Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Sweet Tea’

I just love the silken pyramids-so fancy! The smell is of spices: cinnamon and cloves.

A 3 min brew time yields red tones emitting from the pyramid. It looks like a sunset in my cup. Two dunks and now the color is dark reddish brown. The smell is comforting, the smell of spices being dumped into the mixer bowl..a childhood memory brought back by this tea! This tea is light in comparison to the way it smelled dry. The cinnamon and clove are the only one showing up to this dance. The orange tones are sitting this one out. It is a good warming tea. Good enough to purchase again, probably not, but I am looking forward to consuming the rest of these cute little pyramids.

You can purchase the Sweet Orange Spice directly from the Tea Forte website.

Some days–okay, some weeks—you just need chocolate. In copious amounts. And after multiples of those Reeses’ peanut-butter-cup-snarfing, Oreo-bingeing weeks, one finally reaches the conclusion that one must find a more healthful alternative. Tea Forte’s Hazelnut Truffle provides plenty of the cacao-based yum with much less of the calorie-borne guilt.

The individual ingredients are big, pretty, and very visible inside Tea Forte’s trademark triangular bag. Chocolate is the first and foremost aroma in dry-leaf stage, and chocolate stays the first and foremost aroma as it steeps. The light color may fool you–fully steeped, it stays golden brown instead of the shade of a Russell Stover all-dark assortment. But it’s big on nutty, chocolate flavor with a coconut chaser all the way down.

Hazelnut Truffle is sweet enough on its own; no milk or sugar necessary to make this a real treat, either for yourself or (great gift idea) for your chocolate-loving sweet-tea.

You can purchase the Hazelnut Truffle directly from the Tea Forte website.

The name of this tea is somewhat misleading—it represents the accurately, but doesn’t convey its character well at all. With sugar and caramel as the leading adjectives, I expected a heavy, sweet tea with the flavor of Sugar Daddies that would be fine alongside a doughnut or work well as a dessert tea.

If that’s what you’re looking for, best move on.

With that said, this is a sweet and sophisticated tea. The dry leaves are rolled into nuggets and smell like heavenly butterscotch drops. The liquid itself is gorgeous, clear, and gold. The flavor is delicate and champagne-y (typical of really good oolongs). The sugar and caramel—they’re there, just in a “Where’s Waldo” sort of way—hit you as you swallow, not as you sip.

Even the spent leaves are huge and lovely. I made mine in a little tea-for-one pot so I could reserve the leaves for a second round. Steeped an extra minute, the second cup was as good as the first.

Golden Moon’s Sugar Caramel Oolong is not a casual tea for when you need a quick shot of caffeine and sugar. Reserve this one for an afternoon when you have time to drink from your best porcelain cup and ponder the complexities of a really fine oolong.

You can purchase the Sugar Caramel Oolong directly from the Golden Moon Tea website.

The name of this tea is somewhat misleading—it represents the accurately, but doesn’t convey its character well at all. With sugar and caramel as the leading adjectives, I expected a heavy, sweet tea with the flavor of Sugar Daddies that would be fine alongside a doughnut or work well as a dessert tea.

If that’s what you’re looking for, best move on.

With that said, this is a sweet and sophisticated tea. The dry leaves are rolled into nuggets and smell like heavenly butterscotch drops. The liquid itself is gorgeous, clear, and gold. The flavor is delicate and champagne-y (typical of really good oolongs). The sugar and caramel—they’re there, just in a “Where’s Waldo” sort of way—hit you as you swallow, not as you sip.

Even the spent leaves are huge and lovely. I made mine in a little tea-for-one pot so I could reserve the leaves for a second round. Steeped an extra minute, the second cup was as good as the first.

Golden Moon’s Sugar Caramel Oolong is not a casual tea for when you need a quick shot of caffeine and sugar. Reserve this one for an afternoon when you have time to drink from your best porcelain cup and ponder the complexities of a really fine oolong.

You can purchase the Sugar Caramel Oolong directly from the Golden Moon Tea website.

For this review I decided to brew this tea using a two-cup glass teapot. Canton Tea Co’s website suggests using 1 tsp of pearls per cup, which is difficult to estimate using pearls, so I believe I added about 35-40 of the small pearls to the teapot. Continuing to follow the directions, I steeped the pearls about three minutes, stopping to taste the tea after two minutes (the website had recommended 2-3 minutes).At two minutes, the taste really wasn’t very far developed, but I could already tell that this was one very sweet tea.

With the dry pearls, one could very much smell the jasmine, yet the scent was not overpowering, nor was it almost sickly-sweet, as some teas are that contain jasmine. The aroma of the brewed tea was even less bold and had an even softer nose, with only faint hints of jasmine.

Upon taking the first big sip, the tea flow smooth and thick across the tongue, and the fruity sweet taste of jasmine infiltrated my entire mouth. If a flower could be described as being delicious, this would be the epitome of such a description. The amount of jasmine is enough to lend great character to the tea, while not completely dominating it.

The website recommends steeping this for at least three separate infusions. I most certainly shall.

On my personal enjoyment scale, I rate this tea an 85/100.

You can purchase the Jasmine Pearls directly from the Canton Tea Co. website. Save 15% right now when you use the code LEAF at checkout!