“All around the mulberry bush the monkey…”

Okay, I’ll stop.

According to Tula Teas, a tisane made of steeped mulberry leaves (from genus Morus alba) is popular for those seeking green tea grassiness without the caffeine kick. Health properties associated with mulberry leaf infusions are alleviation of hyperuricemia, gout, as well as a treatment for leukemia. It also happened to be a personal favorite tisane of Tula’s founder for its apparent calming effects.

I can see where one could make a case for it being a green tea alternative. The mid-green, reedy pieces looked like Chinese-style sencha or Japanese aracha on first glance. Light brown, twiggy roots amidst the batch, though, dispelled that comparison, so did the smell. This had a very grassy, wildernessy smell – but much more wild than that of green tea. I likened it to dried nettle leaf, only nuttier.

On a cursory glance, I couldn’t find any brewing instructions for this. I figured the best approach was one I typically used for herbals – 1 rounded teaspoon in 8oz. of boiled water steeped for three minutes. It looked hearty enough.

This is the first time I’ve ever said this…but the liquor brewed up brass. Seriously, brass. Not gold, not pyrite, not bronze, not amber – brass. Color-wise, it appeared to be hedging up to oolong territory. However, the aroma reminded me very strongly of kukicha by way of guayusa. There was a sweetness at the tail-end of the scent. Taste-wise, it delivered a nutty punch on intro, followed by creamy, buttery texture in the middle. The finish tapered off nicely to a sweet echo. Would I be weird if I said it reminded me of steeped peanut butter?

Point being, I can see where some people draw the comparison to green tea. The nuttiness is very similar to a lower-grade, pan-fried sencha or bancha. As luck would have it, I kinda like those teas. This wouldn’t be my first choice for an alterna-green tea – that honor still belongs to green rooibos – but I can see how some would bee-line to it. What’s really odd is my body was thinking I was having a caffeinated green tea…bizarre…

You can purchase the Green Mulberry Leaf directly from the Tula Teas website.

This review is being written in the middle of a heat wave.  Industrial air conditioners around town are failing in the force of the oppressive heat.  The skin on the back of your legs begins to cook the moment you step foot out of the house, causing many to turn and run back into air conditioned houses, making the heat worse on the next visit outside.

What better time for a tea that tastes of ice cream and mentions it would be great iced?

Like all the NecessiTeas blends I’ve tried, it smells amazing.  Orange peel, creamy notes and tea blend into an aroma to make the angels of frozen confectionaries cry.  Once brewed up it’s a lovely light yellow green.  Unsweetened, the tea and the orange peel are front and center.  The pleasantly bitter flavor of the orange combines well with the green tea base to make a pleasant drink.  There’s a hint of a creamy after note.  When I let the cup cool, the green tea took over more and the flavors hid.

But it’s an ice cream flavored tea, so that, to me means SWEET.  So I sweetened my next cup.  YUM.  It brought out the cream flavors, and mellowed the orange flavor while not loosing the tea itself.  When this cooled, it retained the dreamcicle flavor, and stayed an excellent sipping tea.  I tried steeping the leaf again – and was pleasantly surprised that the added flavors remained strong.

This is a yummy, yummy tea.  It’s a flavored green that manages to highlight the added flavors without losing it’s basic tea-ness.  I’d strongly reccomend a sweetened iced cup of this for a warm summers evening, sitting out watching the fireflies.

You can purchase the Orange Creamsicle directly from the The Necessiteas website.

I’ve written about tea in one fashion or another for well over three years, but when confronted with tea chocolate I draw a blank. This marks the first time I’ve tried a tea-infused sweet other than green tea ice cream or mochi cakes. Thankfully, though, eating sweets is well within my area of expertise. Perhaps [looking down at gut] too much.

Tea and All Its Splendour is the brainchild of Raelene Gannon, one of only fifteen certified tea sommeliers in Canada. Certified how and through what? I couldn’t tell you. Point is, she is one, and that’s what her site says. Back in ’08, on a trip to China, she had an epiphany while ordering a cup of coffee and couldn’t even bring the cup to her lips. Switching to a jasmine-scented green tea, she found her thirst-quenching beverage of choice. The experience led her to pursue tea as a viable career.

