Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Herbal tea’

Smell from the bag is sweet, ripe raspberries.

I followed the directions on the sample packet: empty entire contents of bag into 8 ounces of boiling water and steeped 5 minutes.

Ahh, isn’t that pretty? Pink tea with fruit notes. But where is the green tea? The raspberries seem to overpower the tea base.

This brew is tart and tangy. It makes me feel like I am drinking hot Kool Aid. I don’t understand how Rishi can call this green tea. I taste no tea at all.

I tried for a resteep and was forced to pour out the hot pink mess. All I could taste is hot water and even that was not very good.

This should have been tagged as an herbal tea, then I might have liked it better. But with the mention of green tea on the bag and then not being able to taste the green tea base, I am left to say that this tea is not very good.

You can purchase the Organic Fair Trade Raspberry directly from the Rishi Tea website.

The smell from the dry teabag is medicinal.

Brewed for 2 minutes, lifted out the tea bag, took a sip and immediately slipped the teabag back into my cup.

I left the teabag in my cup as I drank this herbal tea.

I could taste the ginger more predominately than the lemon peel. As I neared the bottom of my cup, my mouth was alive with ginger!

This tea would be nice drank at bedtime. It is soothing and calming, but not much on taste. This one fell flat for me. I liked it ok, but I would not choose this tea again.

You can purchase the Lemon Ginger directly from the Hampstead Tea website.

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.

Not being much of a mint fan, in whatever form, be it candy, ice cream, or chocolates, Tea Forte has a tough job at hand to try to convince me that mint – yes, in the form of a tea is good. Well, I like citrus fruits so at least they have that going for them. Anyway, on with the review…

Dry leaf looks like the grade of a fannings, green and some brown, packaged in that familiar pyramid shaped teabag known to be Tea Forte. I cut open the 2 teabags I received (total about 3 grams) and steeped it in about 400 ml of hot water. I was pre-occupied at the time and by the time I returned to the water, it had cooled to 80C. Herbal teas should be steeped at 100C for 2-3 minutes. I knew I was going to get a sub-par tasting tea. There was a faint minty aroma, no hint of citrus. The taste was minty, not overly piercing mintyness but a softer mint. I did not detect any citrus taste. After the initial mintyness, there was a taste as if you were licking the back of an envelope – that sort of gluey-paper taste. Mind you, I think this was because of the low temperature at which I steeped the tea.

I tried a second infusion at boiling point and the tea tasted much better. There was no more of the gluey-paper taste and the mintyness was more light and tangy rather than stale if that makes any sense. I noticed that as the tea cools, the minty taste dissipates and you can taste hints of citrus. I prefer it cold rather than hot. As a hot beverage, I found that the citrus and mint did not complement each other very well. I don’t know, maybe because when I drink citrus I expect something sweet like citrus juices, because when I tasted this the sort of “lack of sweetness” coupled with the mintyness made the taste buds yearn for something that wasn’t there. It was missing an ingredient, maybe honey or cocoa shells or maybe even lavender. But then again, that could just complicate things…let’s leave that to the tea blenders shall we.

You can purchase the Citrus Mint directly from the Tea Forte website.

I did a double-take as I was typing up the ingredient list for this review: it isn’t a typo or an omission on the part of my new bifocals; I’m not seeing “pear” anything, are you? It doesn’t matter: whatever mix of blending mojo, culinary science, and olfactory alchemy Distinctly Tea has used to create this works and works well!

If you play a “Where’s Waldo?” game with the packet, you can visually account for everything: medium sized tea leaves, wisps of calendula, stripy whole fennel, and the apple and orange bits. Together, they give the dry blend a sweet and creamy scent.

As far as steeping goes, flavored green or white tea can be a little finicky—the time/temp combination one normally uses to coax the fruit flavor out of hiding often makes the tea go bitter. Not so with this tea—keeping exactly to the package instructions results in a gorgeous gold ambrosia that tastes and smells a bit like baby-food fruit or a skillfully diluted syrup from a can of fruit cocktail.

Should you need a light and fruity tea to celebrate first day you can sit in the back yard with bare feet—or a wicked winter day when you need a reminder that spring will come…eventually…Pear Cream Supreme makes an excellent and fruitful choice.

You can purchase the Pear Cream Supreme directly from the Distinctly Tea website.