Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: Tea Leaf Co.
Tea Description:
A wonderfully bold and smooth organic tea blend of dark oolong and maple, a perfect pairing. While the oolong is bold, full-bodied, and lightly smoked, the maple is light, aromatic, and sweet. The combination of the two flavors results in a well-balanced, featured favorite maple tea blend.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Mmm! This Brown Sugar Organic Oolong Tea from Tea Leaf Co. is the first from this new-to-me tea company that I’ve tried, and it’s a good one!
The maple flavor is strong but I like that it’s not overpowering the Oolong tea. Tea Leaf Co. has managed to strike a really delightful balance between the sweetness and rich flavor of the maple and the Oolong tea with its fruit notes and hints of smoke.
The base tea possesses notes of stone fruit (peach) and I taste wisps of smoke. I like this delicate smoky note and how it plays to the notes of the sweet maple. Nutty flavors develop as I continue to sip and I like how these interact with the maple notes as well. This is a full-flavored Oolong, it’s rugged and has notes of wood and earth. It’s a strong flavor that doesn’t wimp out behind the sweetness of the maple. The contrasts in flavor from the woodsy, earthy, nutty and smoky flavors help keep the maple in check and keep it from becoming too cloying a drink.
The maple notes are sweet and pleasant. They don’t taste chemical or artificial. It tastes like someone drizzled a drop or two of real maple syrup in my teacup! Quite delectable!
A real treat – this “Brown Sugar.”
Nettle Leaf Herbal Tea from Tealux
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Herbal/Tisane
Where to Buy: Tealux
Tea Description:
It may be a brash statement to say that one prickly green herb is the panacea for almost everything that ails you; but, in the case of stinging nettles, it’s mostly true. If there’s one plant to have on hand at all times that provides a cure for arthritis, an herbal treatment for allergies, relieves hair loss, treats Celiac disease, bleeding, bladder infections, skin complaints, neurological disorders and a long list of other conditions — it’s nettle leaf.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
So after Butiki closed up shop they put together two ‘travelling tea boxes’ for Steepster; one was an educational box with samples of various straight/pure teas and the other was a box of just herbal ingredients so people could try blending their own teas. While I didn’t participate in the Educational box I did get in on the herbal one! Since I was the only Canadian on the list, I was at the end of the shipping list to save people some shipping costs (darn postage; why do you have to be so expensive!?). Along the journey, other herbal ingredients were added to the box including this Nettle Leaf tea from Tealux!
This is one of a few ingredients in the box that I’ve either never had or never had plain; the latter in this case. Before mixing it with anything else, I wanted to try it on its own to know what I’m working with flavour wise – this also gave me a good opportunity to review it! I brewed up about sixteen ounces of this and had half of it hot, and the second half iced. Steeped up this has a very dark, swampy olive green colour. It’s both pretty and kind of intimidating. It reminds me a lot visually of what steeped up mulberry leaf looks like.
I started off by trying out the hot half of the two versions. I found that while this tasted very, very grassy with a bit of sweetness and also a bit of bitterness that along with those bold flavours was an equally bold medicinal kind of taste and aroma. It reminded me a little bit of the smell of a dentists’ office – an environment I’ve had a lot of exposure to recently. Of the two halves, this was definitely the one I least liked.
And on the note of ‘medicinal’ stuff – apparently there are a whole lot of health claims for drinking nettle leaf tea. I want to be really clear that I’m no expert on the health claims here nor do I necessarily believe all of them; and that’s definitely not why I’m drinking this tea. My personal belief is that any ‘health benefits’ I get from tea is a great added bonus, but I completely drink tea for the taste – and I review it for the sense of community, and to learn from other people’s experiences.
The iced version of this was very similar; incredibly grassy with sweet and pleasant bitter notes – however I didn’t taste anything especially medicinal and the aroma seemed less powerful too. It was just the taste of very obviously herbal tea. I’d definitely drink this plain again were it iced; I’m not so sure I’d be as willing to try it hot again unless it was sweetened, and I don’t normally sweeten my tea so that’s probably just a safe no on that front.
At least it gave me some good ideas of what to blend this with for my next herbal mix! Or I might just finish it off plain too; this was one of the ingredients in the box that was actually in a reasonably small quantity.
