Zen

Last year, I never went into the cafeteria… It was too loud and too noisy, and I never really liked the people I’d end up sitting with. Instead, I went to my locker in the back hallway of the English department with a friend or two or by myself, and I had a tea stash in my locker. This is one of the ones I drank a lot, and I had a cup of it today… flashback!

It’s a a light green, with little grassy notes. It’s not remarkable. It’s not anything that I haven’t tried before. It’s not as good as the China Green that I’ve been getting lately. All in all, meh. It’s one of the better teas offered at Starbucks, but I won’t buy it for home.

This morning my stomach was feeling kind of ucky, but of course I didn’t have access to the lemon ginger teas I would usually drink in such a situation. The selection of Tazo bags in my hotel also didn’t include any with ginger, but I grabbed this one for the soothing spearmint in it.

Overall, not horrible. Not especially flavorful, but lightly minty and at least it soothed my discomfort. I’m out of that hotel now, so probably no more Tazo for a while, but it will still be a while before I’m back home. On it goes…

Every time I have this tea, I enjoy the flavor. For some reason, this morning is especially good. Maybe I squeezed the optimal amount of amber agave nectar, or possible the longer steep time helped as well.

I was in Starbucks today, and decided to pick up a tin of their bagged whole leaf tea to try. Zen is one of the Tazo teas I like fairly well, , so I took home a tin.

The tins are absolutely huge, and about half empty – not a feature I appreciate when I have limited tea storage space. I used one bag for a one pint pot, and that seemed sufficient. I think using a second bag would probably make the tea a little overwhelming. I like lemongrass, but I don’t want to swim in it.

This is also giving me a chance to play with my new toy, an Apple Iphone. My husband claims I have been obsessively, obnoxiously geeky about it since it arrived. I found a neat little tea timer app for free, with an amusing little graphic of a glass tea cup that gradually turns darker as the timer counts down. I set it for the recommended time, and was thrilled when it went off. So cool!

The bags are huge, and the leaf inside smells and tastes very attractive – large chunks of lemongrass, with a very minty aroma. (Have I mentioned that I love mint?).

In taste, this could just as well be an herbal infusion – I get spearmint and lemon grass, and just a hint of lemon zest, but no real tea flavor. Looking again at the bag, it appears that it is almost all mint, lemongrass, and lemon balm – there’s not a whole lot of tea present. Still, it’s a pleasant flavor and aroma. The mint is dominant in the first steep. The lemon flavor and scent are more pronounced in the second steep.

I would really prefer to buy this as a loose tea – it is way overpackaged. But good. I enjoy this cup.

Venti, clean, iced @ Starbucks Sunday nite to try to cool down. It was nice and refreshing, but I really wish they’d specify if it’s flavored tea. “Iced Green Tea” to me implies unflavored… but then again it also implies a default of unsweetened for me.

Little by little, my original stash of what seems like thousands o’ tea bags that I bought to try to turn myself into a tea drinker (before I started reading up and realized that was not the best way to go), is diminishing if not yet dwindling. This is among that group, and one of the first I bought. I think it was part of the second wave of splurge, after the original Bigelow/Twinings purchases. It’s in one of those spacious rectangular tins that the full leaf “sachets” come in.

The sachets, by the way, are pretty nice. I feel confident I’m not going to taste paper, I can see the leaves, and there’s lots of room for them to swim in once they hit the water without being too compressed. They do expand to fill the bag and bump up against the sides a bit once they’ve steeped fully.

I expected to like this one quite a bit as it has a reputation for being one of the tastier Tazo blends. But I think I may have to come to terms with the fact that I am not generally liking flavored green teas. Green teas on their own, yes. But I haven’t yet found a flavored green tea that really sends me. This one smells quite nice, a little minty, a little green, and a tiny bit of citrus if I really try hard.

While this is a significant improvement over the Orange Blossom by Tazo, I like their China Green Tips better as a green tea. I can taste a grassiness in the Zen, but it doesn’t have the sweetness and succulence of the Green Tips. And I like Refresh quite a bit as a mint tisane. The combination of peppermint, spearmint and tarragon really works well, and is much more interesting to me than the spearmint present here. In fact, Refresh is still the frontrunner in my Tazo experience and I plan to buy more of it (loose this time) when I run out of the bags as I’ve not been able to duplicate the blend using my own peppermint, spearmint and tarragon.

This isn’t bad, it just isn’t as great as I’d expected, and it’s not something I’ll feel compelled to replace when I finish. I could see having it every once in a while when something I like better isn’t available.

Also, I should say that it steeps well at a longer time without bitterness, but there’s not a noticeable change in flavor between 1.5 min and 3 min.

This may not be a fancy, super high quality tea – but it is nice enough as a soothing cup with a bit of honey. I don’t think I would purchase this, however, I wouldn’t turn it down if offered.

I went through a big green tea phase a while ago and went through several boxes of this blend. I don’t generally enjoy drinking green tea these days, but this is still one of my favourites when I do drink it. Nice mellow blend without the overwhelming rice taste that many green teas have.

Tea with honey in it when you can’t stop coughing is the best. Especially when the tea also has spearmint and lemongrass in it.

Which this one does.

Not a huge Tazo fan, usually. Not a huge Starbucks fan in general, come to that. But this is one of two teas I’ve tried from them that they’ve got right! It’s smooth, aromatic, minty, and lemony, and the green base is perfect. I have no clue why it’s called “zen”- maybe this particular blend is harmonic and balanced?

Anyway, this is a solid, never-disappointing, steady choice for a bagged green. Excellent straight up, or with some sugar or honey, but only a touch of either is needed.

Sitting in Starbucks on the New Jersey coast. The only tea I have with me is some Ito En teabags and I wanted something different so I came here. I ordered a small China green tips tea and they gave me this instead, which is saddening but I’ll deal. This stuff is enjoyable, my problem with it is that I really can’t see or taste the green tea in it, it’s all lemongrass and mint. But for now, it’s soothing as I watch the waves crash on to the shoreline. I just wish the staff of Starbucks knew that just because this says green tea, doesn’t mean it’s the same thing. Haha