Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Tea Company’

Wow…the smell of this tea is great! It truly does smell exactly like vanilla cola. Yet this is the part where my mind catches up with my nose and hits me over the head, telling me to stop and think for a moment: Vanilla cola tea? As in…a hot liquid that tastes like vanilla cola? (I must be careful here to not call rooibos “tea,” for the sake of the tea-political correct.) While my mind is still trying to make a judgement call about whether or not it likes the idea of hot vanilla cola, my body forges ahead into the unknown to investigate and make some of this interesting mix.

It truly is a mix, according to the label. Rooibos, vanilla chips, and “natural flavors” come together in some magical manner to emulate the smell of this carbonated drink…minus the carbonation! Steeping is incredibly straightforward. 1 teaspoon per eight ounces of boiling water. I double this for my teapot and steep the blend for the recommended five minutes.

I had mentioned that the loose blend smells entirely of vanilla cola. Upon removing the infuser from my teapot, I catch my first whiff of the prepared drink…and now I get more variety to the aroma. The rooibos smell is much more prominent, the cola scent itself is there, and the vanilla laces the whole of the aromatic profile. Still charging onward with this endeavor, I pour my first cup and sit back to sip.

The taste of the brew is not as strange as I had anticipated. The rooibos comes through heavily in the flavor, causing this tea to be better described as “vanilla-flavored rooibos with light hints of cola.” The first thought that comes to my mind is “Well, this is fun.” The spiciness (meant, theoretically, to emulate the cola) adds a nice touch. Having experienced great vanilla rooibos in the past, this twist was novel and tasty.

Overall, this rooibos definitely made for an enjoyable and fun experience to try. If you like vanilla rooibos, or even rooibos in general, I highly recommend checking out The NecessiTeas Vanilla Cola. I would give it an 83/100 on my personal enjoyment scale.

You can purchase the Vanilla Cola directly from the The Necessiteas website.

It has been a long time since my last review, but I am finally back in the country and yearning to try a new tea and share my experience with all of you! For this first review, we have “Cannon Ball” by The East India Company. While I would love to tell you exactly what this tea is, I am not quite sure. Their website lists it as a green tea, and the description suggests it is a green tea, yet the label on the container specifically says “It is a lightly fermented oolong tea.”

Well….okay then! This tea basically looks like an oversized version of gunpowder green tea, thus the naming fits, cleverly. The smell of the dry leaves is faintly reminiscent of that smokiness present in gunpowder green tea. Yet the slight floral taste brings to mind…shockingly…light oolongs. This tea becomes more and more mysterious, and I grow more and more curious!

Unsure as to the water temperature, I opt to use 1 cup of water prepared for green tea (to be on the safe side), coupled with 1 teaspoon of leaves. What works for gunpowder greens and oolongs should work for this too, right?

Three minutes of steep time, says the packaging. I can do that! (My time overseas has not taken from my tea-making skills.) The resulting brew is a pale yellow-green and smells like…hmmm…very light, floral oolong. Not overly floral, as one might encounter in the tasting of a jasmine oolong. At the same time, it carries the gunpowder green tea flavor, but with a little extra, as though one took a pouchong and mixed it with a gunpowder. This is definitely different, in a pleasant way. Overall, however, the brew seems a bit weak, and perhaps a longer steep time is required.

I love the smokiness of gunpowder green tea, and the fact that such a quality carried over in a new way to this tea definitely caught my attention. While this is an interesting and decent tea, it might be better to order a small sample to try initially. I thought I would love this tea, yet I now can only see myself drinking it occasionally, not every day. On my personal enjoyment scale, I would rate it a 73/100.

You can purchase the Cannon Ball directly from the The East India Company website.

Rooibos is something I’m mixed on. I’ve had some blends I think are absolutely amazing. And I’ve had some blends which really, to me, just taste like dirt. But this one I had to try because it’s chai. I love the spicy yummy flavor.

