I have a confession.  I consider myself an herbal tea fan.  Yet, I hate chamomile.

And a lot of teas, especially ones designed to soothe and relax, like to focus on chamomile.   So I used to convince myself  (on those nights where I’ve had a horrible long day and want a nice, mellow cup of tea  to help me relax) that maybe the chamomile won’t be so bad this time.  So I brew, and I relax, and I sip.  And then I go and calmly dump the cup out and wonder why it’s still on my shelf of tea.  Blech. 

This cycle continued until I found Sleepytime Vanilla.  This is an herbal tea, designed to relax you.  And it has chamomile in it.  And I actually like it.  The blend of mint and vanilla with the chamomile mellows the flavor, and enhances the brew.  As you sip, you’re first hit by the mint and chamomile, pleasantly combined, then the vanilla shows up with a creamy aftertaste.    The flavors play off each other, and remove whatever it is that consistently makes me go BLEA.

These days, when I’ve had a horrible long day and want to relax, this tea is the one that finds its way into my cup.  I sip contentedly, and actually gain that relaxation I am so craving.

You can purchase Celestial Seasoning Sleepytime Vanilla directly from their website.

Celestial Seasoning’s Honey Lemon Ginseng is fantabulous! Aroma is a soft lemon; it does not smell too sour nor too sweet. Whenever I see the combination of honey and lemon, I think of it as the perfect concoction for cold and flus. Now add ginseng to the mix and you definitely give a boost to your immune system. I am partial to ginseng so of course I had to choose this tea. There is an old Chinese proverb that says if you ask 2 men to walk around the world non-stop, the one who looks untired and refreshed at the end of the journey would have a piece of ginseng hidden under his tongue. This once again referring to ginseng’s many health benefits.

A tip for preparing teas: try ripping open the teabags, pouring contents directly into the teapot and steeping from there. This little step will add more flavour to your cup of tea. You can use a strainer to keep leaves and dregs from entering into your cup of tea. I did just that with this tea, pouring 5 grams into my ceramic teapot and steeping with 600 ml of boiling water for 3 minutes.

The taste is not too lemony and although I could not smell the ginseng in the aroma, I could definitely taste it. It has that familiar characteristic I get from many hui gan teas but without the bitterness. I am referring to the sort of “coated” mouthfeel you get like when you drink milk. Having that “coated” mouthfeel makes it less of a thirst quencher. As a matter of fact, it leaves a dry feeling in your mouth, but then again thirst quenching hot teas are a little hard to come by. There is an initial refreshing quality right when you put it in your mouth, then comes the “coatedness” and dry mouthfeel at the middle and back of the tongue and lastly a hint of sweetness and cool sensation felt from the honey and pressing the front of the tongue to the front centre of the roof of the mouth. It seems that when I drank the tea using loose leaf steeping methodology, the taste of the three components were manifested more in layers – one taste, then the next and so on, whereas when I drank it from the teabag, the taste was more blended, that is, no single element came to the forefront, every sip had nuances of all three elements. The elements are certainly easier to identify using the loose leaf methodology. I tend to rip open the teabag and steep the leaves loose whenever I have teabags, but not many people do this as it is messy (because most contain dust or fannings) and more inconvenient. But you should give it a try; the teabag keeps the character, quality, goodness, and flavour of the leaves all contained; cutting it open makes for a better cup.

A notable tea that I will not soon forget. Now I just need to find it in my supermarket!

You can purchase the Honey Lemon Ginseng Green Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.

Sure, Green Tea Honey Ginseng is just another flavour from Celestial Seasonings, you say? Not really. Who can forget the first time having a cup of Celestial Seasoning tea. You may even recall exactly where you were and what you did when you sampled your first Celestial sip. My first time, I was in Chautauqua, NY, sipping a cup of Sleepy Time before heading off to bed and recall having such a restful night. The beauty of having so many choices of Celestial teas is that you can pick one for posting with your different memories.

Still after all these years, there is no change to the tea bag, the basic cardboard box with the clear crinkle plastic wrap packaging and the inside stiff waxed paper bag sealed with more wax. Celestial Seasonings continues its commitments to fair trade practises and consumer and environmental consciousness. There is the usual philosophical quote printed on the box. Don’t forget to look for it. This box quotes from the writings of Confucius. So why change a good thing? Is any one really crazy about the double tea bag they call a “pillow”. If you only want one cup, you have to split it away from its twin. It does have some usefulness as you will see below. It’s all part of what we expect from this tea company. How many boxes do we have at the back of the shelf? Plenty! Is this just another tea? Nope!

