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Okay, confession time. Whenever I brew up a pumpkin tea, I use the mug that’s shaped and painted to look like a pumpkin. Now that that dorkiness is over…

Received this as a sample with my order. :) Thankyou!

This tea is quite scrumptious. Originally I steeped to parameters, but I wanted it to taste stronger, so I threw the infuser back into the cup, and am quite pleased with the result!

Very nice and pumpkin-y, and the amount of spice is juuuuust right. :) Without milk, you get more of a pumpkin SPICE drink, or with milk the spices are softened quite a bit and you then get CREAMY pumpkin drink. Both are delicious, not sure which I prefer.

The best part about this tea is that it’s not overly sweet. The black tea base is very prominent, and tastes very natural. Hard to believe that this is flavored! Don’t get me wrong though, the pumpkin and the spices are very taste-able, but this is clearly TEA which makes me very happy. :)

Overall, this is a MUST for any pumpkin lovers. :D

I’ve been looking forward to this one. This makes my second oolong ever, and I’m very excited to explore this ‘new’ type of tea. :)

Opening the bag, my eyes nearly rolled back into my head, haha. If this isn’t what heaven smells like, then … Yeah, I just can’t. Wow. Words … can’t describe.

Very excitedly scooped some leaf (and nice chunks of actual pecans!!) into my infuser, set the timer, and very impatiently waited.

It was worth the wait. To say it nice and quick: MMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!! OM NOM NOM NOM.

It tastes far far better than I expected. The pecans steeped well with the tea, and the maple is to die for. It almost has a hint of salt in the taste too, sort of like those salted caramel drinks/treats you can purchase in Autumn.

I have to refrain from just guzzling this delicious tea right down so I can start on a second infusion, hehe.

Next order, I’m going to order the base of this, Nilgiri Frost. It tastes delicious with the flavors, and I’m very excited to taste this tea in its natural state as well.

Thanks very much for the delicious, Stacy! :) This tea has made me even more excited to get into oolongs than before!

EDIT: This tea makes an excellent dessert buster! At the first few sips, I was thinking ‘One of those Rocky Road Bars left over from that family reunion thing would go so well with this!’ but as I continued sipping, I felt more than satisfied. While I enjoyed the cup to the last drop, I certainly didn’t feel the need for the rocky road bar any longer. xD

So I asked myself why I was putting the half teaspoon of golden sugar in this tea (which, despite my previous note has not only become a cupboard staple the past few weeks, but I drink two of these a day now if not more) when it seems it’d taste so sweet without to begin with, so I put in just a splash of milk, no sweetening of any kind.

It’s interesting how much it changed the flavor. Before it was a tea that had a bit of a creamy note, but without the sugar to distract it, it taste full on like CREAM now. Somehow without the sweet indulgence, this cup of tea has become thicker, more decadent and far more dessert like. So it became more indulgent WITHOUT the indulgence, ha. Less is more as they say, I suppose. :)

Anyway, I’ve upped my rating considerably. Not because of this experiment, but because it suddenly became a can’t-live-without tea somehow even though during my last taste note I was simply trying to get rid of my remaining stock…

So excited this finally got here! :) Today is an especially good day for tea, cold, dark and raining. So I’ve been snuggling on the couch with several cups of hot tea in a row. I’ve been looking forward to this one arriving in quite some time. Let’s get started.

Initial impressions are very good. The scent is lovely; both strongly of coconut but also of black tea. Probably smell about 50/50 of each, which is very promising. The coconut flakes are ENORMOUS, but in the way you’d want. Big enough that they promise to offer a lot of flavor, but not so humongous that you have to use a ton of scoops to get some leaf along with it.

The verdict?

Yummy yummy yum yum! :D It’s exactly what I wanted. I love black tea, I love coconut and this is a match made in heaven, heh. It’s deliciously sweet, but not so saccharine that you can’t taste the black tea base. I don’t generally drink flavored blacks very often, but I think this could easily become a tea I drink nearly everyday. This is also one of those rare special teas where the taste is more delicious than the smell. I’ll have to stock up on this. :)

So now that I have a proper infuser vs. T-sacs that I used in my earlier tasting note, I just want to say that using an infuser TRULY makes a huge difference!