So, it was with some trepidation and some anticipation that I tried this blend. I followed the directions on the packet, and brewed up the chai. It smells amazing, absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, I’m not finding the flavor keeps up with the aroma. I find that the actual tea in spiced chai tea adds a low, base note that balances out the higher sharper note of the spices. This blend to me has all the high notes but lacks that balance that makes other chai teas so pleasurable.

I think if I were looking for a chai option with less caffeine, I’d prefer to have a decaf regular type of chai than this rooibos blend. This one, it just isn’t for me. However, based on my rooibos preferences, you may want to give it a spin yourself rather than just taking my word for it.

You can purchase the West Cape Chai directly from the Rishi Tea website.

A couple of months back, when the time came for me to select my IAATL samples, I squealed with delight when I found a new growing region listed. Portugal. There was tea. Grown. In PORTUGAL! I was stoked and immediately requested it. Alas, I was a hair to slow for the loose leaf Orange Pekoe, but the teabag version was still available. Silver medal ain’t bad.

For those that don’t know, Gorreana Tea (yes, I know what the name sounds like – stop giggling) is the only tea plantation in mainland Europe. It was founded in 1883, and it was “green” before the environmental connotations even existed. And since the tea plants they grow are in the Azores region (i.e. high altitude), they are naturally pest and pesticide free. Yes, that means “organic” to you hippies out there.

It wasn’t easy judging the contents of the OP teabag. After all, they were mostly hidden from view. That and I didn’t feel like tearing it open to view the fannings. I knew they would be fannings just by the feel of the bag. So, I put nose to filter and whiffed…and was greeted by something sweet. Splendid start.

I guess I “could’ve” adhered to some formal brewing instruction for this…but I didn’t. It was a teabag; I treated it as such. 12oz. cup of near-boiling water and a three-minute steep. Seemed a reasonable approach.

The liquor brewed to something I can only describe as “soft cherrywood red”. It had a very gentle-seeming appearance – beguiling even. The aroma was slightly tannic, incredibly floral, and welcoming in its gentleness. The same was the case with the taste. It started off with a midly astringent intro but cascaded into something different. This was an orange pekoe through-and-through – lacking the Darjeeling spiciness but possessing the subtleties of a soft blanket in beverage form. This was the most perfect teabag that I’ve ever dunked. I wish I had more of ‘em for early afternoon tea fixes. Hopefully, an opportunity will come in my fantasyland future to try the loose leaf version…at the plantation itself. *Le sigh*

You can purchase the Orange Pekoe directly from the Gorreana Tea website.

In 1942, coffee was rationed–one pound every five weeks, thanks to German U-boat interruption of Brazilian shipping routes. Government ration stamps weren’t product-specific, so you had to read the paper every week to find out if your java was going to cost you one airplane and three flags, or two tanks and four stalks of wheat.

Enterprising alchemists attempted all kinds of ersatz (German for “substitute or replacement”) coffees using almonds, molasses, beetroot, carrots, cottonseed, rye and wheat bran. Postum, a nationally marketed coffee doppelganger, relied mostly on grain. The one ingredient that evidently approximated the bang of the bean was chicory, which is a chief ingredient in Ersatz coffee produced by Coffee Trade Company, proud to call itself “charmingly anachronistic.”

Dry coffee has a tendency to smell up the room it’s in (my parents recommended it to us to chase away the litter box smell when we moved into a house formerly inhabited by cat owners). Dry and in unbleached paper filters, Ersatz’ scent is similar, but not nearly as strong. Steeped to the strongish side, it’s comparable in color and personality to a conventional cup of diner coffee–just a little lighter and sweeter. Cream and sugar works just fine. If you’re familiar with Celestial Seasonings’ Roastaroma, this is its slightly less tea-ish stepbrother.

This blend is not going to fool a die-hard coffee drinker. But for those folks who like the roasty-toasty taste of coffee with out the heebie-jeebie caffeine buzz, it rates a “V” for very interesting! (Cue Glenn Miller exit music.)

You can purchase the Ersatz directly from the The Coffee Trade Company website.