Somehow this tea company manages to maintain its high standard, offering a fragrant and tasty cup of tea that quenches your thirst and provides complimentary flavours to maintain your interest. I found myself reaching for this tea over and over again. It’s definitely a tea that would be appealing to many. It doesn’t seem to get strong. The ingredients are straightforward – “authentic” green tea, Bai Mu Tan white tea for “smooth taste”, Eleuthero (an adaptogen to combact stress, colds and other immune system deficiencies and mental fatigue), natural lemon and honey flavours, licorice, lemon verbena, chickory, ginger, orange blossoms, honey and Asian ginseng. Yes, it does contain caffeine.

The honey flavours are there (shown dripping all over the cover of the box) and are well balanced with the lemon and ginseng. You can expect a clean, smooth brew with natural sweetness! The colour of the liquor is lemon-yellow but is not clear, so it won’t matter because so many people use a mug and will leave the tea bag in the mug while drinking. By the way, have you noticed that the tea bag tips up, leaving just enough sticking up that your finger tips can reach in and pull the tea bag out without burning your fingers? That little pillow is part of the boheme experience.

The instructions are to make the tea with hot water but not at the boiling point, to preserve the mild and delicate flavours of the tea leaf. Steep 2 minutes. The beauty is that if you steep longer, the sweetness of the licorice seems to offset any bitterness drawn from the teas or the ginseng. I felt a definite lift of energy after drinking this tea. I wanted a nice cream scone or an oatmeal cookie with this tea but would be happy to have this tea at anytime with any food. I would definitely serve the Green Tea Honey Ginseng as an iced tea, possibly make a pitcher using sunrays rather than boiled water to naturally draw out the natural flavours. Haven’t this tea been processed enough? Can we save some energy here? And don’t forget to recycle!

You can purchase the Honey Lemon Ginseng Green Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.

Back in January we ran a very successful Celestial Seasonings Contest for a case of Decaf Lemon Jasmine Green Tea, well, Sleepytime Bear is back, and this time with a prize pack that will blow you away!

You could win:

• Decaf Sleepytime Lemon Jasmine Green Tea
• Celestial Seasonings Tin Tea Caddy
• Celestial Seasonings Magnet
• Celestial Seasonings Lip Balm
• Honey Sticks

What do you have to do? It is pretty simple.

1. Follow @Sleepytimebear on twitter, or “Like” SleepyTime Bear on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/SleepytimeBearTea
2. Comment in this post with your twitter name, or the name you are following Sleepytime Bear with on Facebook so we can confirm your entry.
3. For an extra entry, re-tweet: I just entered to win an amazing prize from @allabouttheleaf and @sleepytimebear – you can 2! Enter here: http://is.gd/h6GFcp #iaatlcontest

One random winner will be chosen from the commenters on this post that have met the above requirements.

This contest runs from Monday March 7th, to Monday March 14th – so you have a full week to figure out this Facebook and Twitter thing!

So get on this now – and win this amazing prize pack from Celestial Seasonings!

The rules of the contest are as follows:

1. You must be following @allabouttheleaf, otherwise we cannot contact you via DM if you win!
2. You can re-tweet as many times as you like, but there is only one extra entry per person.
3. Duplicate accounts created by the same person for the purpose of entering will be disqualified.
4. You must re-tweet the message above EXACTLY to gain the extra entry, otherwise we cannot track your tweet.
5. This contest not open to employees of Celestial Seasonings.
6. Contest ends Monday March 14th – one random winner will be contacted via DM on Twitter for their shipping details.

Just in case you needed more convincing, take a look at some of the Tea Reviews for Celestial Seasonings Tea that our reviewers have posted over the past year or so.

Congratulations to @dolls123 for winning this contest! Stay tuned to more contests from It’s All About The Leaf

It’s All About The Leaf has teamed up with Celestial Seasonings for this great contest!

Celestial Seasonings has been in business since 1969, and is currently the largest specialty tea manufacturer in North America. That translates to more than 1.6 million cups of Celestial Seasonings tea served daily – that is nothing to be sniffed at!

With It’s All About The Leaf quickly becoming one of the most popular Tea Review sites online, it was only natural that we should team up together to offer this contest

It is very simple, just follow @allabouttheleaf on twitter (visit www.twitter.com if you do not already have an account), and retweet the message below.

