Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Celestial Seasonings’

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.

The smell of the dry tea bag is ginger-y but sort of a candied ginger rather than straight-up, freshly-chopped gingerroot. Adding water brought out a delicious pear fragrance that reminded me of pear-flavoured hard candies with a hint of warm, spicy ginger.

Tea Fort’s teas have (in my personal opinion) a reputation for looking and sounding fancy but not really having much actual flavour or substance to them. But this tea proved me wrong. It tastes exactly like what it says it will – pear and ginger. The fruity pear dominates with the ginger complimenting it subtly rather than trying to compete with it for my taste buds’ attention. The whole thing is surprisingly sweet, almost like I’d added some sugar or agave nectar to it, and has a faint herbal-floral aftertaste.

I have to say that I REALLY enjoyed this tea and I think it would be a good one to convert someone who’s used to drinking Celestial Seasonings or Lipton to finer teas.

I gave this tea a Steepster rating of 90/100.

You can purchase Tea forte white ginger pear directly from their website.

Congrats to @AmazonV – she has won our great prize pack from @sleepytimebear and Celestial Seasonings! Stay tuned for more draws and contests in the future!

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.