Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Tea & All It’s Splendor
Tea Description:
THIS. TEA. IS. RICH! It’s full of flavour, body and mouth feel. It’s like drinking a great red wine. We were blown away by just the smell of this well made blend. It was so amazing we had to check to make sure that it was all natural. Raelene assures us it is (along with all their other teas).
The rich sour cherry flavour, is sweet and fruity. The fig, adds a sweet and mellow brown sugar finish. This paired with a high quality black tea means you’re left with a warm cuppa that is perfect for novice and advanced tea drinkers.
Learn more about subscribing to Postal Teas here.
Taster’s Review:
My eleventh edition box from Postal Teas has finally arrived! Happy day! This eleventh edition focuses on a new-to-me tea purveyor: Tea & All It’s Splendor and this Acerola Cherry Fig Black Tea Blend is the first that I’ve tried from this collection of teas.
I mean, how could I resist? They had me at the word fig! And as I’ve confessed previously, I’ve noticed a trend in my tea drinking. When I’m given a selection of different teas, the type of tea that I’ll reach for more often than the others is black tea. Don’t get me wrong, I love other tea types. I’m crazy about Oolong teas and Yellow tea is my favorite, but there is just something so comforting about black tea. It appeals to an almost instinctual need for me. That need for tea and it’s caffeine.
And this tea is quite lovely! There is a tasty balance here between tart and sweet. The fig is sweet – almost sugary sweet and it’s a pleasing contrast to the jarring tartness of the acerola cherries. Beneath the cherry top note I taste the smooth black tea that’s not bitter nor overly astringent. I’m really glad about the lack of astringency here, I think that astringency would kill this blend for me because the cherry flavor is quite tart and a tangy, dry sensation would be a bit much for my taste, I think.
But even though the tart is very strong here, I’m not finding it off putting the way I tend to find tart flavors. I think this has more to do with the fact that the cherry flavor tastes so authentic. This is not your average cherry flavoring that ends up tasting like cough syrup. NO! This is a really tasty, true-to-the-fruit cherry flavor that tastes as though I’ve just bitten into a tart cherry. Except that thanks to the fig notes, I’m not puckering.
This. This is good tea. And as fantastic as it is served hot, it’s even better iced. Wow! What a great way to get back into the swing of things with Postal Teas!
Jasmine Mist Green Tea from Sloane Tea Company
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
This tea is available from Amoda Tea.
Tea Description:
Classic green tea leaves possessing a natural honeyed sweetness blossom with an even sweeter aroma of freshly plucked jasmine.
Learn more about subscribing to Amoda Tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I’ve had a few questionable jasmine teas lately. By questionable, I mean jasmine teas that were flavored with jasmine oil instead of scented with jasmine blossoms. When a tea is flavored with jasmine oil, the result is usually not good. I’ve tasted a few flavored jasmine teas that turned out alright but for the most part, they’re just far too perfume-y for my liking.
Fortunately, this Jasmine Mist Green Tea from Sloane Tea Company was not flavored with jasmine oil. Instead, it was scented with jasmine blossoms. This is the best way to impart jasmine essence onto the tea leaf!
The dry leaf smells like jasmine and it’s a pleasantly strong fragrance. Not too overwhelming. I also noticed that there were no jasmine petals in the blend. This is a sign of a good quality jasmine tea! The aroma of the brewed tea is a gentle jasmine note with notes of fresh, light green tea.
And that’s what I’m tasting too. The jasmine note is distinct without tasting of perfume or soap. It tastes like beautiful, exotic jasmine! It doesn’t taste like perfume oil that’s been poured over tea leaves and then brewed into a liquid that’s much more suited for bathing than it is for drinking.
The green tea is a sweet, delicately grassy taste. It’s soft and buttery and complements the lightly sweet, exquisite flavor of jasmine.
In other words, this is the good stuff, folks! I’m happy that Amoda Tea chose to include this in this month’s box – if for no other reason than to remind me what a good jasmine tea is supposed to taste like!
Thank you, Amoda!
Organic Black Gold Tips from Treasure Green Tea Company
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
This tea is available from Amoda Tea.
