Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Tea Temptations
Tea Description:
A blend of Ceylon teas, diced Apricots and Apricot flavor.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
When I opened the package of this Apricot Fantasy Black Tea from Tea Temptations I could smell the apricots! It was such a strong and distinct aroma that it evoked memories of late summer when my gramma’s apricot tree in her back yard would start yielding it’s bounty of golden, juicy, delicious fruit.
The black tea base of Ceylon teas offers a mild, even-toned flavor that works well with the apricot notes. The apricot flavor is sweet but not too overpowering and I appreciate that there is a balance between the flavoring and the black tea.
The tea is fairly smooth but there is some astringency toward the tail. I’m also noticing just a hint of citrus at the finish from the Ceylon. I like how this whisper of citrus-like flavor melds with the apricot, the bright note of the tea offers a nice contrast to the sweetness of the apricot flavoring.
This is good served hot. I drank it straight up and I enjoyed the subtly of the apricot flavor. If you want to punch up the apricot notes, add a little sugar and this will encourage the flavors to emerge. If you want a real treat, try it with a dollop of honey. I like the way the honey and apricot notes play together.
As good as it was hot, I liked it even better as it cooled. This is one that would make a stunning pitcher of iced tea that everyone in the family will enjoy.
Cinnamon Apricot Iced Honeybush Tea from Southern Boy Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Honeybush
Where to Buy: Zoomdweebies
Tea Description:
Organic caffeine-free honeybush with organic sweet cinnamon and apricot flavors. This is a tea the whole family will love. We made a similar rooibos blend with these flavors for a 52teas blend years ago. It was my wife’s favorite and received the name, “Sheri’s Blend”. One of our tea bar customers took one sip of that tea and exclaimed, “It takes just like Christmas!” Personally, I think this honeybush blend is even better.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I remember really liking the Sheri’s Blend from 52Teas which was a rooibos based blend with the same flavors of apricot and cinnamon. And as weird as it is for me to admit, I think I liked that blend better than I’m liking this Cinnamon Apricot Iced Honeybush Tea from Southern Boy Teas.
Maybe it’s the “iced” part, because I am of the firm belief that I prefer honeybush over rooibos so I don’t think that’s the issue with this. Then again, maybe it is the rooibos – maybe rooibos just goes better with the apricot and cinnamon flavors than the honeybush does. I don’t know.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like this tisane. It’s tasty. But its not as tasty as I remember Sheri’s Blend being. I remember tasting a good, strong flavor of apricot that tasted true to the fruit, and here, I’m having trouble finding much apricot flavor at all.
The cinnamon is really dominant in this blend. I taste mostly cinnamon and it seems to be masking the flavor of the apricot a bit. After drinking about 2/3 of the glass, I start to pick up on the apricot notes, but they’re still not as strong as I’d like them to be.
The cinnamon is the top note, with mid-notes of honeyed nutty flavors and a low note of apricot. It’s a tasty blend, but if you’re looking for a strong apricot flavor, this tea isn’t bringing that for me. But if you like a really nice cinnamon flavor that’s a little sweet and a little spicy – kind of like the cinnamon you’d sprinkle on your breakfast toast – this tea delivers!
Overall, a tasty iced tisane, but I’d like it better if the apricot were more pronounced.
Peach Apricot Tea from Culinary Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Culinary Teas
Tea Description:
A flavory and tasty combination of mellow peaches with deep full flavored apricots. Try a cup for yourself and discover what makes this one of our most special flavored teas.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I love peaches and apricots. I can’t think of any two fruits that say “summer” to me more than peach and apricot. My grandmother had a very prolific apricot tree in her backyard when I was young, and not only did it provide the family with lots of juicy apricots in the mid-to-late summer weeks, but it also was our favorite climbing tree! I remember climbing that tree and sitting in it while eating a fresh, tree-ripened apricot. YUM!
My grandmother also had a peach tree, but it wasn’t as prolific as the apricot, so instead of peach cobbler, she’d make apricot-peach cobbler and this was one of my favorite desserts. This tea brings all those delicious dessert memories back! And it tastes a little like the filling of the cobbler – liquefied – and then added to a pleasant, medium-bodied Ceylon tea.
The dry leaf is beautiful: dark brown tea leaves mixed with bright yellowish-orange petals and pieces of dried fruit. The dry leaf smells – not surprisingly – like peaches and apricots! It evokes thoughts of a farmer’s fruit stand in the middle of summer!
