Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Blends’

This scent of the un-brewed tea is amazing. I almost want to eat it straight. Or pack my pillow full of it and smell it all night long as I sleep. It’s AMAZING. It’s full of sweetness and floral-ness and is just made of yum.

And while the flavor of the tea is good, it’s not as good as the smell. It’s got a very light, very floral flavor. I love roses and rosewater candy, and this tea reminds me a lot of rosewater candy. Another element I like is the green rooibos. This is the first time I’d had the chance to try green rooibos. And I think I like it a LOT. I have to admit, I’m not a fan of red rooibos. It tends to taste like dirt and sawdust to me. There are blends I like that contain it, but it’s mostly in their ability to cover the dirty-sawdustness of the rooibos flavor. But this tea has such a light flavor, trying to get it to cover any other flavors would be like trying to completely cover a Cadillac with a Kleenex. This green rooibos adds the sweetness and base notes without the sawdust flavor of the red. It really makes me want to try other green rooibos teas.

Overall, I like this tea; it has a lot of elements I very much appreciate. But I wanted more out of it, based on the aroma.

You can purchase the Xaouen directly from the 52teas website.

I received this tea from a friend and had only HEARD about it prior.  Because I LOVE the fact Frank from 52 Teas ‘thinks outside the box…or in this case, the bag”…I like to try as many blends of his that I can.  The rarer and more crazy – the better!  It’s the perfect example of TEA MAKES A GOOD STORY!  And…I’m just crazy enough to TRY it!

When I was scrolling thru the reviews on Steepster I noticed everyone seemed to like it.  Then it happened…2 low, low, low reviews. It didn’t scare me! So…I YELLED…”Bring it on!!!”…and so I did.

I LOVE Frank’s write-ups and product descriptions!  One thing that made me laugh while reading the their description about this tea was the butter flavoring!  I was like…”OH MY GOSH…I’m going to drink butter?” I really didn’t stumble on the thought for too long as I was really excited about trying the blend.

It smelled like Cinnamon Raisin Toast.  Mission Accomplish, there, I guess.  I was unable to smell the butter BUT…I don’t slap on much butter on my toast anyhow…so…maybe this will be tailor-made for me!?

YUP! I could taste the black tea, the toast, the cinnamon, and the raisin. It was hard to taste the butter but just as it started to travel down my esophagus I could taste a hint of it…but just a hint!

The more I drink this – the more I can taste the toast as an after taste.  Normally I don’t like funky aftertastes but this works…especially in the morning when you are hungry for toast or a bagel or something and don’t have access to it!

This is a neat little creation that 52 Teas has available and I appreciate the fact that it’s different and unusual. It’s surprisingly good and I’m glad I could still taste the black tea.  Too many times when doing a flavored black tea…the black tea taste is often lost.  Not in this tea…it’s still, thankfully, present.

You can purchase the Buttered Cinnamon Raisin Toast Flavored Black Tea directly from the 52teas website.

The fancy teabag/pyramid/thing had a wonderful fragrance when I took it out of its packaging. The vanilla was deliciously fragrant and smelled like actual vanilla bean rather than some random perfume or extract. I could smell the tea base underneath which had an oddly lightly spiced sort of scent. I had to concentrate for my nose to pick up the coconut, but I think I detected it up. There’s something about coconut that just seems to blend really well with vanilla.

Unfortunately it pretty much all vanished as soon as the water hit the teabag, and just smelled like steeping tea. The taste of the tea started off rather weak and somewhat flat and only slowly did the flavour creep in, first the tannic flavour of the tea (which was fairly gentle and mellow compared to many of the bases used in flavoured blends – a point in this tea’s favor) followed by a sweet, vanilla-ish flavour. It’s not really the bursting-with-vanilla-flavour taste I was expecting, and it was kind of a let down in this regard. Not really getting the coconut flavour either.

This tea might benefit from adding a bit of sweetener and possibly milk too, although I think it would have to be steeped longer, as right now I think it’s too mild to stand up to the milk. It’s not a bad tea – it doesn’t have me jumping for joy, but it’s a nice easy-drinking black tea. I gave this tea a Steepster rating of 72 out of 100.

You can purchase the Orchid Vanilla directly from the Tea Forte website.

Green Tango is a mildly flavored green tea from Tea Forte; their website gives this description of Green Tango: ” Deliciously fragrant mangoes and peach scent every cup of our lightly steamed green tea with honeybush. A hint of the tropics with every satisfying sip.” The listed ingredients are organic green tea, organic honeybush, natural mango flavor, and natural peach flavor.

I used one of Tea Forte’s beautiful pyramid tea bags to brew this cup and steeped it for 5 minutes (more than the recommended 2-4 minutes). Always curious, I did slit the bag before brewing to take a look at the blend and was a bit disappointed to find that at least this particular bag must have missed out on the marigold petals and was just a mix of green tea leaves and honeybush. I don’t imagine that the flavor was compromised but it did look “prettier” on the website with the gold accents against the green.

Before and after brewing the tea had a pleasant scent of mango – nothing too strong and overpowering, but just enough to be identifiable as mango rather than simply fruity. The mango flavor presents itself as mildly in taste as it does in the aroma and unlike a lot of flavored blends it doesn’t hide the taste of the tea which is very smooth, no bitterness at all – a very nice cup of green tea with a refreshing fruit finish.

Green Tango is available in Tea Forte’s pyramid infusers and come in a box of 48 at $1 per, or more affordably, as loose tea in a 35 serving canister for $15.

You can purchase Tea Forte Green Tango directly from their website.

Africana is one of the Rooibos blends from Red Leaf Tea. It combines a rich red Rooibos leaf with bright blue malva flowers and purple cornflowers creating a very attractive loose tea that smells mildly of vanilla. The only ingredients listed for this blend are the Rooibos and the flowers that I mentioned but the description refers to “subtle touches of vanilla and orange” which I assume are added as flavoring.

I brewed a single cup of the Rooibos for 5 minutes; the tea was a nice mahogany color and had the typical sweet scent of Rooibos. The flavor as described was very subtle. A little too subtle in fact, if I hadn’t read the bag I would have thought this was a straight Rooibos. It wasn’t unpleasant; it had the nice sweet, nutty flavor that Rooibos is known for, but I couldn’t distinguish any of the vanilla or orange flavors that I was expecting.

I do enjoy plain Rooibos. There are so many flavor combinations available that it is sometimes hard to find a good Rooibos with nothing added to hide the natural taste. I started drinking Rooibos because it is naturally caffeine free and it made a nice cup of tea to relax with in the evening. For these reasons I did enjoy my cup of Rooibos Africana but I have to say that I was expecting a bit more from it.

Africana is priced a little high for a Rooibos, as are most of the loose leaf teas at Red Leaf Tea, but they have a Points and Rewards program and are currently offering free shipping which sweetens the deal considerably.

You can purchase Red Leaf Tea Rooibos Africana directly from their website.