Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Lemon Balm’

Valerian root is the one thing I recommend to people that complain about insomnia. Perhaps I’m sensitive to herbal effects, but relaxants knock me the “eff” out. Valerian, especially. The stuff is like NyQuil in leaf form. Kiss the next twelve hours of your life good-bye. Too bad it smells wretched. Other herbs are needed to dial back the skunky, weed-like odor it emits. Usual suspects for this task are of the lemony variety; verbena- for instance – works wonders.

Hampstead Teas does something similar by employing strong lemon balm to counteract the pungent Valerian. Funny thing, though. I didn’t smell it when I put nose to tea bag. Chamomile came to mind. No surprise since the Roman-borne relaxant was the third ingredient rounding out the pass-out pastiche.

The HT site recommended a steep of three-to-five minutes in boiled water. No mention of cup size. I went with a 10oz. glass and a six-minute steep. It was knock-out juice. As such, I felt obligated to brew it strong.

The liquor color was…well…herbal-looking. Everyone knows what that looks like – kind of off-yellow with a tinge of green, like pond water only shinier. The mouthpiece aroma screamed herbaceous as well with a mixed message of citral, flowers, and sleepy wilderness. I somehow pictured myself falling asleep on first sip. Luckily, I didn’t. This was a damn smooth ride to relaxation. Lemon balm took point, followed by fluttery/creamy chamomile, all wrapped in a grassy, Valerian-coated blanket wrought with pillow-whispers. I eyed my bed after finishing this, I’ll confess. It was a mighty splendid sleepy-time capper.

You can purchase the Lemon Valerian directly from the Hampstead Tea 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.

The dry leaves seemed to be more powder than leaves. The smell reminded me of cut grass.

I poured the contents of the package into my infuser basket, boiled my water and poured 8 ounces of water in my cup/infuser. I waited 5 minutes.

After brewing the smell of the leaves is sweeter. Licorice comes to mind.

In my sample the leaves were more like powder and even with my best fine mesh infuser, the particles found their way into my tea cup.

This tea is not totally undrinkable, but it was a close call on that point for me. With all the particles floating around in my cup and than the taste of valerian root, I did not enjoy this blend at all.

You can purchase the Serene Dream directly from the Rishi Tea 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.

OMG, this is the best smelling tea! Sweet with a wee bit of spice. As you sip, the slight sweetness of the pear lingers on the back of your tongue. The white tea base is very pleasing to the palate, not flowery (is that even a word?) like most white teas that I have tasted in the past.

This is a great dessert tea, it adds just the right amount of flavor to enhance your sweet dessert. I highly recommend this tea!

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