Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Licorice’

Ah, the pleasure of a good smelling tea. Often the dry leaves, as-of-yet un-infused, reveal a lot about the tea that is to come. The spicy and sweet notes of the dry leaves of this herbal tisane blend in an attractive melody that promises a deep and possibly heavy drink.

Utilising a Tea Forte Café Cup, I steeped this pyramid infuser for four minutes using just-boiled water. Smelling the infusion, it is clear that cinnamon is definitely what lends much of the spiciness to this tea’s aroma. However, with the first sip, it becomes immediately evident that cinnamon is not all that is in Tea Forte’s Flora. The sweetness of liquorice root melds with the explosion of flavour from the hibiscus in this blend. The hibiscus adds a lot of body to this tisane and sweeps through one’s mouth, filling it with flavour.

A re-steep of this herbal blend offers a much weaker version of the first cup, but with the same balance of flavours. This is one blend that is worth trying and might make a tasty chilled drink as well. I would give Flora an 83/100 on my personal enjoyment scale.

You can purchase the Flora directly from the Tea Forte website.

Vanilla to me is a very round, soft taste and mint is sting-y and has a cool sensation. Chai is like an autumn spice. Rishi tea’s combination of these three makes for a beverage with a very minty aroma but not so minty taste. As a matter of fact, the vanilla and chai is somewhat subdued as well. No one element, vanilla, mint, or chai, stood out. It was one meshed up round, soft, confusing combination of tastes with no clear winner. I guess if I had to identify a “feature” taste, it would be the milk used as the base element. If pressed to describe the flavour profile of this tea, I would call it cinnamon milk.

Steeping instructions are to bring 1.5 cups of water and 1 cup of milk to a boil. Reduce heat. Add contents of package. Let simmer 3-5 minutes. Sweeten to taste and strain to drink. I did not add any sugar, but for those of you who like it sweet and prefer a more minty taste maybe we should do what many do with hot chocolate…that is, (add sugar to the tea) and use a candy cane as a stirring stick to add more mintyness. I know it works for hot chocolate, never tried it with tea though…maybe it’ll work! I would use the candy cane to stir rather than dissolve the whole cane in the beverage though as I find it will be too minty if fully dissolved. This may bring the perfect level of mintyness to an otherwise very lightly-minted tea. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer light to heavily minted beverages, but when everything else is so soft, you end up with a very confusing mix of tastes with no real one you can hang on to.

I think I preferred Rishi Tea’s Chocolate Chai to their Vanilla Mint Chai. Both are soft and round beverages but the former had occasional peeks of spice and other tastes (ginger, and pu-erh to be exact) to liven up your taste buds a little bit more.

You can purchase the Vanilla Mint Chai directly from the Rishi Tea website.

As much as I love discovering new teas from lesser known companies, it’s nice to have a company that I’m know will not disappoint. This blend however, isn’t one that I would think of when I thought of Rishi. Just when I thought I knew the company they surprise me with this one! It look and smells delicious and the list of ingredients is certainly enticing. The strongest scent I’m getting is that of orange and cinnamon, also smells like berries to me though there aren’t any listed in the blend.

Steeped it per the website recommendations and waited a couple of minutes to let it cool. The tea has turned a light red color and the and the scent of apple has become more pronounced. The taste is sweet and tangy and a lot heavier than I expected, it’s really satisfying and the scent alone has given me a boost. Have to say that I do feel ‘recharged’ even with just one cup in my system. Thinking this would be better suited as an afternoon pick-me-up rather than a bedtime herbal.

You can purchase the Red Ginseng Recharge directly from the Rishi Tea 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.

Organic herbal blend, caffeine free.

5 Minute infusion reveals a medium brown brew.

The package is really neat, a silk pyramid filled with cacao, cinnamon, fennel, licorice root, cardamom, ginger, cloves, black pepper. After the 5 minutes, the silk pyramid is full except for just a teeny bit of space at the tippy top of the pyramid. What I really like about Tea Forte is the attention to detail, the pyramid is like a work of art with a cute little green leaf that wraps delicately over the rim of my favorite tea cup.

Smell after brew time is of cinnamon and chocolate (like a really nice expensive chocolate).

First sip revealed a hot cocoa taste with melted chocolate inside. This tea would make a great dessert tea and an even better before bed kind of drink.

Rich and yummy, a dieters dream come true… all the taste of chocolate with zero calories!

This is definitely going on my shopping list, good job Tea Forte.

You can purchase Tea Forte Coco Truffle Tea directly from their website, and in various high-end establishments around the world.