To brew this tea, I used my Kati Tumbler. I added 1 bamboo scoop of tea to the basket and poured boiling water into the tumbler. Then I steeped the tea for three minutes. This seems like the perfect steep time for my palate – the tea tastes strong without any bitterness and I’m getting LOTS of fruit flavor from the peach and apricot.
The base is brisk and invigorating without being too aggressive. It’s got a light to moderate astringency to it. It’s a good base for the flavors because it’s strong enough to be tasted. There’s no doubt that what I’m drinking is indeed tea. It tastes like tea! However, there is plenty of sweet, juicy peach and apricot flavor too.
The peach and apricot flavors here are so strong and delicious. It reminds me of those summer days when I’d bite into a peach or an apricot that was just picked from the tree. That fruit essence has been captured in this tea: it tastes fresh, sweet and true to the fruit. Most of all, it tastes delicious.
Just Peachy Black Tea from Pluck Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Pluck Tea
Tea Description:
This high grown luxury loose leaf black tea is blended with dried ripe peaches and apricots grown in Niagara, Ontario.
Soft and fruity… chill for an enchanting iced tea.
Learn more about August’s Postal Teas shipment here.
Learn more about subscribing to Postal Teas here.
Taster’s Review:
My “August” box from Postal Teas arrived a few days ago, and I was eager to dive right in and try “this month’s” teas. This service is set up to ship at the end of the month, so these teas that I received in September are actually August’s teas, so it will be a little confusing for me to be calling this August’s box when it arrived in September. But it’s really not that important … at least the teas arrived, right? And I’m quite happy with this month’s selection.
And I’m even happier with the note that I received in the box. As I mentioned in my first review of the teas that I received with my first shipment, they include a handwritten note. I dig that, it communicates to me that they took a few moments out of their day to write something to me. While I love the convenience of shopping online and it’s how I do most of my shopping (at least for tea!), with the handling process of the many orders of so many companies out there it seems that the personal touch is lost. That “thank you for shopping with us” and the smile from the clerk is lost (and let’s face it, it’s lost when you shop at most of the big chain stores too) and that’s something that I – as a consumer – appreciate. So when I get a handwritten note with an order, even if it’s just something as simple as a hand-written “thank you” on the receipt, it tells me that a person was on the other side of this order. I like that.
And what I like even more is that this note … was written with ME in mind. They wrote this to me. They didn’t have some formed response that they wrote on everyone’s note of every package that they sent out this month. Let me show you what I mean. The note says:
Anne,
We love having your feedback!
We hope these are a little more exciting for you!
Be sure to let us know what you think!
OK. So not only are they addressing the fact that I sit here and write tea reviews, but they’re acknowledging that they read my reviews and they’ve taken my feelings into account while writing this note because I did express some discontent with the previous box because the teas – while they were classics and quite good! – were just a little … well, it was like, OK, I signed up for this new service and they’re sending me teas from a new-to-me company but they were teas that I could pretty much find anywhere. I could go to my local coffee shop and find those teas. So, I was like, “Um … boring!”
Hey, what can I say. After writing reviews for over five years, I guess you could say that I’m needy and what I need is something different. Something that I don’t already have in my pantry. (And my tea pantry is extensive.) So, yeah, my apologies to Postal Teas and Tease for sounding less than excited about trying something that I’ve already tried.
BUT … I’m not here today to talk about last month’s box. I want to talk about this month’s box! This is the first tea that I’ve tasted from this month’s box from Postal Teas. This month’s supplier for Postal Teas is a company called Pluck and it’s a company that I’ve not yet tried. And THAT’S why I like to subscribe to services like this. I like to explore teas that I’ve not tried before from companies that I’ve not yet heard of. This month, Postal Teas delivered that right to my mailbox.
The dry leaf is deliciously fragrant! It smells a lot like my kitchen did about a month and a half ago when I brought home a big box full of freshly picked peaches. Yum!
I brewed this tea in my Breville One Touch. I put two bamboo scoops of tea into the basket of the tea maker and added 500ml of freshly filtered water into the jug, and then set the controls for 212°F and 2 1/2 minutes (my go-to settings for most black teas).