That is IT! Once you tweet the message below BEFORE January 21st, and you will automatically be entered into the contest to win…

1 CASE (6 boxes!!!) of Sleepytime Decaf Lemon Jasmine Green Tea

Just tweet the following message, exactly as it is, without the double quotes: “RT: @allabouttheleaf Follow @SleepytimeBear and join his weekly #CSTeaTime sessions every Tues. from 3-4pm EST to win prizes! #IAATLcontest” or click on this link to go to twitter automatically, and have this message pre-filled for posting.

The rules of the contest are as follows:

1. You must be following @allabouttheleaf, otherwise we cannot contact you via DM if you win!

2. You can rewteet as many times as you like, but there is only one entry per person.

3. Duplicate accounts created by the same person for the purpose of entering will be disqualified.

4. You must retweet the message above EXACTLY to qualify to win, it is also how we track the entries.

5. This contest not open to employees of Celestial Seasonings.

6. Contest ends Friday January 21st – one random winner will be contacted via DM on Twitter for their details.

Just in case you needed more convincing, take a look at some of the Tea Reviews for Celestial Seasonings Tea that our reviewers have posted over the past year or so.

When I was contacted and asked to try the Celestial Seasonings Fast Lane Black Tea, I readily agreed. Celestial Seasonings was the very first company to respond to our inquiries when we started IAATL, and sent our very first batch of teas for review, something for which I will be forever grateful. Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime tea is also the tea that started it all for me, back those ummhurummph years ago, when I was but a wee child of 5 or 6.

Apparently, Fast Lane Tea was, a number of years ago, a tea that Celestial Seasonings discontinued. Since then, the legend goes, fans of this tea have petitioned sufficiently to have it return, albeit for a short period of time! This tea is ONLY available online (at http://www.fastlanetea.com or from Celestial Seasonings Tea Shop in Boulder (see the website for details).

Now, to the tea. This tea is a caffeine packed punch in the gut. With a black tea base from Indonesia, we get cinnamon, eleuthero (a variety of ginseng), licorice, nutmeg, and an EXTRA shot of caffeine! This is the very first time that I have see caffeine actually listed as an ingredient!

The smell is spicy/sweet. I can detect the cinnamon and licorice for sure, not so much on the ginseng or nutmeg however. Brewed up, you get what you would expect, a dark liquor, and almost Christmas Spice-like scent to the tea.

It tastes pretty much what you would expect – not particularly strong, a very middle of the road, spicy with sweet notes of the licorice. It is not an amazing, blow me away Darjeeling/Assam/Ceylon single estate loose leaf tea flavour with complexity, but it is also not a bitter, pour it on the neighbors weeds to get rid of them tea. Pleasant and non-offensive, a little passive for my personal tastes, but certainly of higher quality than you would expect from a bagged store shelf tea!

As for kick? Well I wrote this review in 5 minutes at 3:00am, after drinking the tea at 3pm – what do you think? Seriously tho – I can sense that it does have more caffeine than I am used to in a black tea, but I don’t get the frenetic mind warp and massive crash that I get from a triple espresso either – this would be a great tea to study with – students take note!

Bottom line – while it is not a “don’t miss this tea” it is well blended and will appeal to a wide range of people – keep it in the cupboard for when you need a boost.

You can purchase the Fast Lane Black Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.

I grew up drinking Celestial Seasonings teas and it was (and still is) a staple in my mom’s cupboard.  But for some reason I never got around to trying this particular one even though ‘SleepyTime’ is one of the standard CS blends. As it turns out, for once CS seems to have made a herbal tea without hibiscus being involved (thankfully, as the hibiscus over-dose is what has kept me away from a lot of them in recent years). Out of the box it smells quite herbal-y with a strong odor of mint. More in-depth sniffing revealed a sweet vanilla-y odor lurking in the background.

There’s not really a whole lot of vanilla that I can taste in the tea itself and I think that’s partially due to the fact that the mint and chamomile are such strong, aromatic herbs that they drown out any subtleties in this tea.  The herbal flavours aren’t bitter and the chamomile has a nicely sweet, apple-like flavour.  I can pick up a bit of citrus from the lemongrass, but the rest of the ingredient are mostly there for show I think l – or maybe they’re just part of the amorphous herbal flavour.  As for its effects as a practical herbal tea, I didn’t really find myself getting sleepy per say, but it does have a bit of a relaxing effect on the body and mind.

I gave this tea a Steepster review of 63/100

You can purchase Celestial Seasoning Sleepytime Vanilla directly from their website.