Tea Description:
Organic Black Gold Tips is an excellent black tea for every morning. It has visible golden tips that provide smoothness and sweetness. Enjoy alone or with milk.
Learn more about subscribing to Amoda Tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I’ve noticed a sort of trend in my tea drinking and I think that Amoda Tea has helped me fully realize this trend. I guess that I’ve always been aware of it, but I have a strong preference for black tea and when I’m given a selection of several different teas, if there is a black tea among the selections, that’s the tea I will usually reach for. Such is the case with this Organic Black Gold Tips from Treasure Green Tea Company – one of the four teas featured in this month’s Amoda Tea Box.
This is a really lovely Black tea. I love that it’s organic. But even more than that, I love that it’s rich and full-flavored. It’s deliciously smooth and pleasantly sweet with notes of caramel and cacao. It’s full-flavored and robust without a lot of astringency and no bitterness.
I brewed this in my Breville One Touch tea maker. I eyeballed it – but by the looks of it, the sample from Amoda was just enough for 500ml of tea! So I poured 500ml of freshly filtered water into the jug and emptied the pouch into the basket. Then I set the timer for 2 1/2 minutes and the temperature for boiling (212°F).
This created a perfect pot of tea – and with my awesome tea mug (a Christmas present from my daughter, Amethyst) – it’s actually a full cup of tea. This baby holds 16 ounces of tea!
And this tea is quite lovely. The kind of black tea that I like to start my day with because it IS rich and malty and full of flavor. It’s smooth. It’s not bitter. There is very little astringency. It’s all those things that make me so happy when I drink a cup of tea.
As I continue to sip, I start to explore beyond those notes of cacao and caramel. There are notes of leather and almost a tobacco-ish sort of flavor. Molasses. Hints of warm spice. There’s a lot of complexity to this tea.
A really lovely tea – I’m glad it was part of this month’s box from Amoda Tea.
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.
Prickly Pear Black Tea from Simple Loose Leaf
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Tea Description:
Prickly Pear is a cactus fruit native to Mexico and the Southwest Desert of the United States. Its succulent flavor compliments our Indian black Nilgiri tea to create an astoundingly rich and delicious regional tea. This tea serves wonderfully hot and creates a beautiful iced tea to sip on those warm, Southwestern afternoons.
Learn more about Simple Loose Leaf’s Co-Op Membership here.
Taster’s Review:
I received this Prickly Pear Black Tea from Simple Loose Leaf some time ago but I put off reviewing it in favor of the teas in their subscription program. As I was going through my stash of teas, I found the unopened, still sealed package of tea so I decided that NOW was the time! I apologize to Simple Loose Leaf for the length of time it took me to get to reviewing this tea!
And now that I’m tasting this tea, I’m really sorry that I put off trying it until now – this is fabulous!
There’s a really pleasing balance between tart, savory and sweet. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what a prickly pear tastes like, it has a sweet-tart taste that reminds me of a raspberry. More accurately, it tastes like a combination of raspberry and melon, so it’s a little sweeter than a typical raspberry and a little more tart than a typical melon. And this tea has captured the flavor of prickly pear quite well!
The sip starts out sweet and fruity. As the sip progresses to mid-sip, I pick up on some of the robust flavors of the Nilgiri black tea base. It’s a sweet, malty tasting tea. It’s smooth with very little astringency, and what astringency I do experience at the tail plays really well with the tartier notes of the prickly pear flavor. It’s not bitter. It has an invigorating quality to it but it’s not overly aggressive.
As the sip approaches the finish, I taste more of the sweetness of the cactus fruit. At the finish, I get some of the tart notes. The aftertaste is tart and tingly, sort of like what I’d experience if I ate a raspberry: that tingly sensation on the tongue.
As the above description suggests, this tea tastes great served hot or cold. I had a glass of it over ice with dinner and found it very refreshing and thirst quenching. For a mid-day cup of tea, I enjoyed this hot and found that the flavor was much more defined served hot. So for a more pronounced flavor, serve it hot – for a sweet, delightful glass of refreshment, serve it iced!
This is a tea that Simple Loose Leaf isn’t carrying at the moment, I do hope they’ll bring it back because I’d love for my readers to get an opportunity to try it! It’s really tasty!