Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Flower Petals’

I tend to like tropical tastes. Much to the chagrin of my family, when I order pizza, I usually choose pineapple and ham as toppings. This just grosses people out but I like it. So how about pineapple tastes in tea?…keep that thought in mind, okay now add to it guava. This combination makes me think that you’ll either love it or hate it. As separate food and drink items, I like it so I’m game to try the combo too. Not too sure about the flower petals in it though. We’ll see.

Opened up the package and found a mesh-stitched teabag filled with not small fannings or dust in the teabag but whole leaves that looked of good quality and only a tiny bit of blue flower petals. Steeped the teabag in boiling water for 3 minutes as per the instructions. Aroma is very fruity and floral. A very pleasant fragrance.

I agree with Mighty Leaf that the “green tea blends harmoniously with the sweet tropical fruits of pineapple and guava” and this may be part of the problem. It would have been more distinctive had the green tea had some of the characteristic grassy or vegetal notes of other green teas. Because of this, it tasted more like a tisane than a green tea blend. The taste of pineapple also seems to be lost in a stronger base note of the sweet guava. The blend does seem to come together quite naturally with the floral notes. It is an okay beverage but tastes too much like many fruity, floral teas I’ve tasted. It doesn’t stand out but it’ll do. I could take it or leave it.

You can purchase Mighty Leaf Green Tea Tropical directly from their website.

Although I normally cut open teabags and steep them loose, I decided to steep this tea in its own bag and why not, Tea Forte has one of the most attractive teabags in the industry. I kept the teabag in for the full duration of my drinking the tea. Steeped leaves show broken green leaves, stem, ginger bits, and white flower petals. Infusion is a yellowish colour. Although the leaves are not small enough, I did notice a little bit of dust components, pekoe?, that made it through the teabag and sat on the surface of the tea. Aroma is heavenly, sweet from the pear.

Unlike with many teas with ginger as an ingredient that I have tasted recently, the ginger here is surprisingly soft. Sweetness came predominantly from the white tea and pear and the ginger played the supportive role. The resulting taste of the balance of these three flavours is one similar to bubble gum. Funny, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pear bubble gum flavour before, but the combination of these three ingredients was spot on like bubble gum. Don’t get me wrong, I like bubble gum but like with bubble gum I can’t chew more than one piece at a time. I don’t think I can drink more than one cup of this tea at a sitting. I can’t see myself drinking a lot of it.

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

Canton Tea’s Alishan Oolong is absolutely fantastic! I haven’t tasted an oolong so flavourful in a long time. Alishan Oolong is one of Taiwan’s finest high-grown oolong teas. According to the Canton website, their Alishan won 2010′s Great Taste award and I can see why!

Dried leaf is in tightly rolled clumps that open up into medium long leaves with hot water. Liquor is an attractive clear, bright, green infusion. The scent is just heavenly, floral with apricot scents and most importantly the taste is just yummy. Smooth with very floral and fruity notes, not to the extent of being too perfumy or chemical but I would say a little goes a long way. I used about 9.5g in 1.6L of water which is on the more diluted side but it was still packed full of flavour. I think I would still prefer it to be even more diluted. My taste buds were on overdrive it seemed. Hey, this didn’t win the great taste award for nothing! For those of you who love quality, classic, flavourful oolong taste this is perfect for you but if you are looking for something more subtle or light then I would suggest you look elsewhere, probably not in the oolong category. This tea like many oolongs has many nuances and complexities and yet still has a bit of a vegetal base. One thing I found interesting was you get an aftertaste in your mouth like you’ve been chewing on some flower petals and have just eaten an apple after drinking this tea. My co-worker has been hinting at me to order this for the office and I have no hesitation to do so.

You can purchase the Ali Shan Oolong Tea directly from the Canton Tea Co. website.

I’ve had Tea forte before and consider it a premium tea. This whole leaf organic tea comes from a single estate Assam. Assam tea from India is known for its exceptional malt flavours. The packaging indicated that the bergamot oil used in the manufacturing is a 1st pressed Italian bergamot. Like a good olive oil, forst pressed offers higher quality and more desireable flavour. The package temps you with words of ” citricy and lightly floral infusion” and prints a single word “caffeine” on the front to let you know this tea is not a caffeine-free. The ingrediatent listed areblack tea, corn flower petals and natural flavours. Both the Fair Trade and USDA Organic seals were printed on the package. After opening the package, I could smell the bergamot and citricy oils I weighed the sample in at 5 grams. The packaged direction were 12 0z. Boiling water and 5 minutes steep time. Milk and sugar were a compliment for this tea, I read.