Mustering her acumen in the chocolate and confection industry, she also developed the ‘ChocolateT’ line of gourmet bars. The idea of pairing tea and chocolate isn’t a new one, but this was the first time I’d come across a Belgian chocolate/tea pairings. Of the choices presented before me, I went with the safest bet ­ White Belgian Chocolate with Matcha and Sencha.

Ingredients included sugar (obviously), cocoa butter, full cream powder, soy lecithin, natural vanilla, and natural tea flavor. When I read the last one, I did a mental about-face. Tea flavoring? Isn’t that cheating? From the looks of the gourmet bar itself, it appeared actual matcha powder was used rather than a flavoring agent; so, why not just say that?  I could believe that sencha flavoring was used, though, unless it was an extracted powder. But that would’ve been redundant given the matcha powder inclusion. So many questions.

The gourmet bar itself looked like white chocolate that’d been paired with matcha ­ light green ringed by white on the periphery. There was an ornate, circular, vine-like design on the body of it, and the pieces easily divided into four smaller pieces like a good candy bar should. Not sure if this was the proper thing to do to chocolate, but I went up and took a whiff. It certainly smelled like chocolate, too. (Leave it to me to point out the obvious.)

To the taste, well, there really isn’t much I have to say. It held the flavor of white chocolate – quality stuff at that. Did I taste any matcha or sencha? Unfortunately, no. Perhaps my taste buds aren’t advanced enough to pick up on the nuances of tea-infused chocolate. I never said I was a choco-sommelier. Heck, I’m not a sommelier of any sort. I’m an amateur appreciator of tea (at best), and from my uneducated perspective, this was a damn good chocolate bar. And that’s about it.

You can purchase the Tea Infused Chocolates directly from the Tea and All Its Splendour website.

When I was growing up, my father loved cheesecake-flavored ice cream. Specifically blueberry cheesecake ice cream. So this aroma makes me nostalgic.  And drool.  Because oh my goodness! This tea smells amazing!  Creamy, cheesy, and fruity. I almost want to nibble on the tea leaves it smells so amazing. And there are GIANT blueberries included in the leaf.   It’s beautiful!

Brewing it, it turns into a very light yellow brew, with a light, beautiful aroma. It’s the same blueberry-cheesecake-y goodness as the leaf, albeit a lot more delicate and light.  Unsweetened, I got a lot of the bright, berry flavor. Sweetened, it was lovely. To me, the green tea flavor is, not particular strong or stand-out, but the blueberry, and a cakey/cheesy flavor are there, and they’re lovely. It was a lot lighter and more delicate taste than one might anticipate from the aroma of the leaf. But it’s very very yummy. And I got a second brew out of it, which is surprising for a flavored tea.

Lovely tea. I think I’ll be seeking this out again.

You can purchase the Blueberry Cheesecake directly from the The Necessiteas website.

We are on Week Umpteen of a Midwest heat wave with daytime temperatures no less than sizzling. Nighttime lows are at a refreshing slow roast. Thus, I selected Pineapple Paradise as the optimum tea for this particular season–the name evokes visions of hammocks, gently swaying palms, a stack of really good books at my side, and somebody subservient to bring me copious amounts of this tea, iced.

I’m a big sun tea fan in the summer, so I deduced that, following the double-up instructions on the packet, I could put a batch in my trusty Mason jar on the front porch of our miner’s shack (temporary residence–long story) and brew up a batch of tropical goodness. The dry mix smells great–minus the rose petals, the scent is a lot like a Caribbean dried fruit mix.

