moraiwe Send Message

There’s a very distinct smoky, leathery element in here, which I wasn’t sure about with the first sip, but ended up actually enjoying more than I thought I would. With the orange citrus adding a sweet and bright flavor, this reminds me a bit of an Earl Grey, or like a Kusmi spin off thereof.

What I learned from this: I actually think I might enjoy smoke with citrus. I ran into the same thing with Romanoff (American Tea Room), when they paired it with blood orange. It just works.

Thanks Shmiracles!

Sipdown!

I think I’d like to reorder. But I’m going to hold off reordering this until at least summer, when it’s nice and warm out. It’s good and I always enjoy it when I have it, but I almost need to be in a particular mood to enjoy it.

After Fiance and I finished the Cherry Limeade SBT in record time for us, I went for this one. And after cold steeping it overnight, I was really excited to try it!

I love it when excitement is well warranted. This really tastes like sherbet. Initally, I get lime, then orange, and then the raspberry, but the best moment is at the end of the sip where they all kind of come together and bcome a spoonful of guilt-free sherbet. It’s even a little creamy.

I personally didn’t add sugar because there’s a bit of natural sweetness, but I can’t see it as anything but delicious and even more sherbet-ty then.

(And only 5 more reviews till I hit 500! Yikes!)

This is actually an enjoyable cup. But it wasn’t what I was really expecting.

First, I’m really digging the base they use. It’s smooth, with a full body, and just a little malt. It’s not bitter, and just a bit astringent as the tea cools to room temperature.

The flavoring is where it was more unexpected. The first flavor I pick up isn’t peach or apricot, it’s lemon myrtle. It adds a pleasant amount of creamy and sweet lemon notes, but seems to dominate the peach and apricot on the whole. The stone fruits are relativly easy to differentiate from each other and don’t taste candy-like or cloying (or like peach gummies), and are pretty natural tasting, but don’t seem to set in until midtaste. These flavors blossom in your mouth and linger through the sip, though. I just wish they occurred sooner.

While I did like the tea well enough, and would drink it again if it was offered to me, I really just think it’s not quite a peach/apricot tea.

I almost drank this last night at about 10pm, which would have been a huge, horrible mistake, because apparently there’s mate and green tea in here and I like sleep. But that makes it great for this morning.

In ways, I like this blend. The lemon is nice and there’s a bit of zip from the ginger. I actually really like the way the hibiscus was implemented here, too. It’s tart and adds to a real lemony feel without overpowering the whole cup or leaving the metallic taste I associate with hibiscus.

The cinnamon is kind of weird though. It adds a strange sort of sweetness and doesn’t really fit to me. It also seems to just be muddling what could have been a really crisp pick me up.

Thanks Shmiracles, I look forward to my mate induced energy spurt :)

I’ve had a really weird relationship with this tea. I loved it for a while. And then I didn’t care for it al all, and now I’m back to thinking it’s okay.

I don’t necessarily care for the smell. It smells a bit like boozy rooibos, which isn’t all that attractive. It captures the coffee and dark cocoa (and rum) notes of tiramisu really well though, and has a nice creamy mouthfeel. The taste of rooibos tends to creep into each sip, but it never seems to get too cedar chippy. The aftertaste is rooibos, cocoa, and cream.

While I enjoy this one when I drink it, I won’t necessarily be sad when it’s finally sipped down.

“…but no sign of age was upon them, unless it were in the depths of their eyes; for these were keen as lances in the starlight, and yet profound, the wells of deep memory.”

So I’m a bit of a Tolkien fanatic. It has been my fandom baby for forever and a bit longer. I have all the History of Middle Earth books, and I’m totally that person when it comes up in conversation.

When I was in high school, I spent a good amount of free time learning Quenya. It’s actually how my moraiwe handle came into being. I used to sign letters to my friends with it so they couldn’t be traced back to me (and they had their code names too (but one was Star Trek Voyager related and the other Harry Potter related. We were pretty awesome, what can I say?)

Fiance thinks I’m a bit mad, but I get a gleeful enjoyment when someone asks about my gamertag on XBL. It usually goes like:

“How do I say your gamertag?”
says name once or twice “But if you call me something that vaguely resembles it, I’ll probably respond”
“Err. So how’d you come up with that?”
“It’s Quenya for blackbird”
silence
“It’s one of Tolkien’s Elvish languages.”
“Oh like in the movies?”
“No, that was Sindarin.”
silence
“Hey. At least it’s not Telerin”

It’s way more fun when they ask where Tol Galen is.

This tea is actually pretty remarkable though. I was surprised at the depth the caramel offered when paired with the apricot and peach. The peach is mildly candy-like, but that’s offset by the dark caramel sugar notes, and the little bit of cinnamon that peaks midsip. The peach flavor lingers quite long after.

I couldn’t say quite why, but this tea is conjuring images of Celeborn and Thranduil meeting in the former Mirkwood after the fall of Dol Guldur and renaming it Eryn Lasgalen (The Wood of Greenleaves).

This is totally working for me.

Thanks again for your generosity in the samples Shmiracles!

While I know I don’t necessarily care for this cold steeped (it gets a little overwhelmingly perfumed), I steeped with my usual parameters and let this chill today.

It’s actually incredibly good and a completely different experience to drinking this hot. Still very floral, but balanced and tempered with the white peony, which is almost juicy tasting. It’s almost like there’s pear or light apple in here, that just explodes with juicy freshness in my mouth.

In other news, it’s supposed to get above freezing next week for the first time since Christmas, and that is ridiculously exciting. If Fiance breaks out shorts though, I might disown him.

I never really intetionally jumped on health craze this berry had, but it’s been in so many things I’ve consumed and enjoyed (most frequently paired with blueberry it seems), that I wanted to at least jump on this!

Also. I decided it was smoothie time. I picked up a smoothie machine four or so years ago at a rummage sale and haven’t used it a whole lot. Fiance hates the sound of it (it sounds like a higher pitched blender), so I get the grumpy eye when I try to run it when he’s home.

So, I added 8 or so ice cubes, 14 oz of milk, (pretty much lined up to the appropriate ‘For Serving 2’ lines on the smoothie maker, honestly) and 2 tsp of matcha powder and gave it a pretty solid whirr. And wound up with a delicious, flavorful, frothy cup of happiness. (With an extra for Fiance).

The berry flavor is amazing. It’s like a cross between blueberries and blackberries, with the sweet tartness of blueberry, but the depth of blackberry. And it pairs really well with the subtle natural sweetness of matcha.

I really hope Fiance likes this as much as I did, because I really wouldn’t mind picking some up. And then maybe I can experiment and add frozen blueberries for a thicker smoothie. Ooooh. I’m excited.

I figured I’d keep the grape theme going this morning.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this one, though, because all grape flavoring winds up tasting like Children’s Dimeatapp to me, and I understandably don’t have amazing memories of that.

While the black tea tempers it some, this definitely came out on the cusp of natural and artifical flavoring, which I expected. Fortunately, the grape flavor was more like the Japanese grape candies my friends and I were obsessed with in high school, and not the American purple grape flavor that I associate with cough medicine.

I actually really like this. Maybe once my stash is of manageable size I’d pick more of this up, but it isn’t something I need right away.