Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Mint Tea’

I picked out a couple different Rishi herbal blends to try because I’ve discovered that the only non-caffeinated teas in my cupboard were pretty much exclusively rooibos and honeybush. A little variety wouldn’t hurt.

The dry tea smells liked Christmas dinner in a field of peppermint – no really! The scent is a blend of savory sage and mint with very little bergamot apparent to my nose. The taste of the peppermint is quite dominant in the tea itself, but the sage and thyme provide a strong counterpoint to it. There’s not a lot of bergamot really that I can pick up – a faint, sweet citrusiness is all I get from it; so personally I think the tea’s name is a bit of a misnomer.

I find the whole thing to taste a bit medicinal, like the sort of thing I’d drink if I was sick with the flu. All the same it’s a nice alternative to the typical mint tea and I think it would make a nice drink after a big meal to aid digestion as many of the herbs in the blend are supposed to help with that sort of thing.

I gave this tea a Steepster rating of 71/100.

You can purchase the Bergamot Sage directly from the Rishi Tea website.

Moroccan Mint is one of my all time favorites – first discovered it by accidently making some. Had bought some gunpowder when I was in Chinatown, got home and brewed some up but found it boring. Added some Adagio Mintastic, perfection. It was my morning drink for years and now I have been reintroduced to it and I’m thrilled to try it.

The dry tea smells and looks fresh, with a generous amount of spearmint mixed in with small and shiny pellets of Gunpowder. Looks perfect and today is the perfect day for some Moroccan Mint – definite winter chill in the air. Steeped the leaves in boiling water for three minutes, the pellets exploded and unrolled and the water turned a nice, light orange yellow color. The taste is slightly peppery with a bit of a grassy flavor.

This is definitely one of the better Moroccan Mints that I’ve had and I’ll be recommending it to people when they’re struggling to find a source of warmth this winter.

You can purchase the Moroccan Mint directly from the Boston Tea Company website.

Dry leaves are brown with green specks and slender brown twig like pieces.

3 minute infusion produces a light brown brew that smells of mint.

The first sip reveals the perfectly balanced vanilla undertones. Most vanilla tea that I have sampled are fake tasting, the vanilla in this blend is mild and smooth.

This tea is very soothing hot. The kind of tea you want to keep in your cupboard for days when your throat is sore.

Iced, this tea speaks of spring, light and crisp. The mint is not as noticeable iced as it is hot. This blending of green tea, black tea, mint and vanilla are so precisely done that one can enjoy this tea year round.

You can purchase the Vanilla Mint directly from the 52teas website.

Canton Tea was nice enough to send a box of tea infused chocolates as a thank you, and wow, what a thank you it is!

It seems almost daily that there are more and more tea infused chocolates, chocolate bars and other treats available. To date, I have only tried a couple of tea infused chocolate bars, and what they are lacking is the purity of taste. To me, if you are going to mix chocolate and tea, you need to highlight the best of both, and not overwhelm with one or the other. This is where the chocolates that Canton Tea sent me really excel.

These chocolates are made by hand, by Katie Christoffers in the UK. The name of her company is Matcha Chocolat. Her chocolates are made with only high quality chocolate from France, and fresh, high quality teas and other ingredients. Canton Tea has partnered with Katie, and is offering a box of her chocolates in their Tea and Chocolate Gift Pack – and now is the time to get it! Matcha Chocolat does not ship outside of the UK – but Canton Tea does

On to the chocolates. The box contained 3 Mint & Green Tea, 3 Jasmine Pearl, 3 Earl Grey, 3 Matcha and 4 Masala Chai Caramel hearts. I will go through each of the briefly.

Mint and Green Tea: I am a big fan of mint, and this does not disappoint. There is a nice minty freshness, with a bit of background Green Tea, there but not there, with a wonderfully smooth chocolate flavour. Think After Eight with a touch of seaweed (in a nice way, not nasty

Jasmine Pearls: This combines my two favorite comfort flavours – Jasmine and White Chocolate. Not at all flowery, it is just perfect. As the chocolate melts I can feel the tension flowing out of my body. No sharing this one!

