Orange Blossom

I love this tea. It’s incredible mixed with David’s Pure Vanilla, iced, mixed with almond milk.

This is delicious iced! Horrible as a hot tea though.

After enjoying the Orange Cream Honeybush blend from International House of Tea I thought I would try this blend from DAVIDs. Overall the orange smell is certainly present in the of the dry leaf + brewed tea, but the orange taste is only present when the tea is on the hotter side. As it cools down to more drinkable temperatures you get much more of the woody taste of rooibos than orange. Overall I think IHOT’s blend is better because there is more of the orange flavour and I think I prefer honeybush over rooibos.

I feel like this is a major Rooibos discovery! I haven’t found a Rooibos I liked as much as the Pure Vanilla – and I feel as though this one offers something new to the Rooibos family and yet still tastes delicious! It’s a smooth Rooibos – no hints of the nasty tobacco aftertaste – it’s all a smooth orangey tang to offset that. A wonderful evening tea for me!

Rooibos, why can’t we get along?

I tried this blend per a recommendation from DT on twitter after being tremendously disappointed with Pink Lemonade. It sounded lovely – orange, currants, vanilla. Yum, right? Not so much.

I just can’t overcome the rooibos base. :/

I even purchased Pure Vanilla to mix with it to have this dreamy creamsicle experience that I’ve seen people just gush about.

No. Not this gal. Not these taste buds. Major letdown.

Tried this in the store yesterday, and wasn’t crazy over it even though I like my orange blossom. The base was quite loud and covered up the delicate floral notes. They served it iced, which I imagine is the better way to go with this one, but it still gets a “no thanks” from me.

Man, I don’t know what it is with some of David’s fruity teas and their artificial flavours but they remind me of bubblegum somehow. I just can’t get over it – I expected a deeper orange flavour. This one was great until the underlying artificial taste hit and then I disliked it. Which is a bummer, because I really wanted to like it.

A sample from Memily! I’ve been drinking this one on an evening over the past few nights, and it makes for a delicious pre-bedtime treat. I’ve been using 1.5 tsp of leaf, and giving it 4-5 minutes in boiling water before adding a splash of milk. The flavour is a rather nice candy orange — a little like an orange flavoured lolly, or orange boiled sweets. There’s a light hint of floral in the background, and a whiff of perfume. It sums up orange blossom pretty perfectly to me!

I’ll have no trouble finishing off my sample of this one. It’s a pleasant orange rooibos, easy to drink, and caffeine free to boot! A win with me.

I have come to love red rooibos for the all the caffeine free blends it enables. This is a rooibos blend with orange blossoms and currants. There is a tour of sour currant and medicine-like rooibos, but mainly the natural orange flavor comes through the most. It is a little too tart to be an orange creamsicle flavor, but there is definitely a vanilla presence in among the orange. Sweet without sugar, this would be extra special with some milk or as a dessert late. Simple, comforting, caffeine free.

Sipdown (145/151)!

So to finish this off I cold brewed it because my tea twin VariaTEA said she liked it iced/cold and since I’d already experienced a hot cup and still had enough left for a cold brew I figured “why not”.

I must say, this was just as good cold as it was hot and, in fact, may have been even more creamy/Creamsicle like. I’m wondering if that’s because the rooibos base was less present this way, so the other notes got to shine more. Regardless it was delicious, but I’m still not totally sold on stocking this one. Certainly not in any sort of quantity; but maybe in 10g or 20g sample pouches for spontaneous cups? I don’t have any other sort of orange rooibos/honeybush blend stocked. In fact, I have a very small selection of fruity rooibos to begin with. So maybe this could have a place.

Probably not, though.