lemon and suffered no more. I miss it.

A very specific outcome. Senna leaves are known to “cleanse your system;” (make you sh*t). What I appreciated about this blend is that it was designed for a specific reason, but still had an enjoyable taste. Not something you could drink every day, but for when you needed to benefit from it, it wasn’t unpleasant.

I loved this blend. A spiced tea (not unlike a Chai), but more like cinnamon hearts (without being too sweet). I loved the balance of flavours. What I would particularly praise is that this a full-flavour blend, but does not overpower the taste of the black tea. You can still tell it is a black tea and enjoy it as such. I shall miss it.

Tip: Strawberry Paraiso by Teavana and Strawberry Fields are virtually interchangeable. Very little differences.
Light, sweet, fruity. A perfect “gateway tea” for anyone who isn’t sure if they like tea or not. My best friend and I were absolutely hooked on Strawberry Fields Lattes. We made them hot or iced (with soy) and bit of chocolate sauce. A sweet, decadent dessert in a cup. For me, a classic. Certainly a favourite.

I loved this blend. Purely fruit pieces. You have to steep it strong to really get the full flavours, but it was just so light and simple. Naturally sweet (being that the ingredients are basically all candied fruit pieces). I loved it hot or iced. I can certainly see where people would get the “bubblegum” essence from, but not in an over-bearing way. I often made it in the morning and tossed the steeped pieces in to my oatmeal (afterall, it was just fruit). A unique and fun blend.

I’ve actually been drinking this tea for awhile but I just couldn’t be arsed to write a tasting note, I’m afraid. I really love the smell of the tea – it’s all very apple-y and cinnamon-y. I’m not really getting apple pie from the flavour, though it’s still quite a nice-tasting tea. I get the fruity apples, and hints of vanilla and cinnamon but it’s just not quite….there. Part of the problem might be the oolong used in this blend – it’s quite a dark oolong with a distinctly roasted flavour – I’d maybe go for a greener, sweeter one like a Tie Guan Yin instead.

This tea has a wonderful, exotic scent even though it’s been sitting in my cupboard for quite awhile as part of a white tea sampler. The flavour doesn’t seem to have suffered either. It’s an interesting mix of tangy orange and nutty pistachio with hints of spice like cinnamon and touch of fruitiness. It’s very well balanced despite the seemingly odd mix of flavours and I’m really enjoying it.

Sipdown. I’m kind of sad to see this tea go as it was a decent tea and given that Teaopia is now defunct I won’t be getting more. But tea isn’t something that will keep indefinitely and this blend is noticeably showing its age at this point.

This is the second tea from the white tea sampler I got on the cheap. This one seems to be a different beast entirely from the White Pear, for one I’m pretty sure that this blend is actually more fruit than tea – there’s giant pieces of dried strawberry and apple. To be fair the white tea leaves that are in there are lovely whole leaves and buds, but they make up less than half of the dry tea in the tin.

The flavour of the tea is sweet and fruity without being cloying – it’s strawberry but there’s also other fruit flavours mixed in. Someone else compared it to strawberry Jell-o and I’d say that’s a pretty accurate comparison. It would probably be great iced, though I don’t have enough tea to make a full jug. I might just try sticking a mug of it in the fridge.

I had a craving for some tea late in the day so I dug out the white tea sampler I got for super cheap from Teaopia when it was being taken over.

I have to agree with other reviewers’ assessments that the flavour of the tea is too grassy and astringent even with relatively cautious steeping parameters. The pear flavour is also rather lacking, though I noticed it a bit more when the tea cooled off a little bit. Just as well I didn’t buy a whole bunch of this blend, I suspect.

This is the second last tea of my box of little bags. Sadly, it’s very light — too light really, whether from too little tea or just being incredibly light. There’s a bit of a sweet aroma, but that’s about all I can say.
I’m not going to rate this one… I don’t think I got enough from it to feel comfortable doing so.

Well, it seems that green teas work particularly well with this small tea bag format. This one is primarily vegetal and grassy, but with a nice cherry aroma and aftertaste. I’ll admit, I think it would taste amazing with something like chocolate covered cherries or black forrest cake. Too bad I can’t test that theory right now….

But yay and yum nonetheless.

Well, this tea is a lot more potent than its teabags from butler cafe brethren have been so far. The green tea comes through clearly, but with flowery and tropical fruity notes as well. Reminds me a bit of Toasted Walnut, but fruitier.
It is, perhaps, still on the light side, but light in a meant-to-be way, rather than being too light for the tea to shine. Definitely resteeping this.

Vanilla. This is very vanilla. And I find that lovely. This is a great before bed comfort tea; the scent and taste is so gentle, with rooibos and that gorgeous vanilla, that I can’t help but feel like it’s okay to sleep before finishing Latin homework…
It didn’t have any cough syrup overly sweet disgusting aftertaste to it at all. The cold dregs at the bottom of my mug do taste slightly chemical, but that was not at all present earlier. I’m sad that this is just a sample now. I really need more good rooibos blends, even though I have an ungodly amount of unflavored red rooibos in my cabinet. It’s just a very comforting tea to me, something I crave before bed.

In other news, I’m thinking of actually counting my teas. Maybe I’ll save that for the weekend though…. Also, I’m writing a ruminative paper on tea. The paper is about something we Need in life, for any reason; the idea came from a scene in King Lear where Lear describes how badly he needs his company of 100 knights. I think that I can easily wax rhapsodic about tea. The ease of writing is especially important as I also have a Physics lab due and a report on Lesbia (of Catullus) for Latin. And then the ACT on Saturday. But then I’m babysitting, and that means money, and that means tea. So, it all comes back to tea. Basically.

Nostalgia in a cup. This was the first cup of loose leaf I ever tried, and I must say, it was the perfect first… I loved to drink this gorgeous blend both hot or iced. It is light and fruity (not too bold, but not too mild). There was something so calming about this tea. I still have a smidgen in my cupboard, that I am rationing, and plan to save the last bit so that I can open it up and smell it when I am reminiscing. My forever favourite.

Ladies and gentlemen, with this sipdown, I come to the end of an era.

Spring Morning was one of the first loose-leaf teas that I ever bought (probably within the first 10) and it was one of the ones that I made sure to keep in stock. When I found out that Teavana still had it in stock last year, I bought 100 g, and I’ve made sure to make it last.

But now, Teavana no longer carries this tea, and I’ve been saving the precious little leaf I had left out of nostalgia.

No more. For today was the last cup, full of broken leaves and dust.

This really isn’t the best flavoured tea in existence, I know that. But the strawberry and redcurrant together smelled so juicy, and it really was one of the teas that turned me on to loose leaf in general. And I needed to finish it off, or else it would have gone stale and just sat there.

Godspeed, little green leafy friend.

I really need to finish this off, since I ordered this tea over a year ago. The leaves at the bottom of the tin are probably 2 years old now, taking into account how I never completely emptied the tin before I topped it up. Alas, strawberry green tea, we are finally nearing the end of our relationship. After this, I probably have just enough left for one cup.

Now I have to figure out what to refill the tin with, because it’s absolutely permeated with the smell of strawberries.

Backlog from yesterday morning:

I oversteeped this by a few minutes and it was surprisingly not-bitter. I used a slightly lower temperature than normal, but I didn’t think using 77C water instead of 80C would be enough to counteract an additional 2 minutes of steep. Plus, at this point, the tea is pretty broken up and dusty (sob! I am nearing a sipdown of this discontinued tea!) so I’m really surprised.