Unfortunately, the fine-grade green tea in this particular blend needs a little more care than I gave it. (Whatever you use for sun tea has to be pretty forgiving.) The fruit and floral flavors were present in the first batch, but due to my neglect, the green tea was bitter and ruined the “ahhhhh” experience I was hoping for. The second try, I did it properly: just a teaspoon, not-quite-boiled the water, a steep on the shortish side, and the results were much better. My taste buds are still playing “spot the pineapple” a little–the lemon and floral elements are pretty pronounced. But if you’re aiming for tropical instead of a single fruit flavor, this’ll hit the spot.

If this is a flavor combo that intrigues you, my recommendation is to steep it as directed for hot tea, chill it in the fridge, then chill with it on a lazy day.

You can purchase the Pineapple Paradise directly from the Boston Tea Company website.

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.

Teekanne is an outfit out of Dusseldorf (a name that always makes me laugh), Germany. The company has been involved in the tea trade – in one fashion or another – since 1882. One of their biggest claims to fame is the fact that most of the teabags sold commercially in the U.S. are made using Teekanne industrial equipment. Their stateside subsidiary is Redco Foods, Inc., which also has several other brands under its umbrella. One of them, I was already familiar with – Salada, producers of a decaf green tea I drank early on in my tea exploration.

The Teekanne Herbal Wellness line went public in 2008 and was endorsed by Stefi Graf (the “Fräulein Forehand” of the tennis world). Blends they marketed fell into three categories: Soothing, Relaxing, and Energizing. Being the neurotic that I am, I decided to go for something I aspired to – relaxing. Calming Chamomile, it was.

There wasn’t much to say about the tea. It was in a teabag. It smelled like chamomile. Both pluses for an end-of-day drink. Brewing instructions weren’t necessary either. Herbals could be steeped in boiling water for up to eight minutes, if one chose to. I went with a five-minute infusion in an ordinary mug.

The resulting liquor was clear-to-off-orange – a medicinal-looking palette that chamomile always yielded. The aroma was floral, faintly citrus and soothing. To the taste, it was what one expects from chamomile – like drinking a pillow that weighs heavy on the eyelids. It certainly accomplished what it set out to do; it made me ease back in my chair and sigh comfortably. Beyond that, I don’t have much to add. It is what it is.

You can purchase the Calming Chamomile directly from the Tea and All Its Splendour website.

7 minute brew time with boiling water

Very pretty blend. Green and yellow “grass” like cuttings are sprinkled throughout this lemony blend.

Champagne colored brew.

Lemon grass is the dominant flavor. This blend would be great added to another tea for that just right lemon addition.

As I neared the end of my cup, I noticed the astringency of this herbal blend, which makes me really think that using this as a mix in with another tea would really be the best use for this one.

Overall, a good lemony cup of herbal tea.

You can purchase the Lemonade directly from the Shanti Tea website.

Dry smell is nice and minty.

A 4 minute brew time yields a light straw colored brew.

My first sip leaves me screaming, “where is the mint?”

This is blasphemy. The Moroccan mint police need to called! Someone stole the mint out of this blend!

The dry smell was to die for, the brewed up tea was a total failure.

I was greatly disappointed with this sample.

You can purchase the Moroccan Mint directly from the SpecialTea Brew website.

Steeped in a Tea Forte Café Cup, with the spent tea pyramid resting on a Tea Forte tea tray, all the pieces were set to provide an enjoyable tasting experience of this mango flavoured green tea. Impeccable as always, the packaging of this individual tea pyramid infuser bag was clean and sharply presented. After heating the water to the proper temperature, I proceeded to steep the tea for only two minutes before moving on to tasting it. The aroma is light, and the mango smell is lighter yet. My guess would be that the green tea base is a sencha or something akin to it.

The tea itself has light forward notes with a strong finish. The mango is present but not very prominent. Overall the tea is not very impressive in its taste. Not wanting to judge it by first try, I steeped a second cup. This time, I left the tea pyramid in the water for three minutes. The mango flavour is now a lot bolder and broader. It complements the green tea far more than during the first infusion.

Overall, I think this is not one of Tea Forte’s better blends. However, for lovers of fruit flavoured green teas, it may be worth giving this one a try. On my personal enjoyment scale, I would rate it a 76/100.

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