Watermelon Mint Chiller White Tea

I taste very little watermelon flavor and lots of mint. Overall, it wasn’t bad…just not what I was expecting.

Not entirely sure how I feel about this tea. It tastes like someone decided to chew a stick of fruit gum at the same time as a stick of mint… it is surely interesting. I don’t really taste a watermelon flavor..but more of a generic melon cocktail. I do like the soothing chill that the mint gives my throat…so it does make a refreshing summer tea. I don’t think it was as tasty when it was chilled, but I tend to like hot teas better, anyways. I will definitely drink what I have, but probably won’t reorder it.

Love mint, watermelon and lime combo so love this tea-chilled. 1.5liters, 4 teaspoons of tea, 2 teaspoons of sugar, cold steeped 24hrs and was great. One of the few I will reorder.

this one isn’t too bad.. i thought, out of the new ones, i’d hate the macaron one and love this… well i love the macaron, and like this one. I made an iced pitcher of it.. its not bad!

Went into Teavana today to get some of the Grape Wulong that is 30% off for a little while. I decided to buy a drink and this was the choice. I had it iced with sweetener. It was ok. I don’t know, I think I wanted more of a watermelon kick. It is definitely more mild flavored that I thought it would be, which might be a positive for some tea drinkers.

Sipdown (207/210)!

So yesterday started off with receiving tea in the mail from the super generous Boychik! Holy shit that showed up here really fast! I received more Potato Pancakes/Applesauce, and Taiwanese Wild Mountain Black which made me very happy, and then samples of Harney’s Wedding Tea and some samples from The Persimmon Tree Company, which I wasn’t even expecting at all.

That, however, really pushed me into sipdown mode for the day. I’d really like to get under 200 teas again – and I’m not seeing that happening any time soon if people continue to be super awesome and generous, and keep sending me stuff. I need to step up my sipdown game and take pointers from VariaTEA and Sil.

Anyway, this sample came from VariaTEA a fairly long time ago, and I’m just now getting to it. I always seem to struggle with trying white or greent eas for the first time because they’re more touchy. Then it dawned on me a few days ago that I could just cold brew this one in my mason jar! So, that’s what I did. In total, this cold brewed for a pretty even six hours and was a nice blush pink kind of colour.

Taste wise, I was surprisingly really impressed. The watermelon isn’t really distinctly _water_melon, more so just generic kind of melon, and the mint was really lovely and added a great deal of freshness to the tea. Juicy would also be a really good word for it. I also just looked up the ingredients for the first time and saw the eucalyptus, which makes a lot of sense because eucalyptus seems to be a great ingredient for cold brews because it also keeps everything fresh too. Actually, overall I was kind of reminded of bubblegum, similar to how I feel about Honeydew Mate from DAVIDsTEA.

I’d drink this again as a cold brew, especially in the summer. Way to go Teavana – this one actually really impressed me.

Story time:

I took my friend to Teavana (only local tea shop that was open after work) to get her an infuser and some tea of her choice. She’s just gotten into tea and I wanted to further the interest.

We go in and spend a lot of time looking at the tea ware and cups. She selects an infuser she likes and we go up to the counter to check out some tea. There’s a salesgirl and a new employee being trained. I asked the salesgirl what the minimum purchase was and she told me 2 ounces. The trainee shows us about five different kinds of tea and my friend and I choose three that we’d like to take home.

“I’d like a half ounce of these two and an ounce of this one,” I tell the salesgirl who’s ringing us out.

“The minimum,” she informs me, condescension dripping from her words, “is two ounces per tea.”

So I bought my friend two ounces of this, the tea she had picked out, and left the other teas on the counter. Maybe I’ll go back at some point and have them in a to go cup.

This is a tea that is good hot or cold. We tried it first hot, and it was very melony and sweet, even without sugar. A very nice, light after dinner tea. As the cup cooled, more of the mint came out and complemented the melon flavors nicely. Cold steeped this tea is minty and fruity and refreshing in a bracing way. I like it better hot.

It steeps well – not the persnickity nightmare that is Strawberry Rose Champagne/Peach Tranquility. It also resteeps well … once. Anything more than that yields vaguely pink water with no flavor.

I was really excited to try Watermelon Mint Chiller so I finally decided to use my “tea for $1” coupon today to get it.

Quite frankly, I’m disappointed with this tea. There was no specific taste that I can describe. It wasn’t fruity or tangy or even minty. The watermelon flavor is so light that it doesn’t even taste like watermelon and it is just gross. This is the first time I’m really not satisfied with a tea from Teavana.

However, the sample of this tea in the store is really good because they added rock sugar! so that’s what I would recommend.

I had this tea iced a couple of weeks ago, and in all honesty, it was absolutely delicious.

The fruit flavours (especially the melon) all came through very clearly without overpowering everything else, and it wasn’t overly sweet, either. The mint added a nice burst of chill to everything, and I love mint, so that’s always a plus.

Overall, it’s just a really enjoyable tea. There’s a great balance of flavour and it’s really refreshing. I’ll definitely be trying this again.