In general, green teas take some coddling: keeping the water temp under boiling, not over-measuring the dry leaves, keeping a watchful eye so that you don’t oversteep.

Even for the hard core tea-ophile, some days you just don’t want to have to coddle your tea. Fatigue and/or time constraints just call for a dump-and-dunk cuppa. Thanks to Celestial Seasonings, green tea fans can have just that without much of a concession on quality.

I interpreted “freshly heated water” to be in the 180-degree range and did the prescribed two minute brew. No particular flavor jumps out to get you, but there’s a mild lemony-citrus tang to each swallow. As you can see above, the ingredient listing on the package doesn’t reveal much; a note on the lid says that that white tea has been added for smoothness. Said white tea does cut the five-required-daily-servings-of-veggies taste that you get in most bagged greens.

When convenience needs to overrule preciseness, this tea is a good call.

You can purchase the Authentic Green Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.

It’s rare for me to have bagged teas but this is Celestial Seasonings so I’m open to it. When I was small, this is the only tea that we had in the house so it makes me feel a bit nostalgic. It says it’s a blend of green tea, Bai Mu Dan and ginseng root, with honey and lemon. It smells like a Chinese green tea, can’t smell anything else. Opened a bag and I can see small white bits that I’m guessing are ginseng, the rest just looks like green tea but I trust that there must be white tea in there as well. The ingredients list says it also contains licorice, chicory, ginger and orange blossoms, but I seriously can only smell the green tea.

Steeped for two minutes in hot (not boiling) water and now I can smell the lemon verbana and the spices. Brews up a light green with a hint of orange, not a clean brew but it’s not bad. It’s actually quite tasty, though slightly bitter, need to reduce the water temperature I think. Next time I’m going to try the cooler water and see if it steeps up better. Then I’m going to chill it and see if that will pull the flavors out better.

It’s okay, I mean it is what it is and it’s not terrible for what it is.

You can purchase the Honey Lemon Ginseng Green Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.

Let me start with the statement that I do NOT consider myself a tea snob. My philosophy is, any tea, any time, any way. However, it was with some trepidation that I approached the Celestial Seasoning Sleepytime Vanilla Tea.

You see I grew up drinking tea via teabag. You know, Tetley, Sleepytime, etc. When I discovered loose leaf tea, I felt that I had moved on, forever putting behind the regular boring old teabag. Much to my surprise however, a shipment from Celestial Seasonings showed up on the doorstep for review, so I thought, why not? Of course I will try it, I am not a snob, they must have come a long way since I was a kid, after all, it is their 40th anniversary, so there must be something to the tea!

The scent when you open up the package was amazing – sweet and minty like peppermint candy. I could feel myself starting to drool already! I was really looking forward to this cup of tea. I extracted a teabag, and the butterflies started. They are the regular old teabags we all know – paper, attached together and perforated for “easy” separation, (I ripped 2 open trying to “easily” separate them…) but the smell… mmmmmm…

When I examined the bag’s contents, it was pretty much what I expected, not just small leaves, but pretty much dust, not much recognizable here. Preparation numero uno was boiling water, 5 minute steep. This produced a golden amber liquid, with distinctly distinguishable scents of Chamomile, Mint and Vanilla. As I went to remove the teabag, it occurred to me that there is no string attached! That is odd, and unexpected, and, well, inconvenient if you did not have a spoon around, as that water is HOT!

As for the taste, the best way that I can describe it is hot, and frankly, tasteless. I was so incredibly disappointed. The scent to this point, and even now as I reminisce about it, was incredible, the buildup to tasting almost unbearable, making the actual tasting experience a total of a letdown. I thought I was in for something different, but memories of drinking tea as a child flood back as I sip hot, tasteless, colorful and beautiful scented, water.

What to do? Well, why not go back to my roots I figured, so I added *GASP* sugar! Just a bit, maybe half a teaspoon – that could not hurt it right? Well, with just that bit of sugar, all of a sudden the tea came alive, and I could taste the Chamomile, and the sweetness of Vanilla and even the Peppermint goodness!

So, in the end, all is well that ends well, I would recommend that if you are not a sugar person, avoid this tea, as the taste of the tea by its self is remarkably unremarkable, but with that sugar, it is a good tea, delivering what you would expect. The only question left is, will Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Vanilla Tea put me to sleep tonight, or will I be tossing and turning all night, ruminating how this tea could have been so much better?

You can purchase
Celestial Seasoning Sleepytime Vanilla directly from their website.