Earl Grey: EG is not my favorite tea (something about the bergamot), however, blended with a nice dark chocolate shell and chocolate ganash, these work together to create a creamy taste with a hint of astringency, both from the Earl Grey and Dark Chocolate – pleasant, if a bit heavy in the mouth for my tastes.

Masala Chai Caramels: Milk chocolate, and Masala Chai infused Caramel – uhh, yum? So far, every spicy tea infused chocolate I have enjoyed, it is not jump out at you O M G I cannot believe it, but rather a more curious, “hmm, I like this, I just don’t know why” kind of feeling. Tasty!

Matcha: I have mixed feelings on this. First of all, the chocolate is divine. I am however, having a very hard time picking up much in the way of Matcha. Matcha is generally bitter, with the edge taken off by sweets. I am “feeling” the Matcha, but not really “tasting” it. It is not bad, just not, well, what I expected. Not my favorite, would pass on this one personally.

Overall, this box of sweets is a must not miss! Thus far it is my favorite box of tea infused chocolates. You can taste the tea in the chocolate, but are not overwhelmed by either – they blend smoothly and leave you with pleasant afterglow.

Lets not forget, that when you purchase this Tea and Chocolate Gift Pack, you also get a sample set of teas! Canton Tea includes their Dragon Well Green Tea, Green Tea with Mint, Superior Earl Grey, Jasmine Pearls, and Bai Lin Gong Fu Black Tea. This is a deal that you juat cannot pass up!

Oh, and if you are not a fan of Jasmine, my address is available for you to send me your Jasmine Pearls Chocolate – I promise it will be WELL enjoyed! Thanks Canton Tea for providing me with the opportunity to taste these chocolates!

You can purchase the Tea and Chocolate Gift Pack directly from the Canton Tea Co. website.

Much to my delight, I recently received a shipment of 3 teas from Davids Tea. I have been looking forward to sampling and reviewing tea from Davids ever since a store opened close to me here. They are truly a Canadian company (unlike the mistake I made with Mighty Leaf, Davids really was started, and is run, in Canada ), and I have been itching to feature them in a review.

Out of the 3 samples I was sent, the Mojito Mint was the one that caught my eye first. It could have been because after my wife going to Cuba, she has been on a Mojito kick, and we finally perfected our own Mojito recipe here, or it could be because of the sweet smell to the tea, or perhaps the odd mixing of Black tea and Rooibos. Whatever the reason, the Mojito Mint gets the nod for the first review.

This blend is part of Davids Tea’s Summer 2010 collection. I have, in all my years of tasting, never seen a blend of Black Tea and Rooibos together. In the bag, I get a sweet scent, with definite coconut and pineapple, and an undertone of the mint.

The instructions called for 80 deg. Celsius water – again, odd for a Black Tea and Rooibos both – usually you use boiling water for each one of these, but I am always for first trying it the suggested route, so that is what I did. They suggested a 3-4 min steep, so I went for a 4 min, as it seemed a good compromise between my 6 min usual Rooibos, and 3 min usual Black Tea.

The colour of the liquor is a reddish, muddy brown, mid-clear. It is not the dark Black, nor the red Rooibos, again speaking to the compromise that I am seeing in this tea already. Straight out of the steep the coconut scent dominated, but as it cooled, the sweet nutty Rooibos scent, and more mint started to peek through.

The flavour of this tea is amazing. Mojito it is not, I did not get any sense of that, but the name aside, I am really enjoying this tea. There is not a hint of tannin bitterness, in fact, the Black tea really seems to be only a supporting cast member. The dominant base is Rooibos, and each of the flavours seem to come through at different points – first sip I got coconut and a bit of rum’ish flavour, then the fruity pineapple flavouring peeks up – the final appearance from the mint leaves a refreshed taste in my mouth, and encourages another sip to start the cycle all over again.

I am still not sure why the Mojito name, since a Mojito is traditionally a rum/lime flavour, but frankly I don’t care what it is called! I have enjoyed cup after cup of this tea, and keep going back for more. Thumbs up recommendation for a Canadian company making it’s debut with us with a bang!

You can purchase the Mojito Mint Magic directly from the Davids Tea website.