The tea has a peachy aroma, and I smell more “black tea” notes now than I did with the dry leaf. The dry leaf is all about the peach, but now that the tea is brewed, I’m experiencing a lighter peach note and a little bit of black tea in the fragrance. It smells delightful!
Nice! The peach is a little elusive while the tea is piping hot so I would suggest letting this tea cool slightly before taking a sip. As the tea cools, the flavors develop. (And it’s AMAZING iced!)
The black tea is strongest flavor of this cup, and that’s the way it should be. When I taste a flavored tea, I like it when I can taste the flavors the tea promises, but I still want to taste the tea part too. Otherwise, I might as well just consume a glass of fruit juice. I want tea!
But that’s not to say that I don’t taste the peach in this tea, because I do. The peach is there, but it doesn’t overpower the tea notes. It’s a flavor that starts out subtle and develops slowly.
And what I like best about the peach notes here is that it tastes very true to the fruit. It doesn’t have an artificial peach taste. It tastes like peaches that have been picked off the tree and then liquefied and added to a cup of Ceylon tea. The aftertaste is delightfully peachy!
As I was brewing this tea, I thought about additions. I didn’t add anything to the cup, but a little bit of sugar might encourage the peach notes to emerge a little bit more and it might temper the slight astringent bite at the tail of the sip. But, it wasn’t too astringent and I could taste the peach notes without the sweetener so it’s not something that must be added. I was thinking that maybe a splash of milk or cream would give this a ‘peaches and cream’ sort of flavor but now that I’m drinking it, I think that the dairy addition would overwhelm the delicate notes of peach and you don’t want that!
It’s a very enjoyable cuppa, and it captures what this time of year is about to me – the sweet harvests as the summer comes to an end and we welcome autumn.
Organic Apricot Brandy Flavored Black Tea from ArtfulTea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: ArtfulTea or ArtfulTea on Etsy
Tea Description:
Organic apricot pieces and natural brandy flavor give this black tea blend a delicious full flavor and luscious sweetness. An aromatic and visually appealing tea.
Ingredients: organic black tea, organic apricot pieces, organic calendula and osmanthus petals, natural apricot brandy flavor. Produced in accordance with the Ethical Tea Partnership.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
When I placed my samples order with ArtfulTea, this was the first sample that I selected. I’m not sure what it was about this tea that allured me, but at the moment when I was shopping something in my head thought: “Oh, that sounds good!” when I read the words Apricot Brandy.
The aroma is a perfect representation of Apricot Brandy! The dry leaf smells of apricots, brandy and black tea. (No big surprises!) Once brewed, the tea smells similar, but I think I smell more black tea now. It’s a wonderful fragrance – the kind of scent that gets the taste buds excited and the mouth watering!
And it tastes as good as it smells! Mmm!
I can taste notes of apricot: sweet, juicy and reminiscent of the flavor of a tree-ripened apricot. When served hot, this is especially true (I guess because tree-ripened fruit is always a wee bit warm, you know?)
I taste the black tea next and it has a pleasant flavor. It’s a smooth, mild-tasting black tea. The website doesn’t indicate what type of black tea is used in this blend, but if I were to wager a guess I’d say it’s a Ceylon, because it has that moderate, even-tempered sort of flavor that is typical of a Ceylon. It’s an enjoyable black tea base, not bitter and not overly astringent. There is some astringency, slightly dry toward the finish, but it’s not a strong astringency. I’d categorize it as a light astringency.
As I sip this, I can’t help but wonder how apricot flavors would fair with Assam tea. I think those caramel-y, malty notes of an Assam would taste delightful with apricot!
The brandy flavor is – happily – not an overpowering flavor. I like the way it balances with the other tastes in this cup. Sometimes with alcohol-inspired teas like this one, I find myself concerned that the alcohol notes will be overwhelming, and because I’m not much of a drinker of brandy or any other alcoholic beverage (I’m a tea-totaler!) I generally am not all that excited about teas that taste strongly of an alcoholic drink.
This has more of the sweet, delicious apricot than it does brandy, and the two meld together in a very delightful way. The flower/petal additions don’t add a strong floral note to the cup, but, the osmanthus does enhance the apricot nicely.
Overall, a really enjoyable cup of tea! I’m very happy with this cup. It tastes good hot, and it’s also nice as the cup begins to cool, suggesting to me that this would make a tasty glass of iced tea as well.