When I opened the package I was suprized that the leaf was whole and not in a tea bag . The Broken Orange Pekoe looked uniformly dark and the intense dark blue cornflowers provided an interesting visual depth. I grabbed my teaball and found the 5 grams fit perfectly. I prepared boiling water and pre-heated a traditional porcelain tea pot, noting the line for 12 oz. I also knew 5 minutes was a long time for tea to steep, so I prepared a burner on my stove with a protective ring to maintain the heat. A tea light on a tea stand or trivet could also have been used, but I was in a hurry to get the tea at 5:30 to revive my spirit after a stressful day at work. I noted a strong chlorophyll rim in the tea pot.

After 5 minutes, I poured off 10 oz into a large porcelain tea mug and had a sip of the clear brew. I noted a low astringency to the tea and soft bergamot and floral flavours. Lets stop for a moment and look at what cornflowers do for tea. First, they are decorative. In Victorian times, adding fresh flowers to food provided a lift from gloom and celebrated the floral tones of the tea. There is a slight clove-like flavour to the flowers. Secondly, the flowers are an aid to digestion, aid in healing wounds and scrapes, and are used to treat ailments of the eyes.

I added milk and took a sip. Milk cuts astringency. As this tea is already low in astringency, the milk enhances the malt flavours but now they come in secondary to the citrus high notes. There is more fullness in the mouth. Amazingly, despite the addition of milk, there is a very long lingering taste of the bergamot, an aftertaste of bitter orange. If you were having an afternoon tea, this flavouring would easily last through two tea scones loaded with jam and clotted cream.

I know there are many who need more “earl” in the earl grey, so I’d recommend this tea to those wanting those citrus notes and that bitter orange bite. Enjoy then, as this tea is forte!!

You can purchase the Earl Grey directly from the Tea Forte website.

Mighty Leaf is one of few popular Canadian tea companies. As a Canadian, I celebrate that fact, and always look forward to sampling a new Mighty Leaf tea. However, in this case, I am left with a bit of a *meh* feeling.

I picked out the Green Tea Tropical from the samples that Mighty Leaf sent us, anticipating visions and flavours of tropical vacations to Mexico and Costa Rica, and the initial scent of the un-brewed leaves gave me just that. It is of course, packaged in the signature Mighty Leaf stitched pillow teabag, and the leaf appeared to be fairly large and full, and as such, of seemingly high quality.

The first brewing was as suggested, 180 degrees for 3 minutes. As the teabag went in, the scent started to become more muted. After 3 minutes, I was left with a dark amber liquor, and mildly tropical scented water.

As I sipped, I noted that the tea was not in the least bit astringent (aka “bitter” for some), leading me to again, believe that the green tea was of good quality. However, the flavouring of the tea was strangely blended together, not really allowing me to sort out different tropical flavours, tho the scent was “Guava” like. I found overall, the tea not “incredible” – but a decent cup of tea, but yet, unremarkable, leaving me with that *meh* that I mentioned before – a take it or leave it kind of feeling.

As I make notes on this tea, the taste does slightly linger, while leaving my teeth feeling a bit fuzzy, and my mouth a bit dry, again, green tea characteristics. The problem I think here, is that the actual green tea flavour gets lost in the tropical fruit flavouring, never really rising to the top to be complemented by the flavours. The second steeping (4 min @ 180 deg) was even more unremarkable, with a little flavour, but less so that the original, and again, the green tea not coming to the fore.

So my overall impression of this tea is that it would be a good starting tea for a convert, someone that is not used to green tea and could get turned off by the earthier aspects of a straight green. This tea has maybe a wider appeal, but I am not sure if it is good enough to be called a “premium” tea or to charge premium prices for.

All that being said, it is not a bad tea, and Mighty Leaf produces some top quality teas, which is maybe why this one leaves me wanting more.

You can purchase Mighty Leaf Green Tea Tropical directly from their website.

EDIT: I was informed by an astute commenter that Mighty Leaf is NOT a Canadian company, and much to my chagrin, they are correct. My apologies for the mistake in this review!