Yunomi Tea Discoveries Club, Volume 17 (Part 2)
For this – part 2 of my review of Yunomi’s Tea Discoveries Club, Volume 17 – I will be reviewing the remaining three tisanes that I received in this month’s package.
The three teas that I’ll be examining a little closer in this article are Hatomugi Tea, Mulberry Leaf Tea and Roasted Barley Tea.
The first tea that I’ll be tasting is the Hatomugi Tea – or Job’s Tears Tea – from Kanazawa Daichi. This tisane was processed in tea bags and when I first opened the pouch, it smelled remarkably like Roasted Barley – that I had to do a double take and make sure I was opening the correct package!
Then I looked closer at the Yunomi website and learned that this is a type of barley. It’s organic and it’s roasted – hence the familiar aroma.
The flavor is very much like I expected after experiencing the fragrance – that is to say that this tastes like roasted barley tea. And it’s YUMMY! Roasty-toasty, nutty and sweet. There is a slight ‘grain’ taste, like … well, like barley. It reminds me of wheat, like Wheat-Hearts cereal.
The second tea that I’m going to review for this article is the Mulberry Leaf Tea from Kesennuma Kuwacha. I’ve actually reviewed this tisane previously, but I don’t mind revisiting it!
I believe I may have brewed this tisane differently this time than I did previously, because when I brewed it before, I think I might have been under the misconception that it was a blend of mulberry leaf and Japanese Sencha because if you look at these leaves – they look like Japanese Sencha leaves!
So, I’m guessing that I went with a lower temperature and a 1 -2 minute steep previously. This time, I’m more ‘in the know’ so I went ahead and increased the temperature to 185°F and the steep time for 3 1/2 minutes.
While the dry leaf looks very much like a Japanese Sencha, the brewed liquid does not! The color is darker, like a forest-y green. But the Japanese Sencha flavor that I expected was there. This tastes very much like a Japanese Sencha and would make an ideal substitute for someone who loves their Japanese green teas but needs to cut back a little on caffeine. It’s a little sweeter than a typical Japanese Sencha – this doesn’t have as much of the savory quality that I’d taste with a Japanese Sencha. This is more fruity and sweet, but it still is very similar to a Sencha to me. Very nice!
My final tea journey with Yunomi this month is with the tisane that I figured would be my favorite from this Tea Discoveries Club package: Roasted Barley tea, which like the Job’s Tears, is also produced by Kanazawa Daichi.
And I was right – this is my favorite. I enjoyed almost all of the tisanes from this month’s package, the only one that I wasn’t all that crazy about was the Japanese Mugwort tea that I reviewed in part one of this series.
But this … ahhh! This is my favorite. I could drink this every day.
This Roasted Barley Tea also came in a tea bag – and yeah, if I’m going to offer any kind of criticism about this tisane at all, it would be that it’s a bagged ‘tea.’ I’d certainly rather it not be bagged.
But other than that, this is so yummy. It’s deliciously roasty-toasty, nutty, sweet and so comforting. It is sweet enough that it could even serve as a dessert substitute. It has a very coffee-ish sort of flavor to it – but without the bitterness of the coffee. If someone were looking for an ideal substitution for coffee – this would be it. It tastes more like coffee to me than chicory (which is an herb often used as a coffee substitute).
So my journey with Yunomi’s Tea Discoveries this month ends on a very high note! A very high – and delicious! – note, indeed.
Honey Citrus Raspberry Green Tea from M&K’s Tea Company
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: M&K’s Tea Company on Etsy
Tea Description:
M&K’s own unique blend! We take Chinese green teas, blend them with three citrus fruits, licorice root roasted in honey, and actual raspberries! Not too fruity, not too simple, it’s a perfect blend of green tea and fruit. We use local honey from California beekeepers and local California orange peel.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
After having tried quite a few different teas from M&K’s Tea Company, I must admit that this one isn’t my favorite. And I thought it would be one I like quite a bit because the name offers quite a bit of promise! Citrus, Honey and Raspberry flavors in a Green Tea? Yes, please!
But the execution is a little off for me and I can’t really pinpoint it yet, so maybe in the process of writing this review, I can figure it out.
To brew this tea, I measured 1 bamboo scoop of the loose leaf tea into the basket of my Kati Tumbler. Then I added 12 ounces of 175°F water and let the tea steep for 2 minutes.
The green tea base is pleasant: it’s a combination of two Chinese green teas: gunpowder and Huangshan Maofeng. Together they give the tea an enjoyable texture – soft and creamy – and a smooth, lightly buttery taste with hints of smoke and vegetation.
The citrus note is subtle to this and most discernible when the tea is slurped (this helps aerate the liquid on the palate and it “enlivens” the flavors for your palate). I taste tart and tangy notes of citrus with a light sweetness of the honey. I also get a hint of bitter from the citrus peel.
Then I pick up on the sweet notes of licorice. Because the licorice root has been roasted in honey, the flavor of the licorice has been softened – I’m not getting that sharpness that I often get from licorice root. I think that this works for this particular blend because if the licorice root hadn’t been softened somewhat, it might have taken over the blend and we’d have Licorice Citrus Raspberry Green Tea instead of Honey Citrus Raspberry Green Tea.
Instead the licorice just adds a hint of almost candy-like sweetness to the cup that I actually enjoy. It might be my favorite thing about this particular blend
The raspberry is also quite subtle and I think that is what I’m thinking is off. I feel like I’m tasting more hibiscus and raspberry leaf to accentuate the raspberry than I’m actually tasting raspberry and that’s unfortunate.
So, there you have it, I’ve pinpointed my issue with this tea: I’d like the flavors of citrus and raspberry to be a little more prominent in the blend. I do like that the green tea is a dominant flavor here and I like the little contrast that the licorice root adds, but I think that because this tea is called Honey Citrus Raspberry Green Tea that I’m wanting a little more focus on the citrus and berry notes.
It’s not a bad tea but it’s not as great as I thought it would be. I’ve enjoyed many of M&K’s blends though, so I won’t hold this against them, because while it’s not my favorite tea that I’ve had from them, it’s tasty. It’s good, just not as great as some of the other M&K’s experiences that I’ve had.
Serene Herbal Tisane from The Honest Leaf
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Herbal Tisane
This tea is available from Amoda Tea.
Tea Description:
This tea does exactly what its name promises – brings serenity to your day. Ingredients like chamomile, jasmine and lavender really do have that affect. We taste the apple-like flavours of chamomile, a perfect lemon squeeze and smooth mint. There’s tart and sweet florals playing off one another and hints of relaxing lavender that come out mid-sip.
Learn more about subscribing to Amoda Tea here.
Taster’s Review:
After my first few sips of this Serene Herbal Tisane from The Honest Leaf, I found myself contemplating whether or not I actually liked it. I didn’t dislike it but I wasn’t too sure whether or not I was enjoying what I was tasting.
That is to say, it’s quite unlike other teas I’ve tried.
Now that I’m about halfway through the cup, I can say that yes, I do like this. It’s different, it’s tasty and I like it.
The flavor starts out quite subtle. I notice a soft lemon-y note from the lemon peel and flavoring. This flavor develops over the course of the sip – starting off with a delicate whisper of lemon. The finish is bright with lemon notes and the aftertaste is quite lemon-y, as if I had just taken a sip of lemonade. The aftertaste lingers a while.
After the subtle introduction of lemon, I pick up on flowery notes of jasmine, lavender and passion flower just before mid-sip. These floral notes are also quite subdued. They don’t develop the way the lemon does, but I do pick up on a few more floral notes mingling with the lemon notes in the aftertaste.
Just after mid-sip, I notice the crisp peppermint. I like that the peppermint follows the example set by the flowers and lemon and is understated. The cool peppermint is a nice contrast to the lemon-y flavor, but the mint doesn’t slap you in the mouth with it’s minty presence. It’s just a slight ‘peppy’ sort of flavor that perks up the flavors of the tea without tasting like someone spilled a little bit of mouthwash in my teacup.
I didn’t really notice the chamomile until I reached mid-cup. The chamomile is more of an undertone, offering a indistinct apple note and hint of honey. I can smell more chamomile in this than I can taste. After the mid-cup point, the chamomile notes develop somewhat, but they never become a strong, prominent profile to the cup.
Happily, I notice no hibiscus in this, unless the hibiscus acts as a ‘tart’ agent to help amplify the tartness of the lemon, because the aftertaste does have a tartness to it. Not too puckery, though, but as I said, I do get a lemonade-y sort of experience in the aftertaste.
Overall, I found this to be a relaxing, enjoyable cup. It’s certainly different than the typical ‘nighttime’ type of tisanes, and different is good!