While I found the tea to be delicious before, steeping it in the infusuer gave me a far more flavorful cup, and the taste of raisins is delightfully stronger while still giving me the chocolatey cinnamon notes at the same time. It’s not just my taste buds picking up on the difference, but I can see the difference visually as well! The steeped leaves in my T-sac before didn’t look much different than the dry, but in the infuser they’ve opened up into much bigger leaves, and the liquor in my mug is also much darker.

So in other words, deliciousness just got even more delicious! Bye bye T-sacs :D

So went out to DAVIDsTea today. :) Second time I’ve ever been there in person, so I was very excited to finally go again today after a year. Anyway, I happily smelled pretty much every tea in the building, bought the new elephant mug, and also walked out with a bunch of teas. :) Overall, a success!

Anyway, I’m a bit disappointed to find out too late (50g bag, anyone?) that this tea actually contains artificial ingredients (I dodge as much as possible) but I won’t lament on that, because I could’ve researched more first. That said, it tastes really delicious! :) It actually tastes like toasted coconut, and not like chemicals at all despite the ingredients.

The girl at the store said this tea works well with multiple infusions, so I’ve kept the leaves to the side to test that theory once this cup is done. :)

As the cup cools, the coconut flavor comes more into the foreground, though it definitely wasn’t mild prior, hehe. :)

Very excited to be drinking out of my first infuser mug. I want a whole bunch now! :)

EDIT: Had a second infusion. It’s definitely much weaker than the first, but still good and coconutty. :) I don’t think this could handle a third. Also just wanted to mention how beautiful and HUGE the leaves are when they’re fully opened up. I was really admiring the difference between the dry leaf in the tin, and the steeped leaf in the infuser. Almost looked like I had a salad in there, ha! Infusers really are a lot more fun than T-sacs. :)

Received this as a free sample in an order. To be honest, I’ve given up on chocolate tea, but hey it’s a freebie might as well try it yes?

Well, so far it’s not promising. It’s steeping right now, and well, it doesn’t smell pleasant. It smells like a combo of dirt and tootsie rolls. Yum?

It’s far far worse than I thought it would be. After the first sip my immediate thought was “WHAT did I just put in my mouth?” Just to be sure, I took another. Then I dumped it down the drain and threw away the leaves.

I’m going to refrain from rating it because I think the problem is partially me. Chocolate and tea just don’t work for me. Not unless it’s a NOTE of chocolate like in Butiki’s Premium Taiwanese Assam, but actual chocolate and tea just … I don’t know. I just don’t enjoy it.

Just glad this was a sample.

My world has been flipped upside down. Not in the negative “My life has been ruined” way but in the “Omg this tea is so amazing, it just changed my view on tea forever.”

At first I was a bit grouchy ‘cause … well, I could not for the life of me get the very long tea leaves to stay on the spoon long enough to get into my T-sac at first. Maybe I’m tired. Anyway, as soon as I poured in the water, this amazing aroma wafted out of the cup instantly. Of cinnamon and chocolate. YUMMO. By the time the three minutes of steeping was up, it had this wonderful raisin like smell. Think of the most delicious smelling pastry you can imagine. This tea smells better than that.

As for taste, I get all of those flavors, and it’s so good, so satisfying. I’ve enjoyed tea all my life, and yet I feel like my eyes have been opened. I didn’t know tea could taste like this.

Stacy, this tea is truly amazing.

This has a place in my cupboard forever.

Here we are. The tea I’ve been dreaming about trying for the first time for the past week and a half. Now that it’s here, ready to be tasted, I’m almost scared that I hyped it up in my head to unrealistic expectations.

The tea leaves are beautiful. So beautiful, I almost want to take a picture. Or even more silly, find some sort of glass container and dump them in and make them a decoration. But the smell is far too appealing to waste them like that.

… And … oh … my … word. This is cantaloupe. I’m almost confused. My taste buds are telling me, “This is not tea. This is a cantaloupe. Juicy sweet cantaloupe. FRUIT.” But my brain argues back “No, no, this is tea. Granted, delicious tea, but tea nonetheless.”

“Cantaloupe!”

“Tea!”

“Cantaloupe!”

“TEA. Just take a look if you don’t believe me!”

…

Okay, no idea where that came from. Hopefully my lapse into crazy town will be enough to convince you that this is truly a magical cup. Thankyou so much Stacy, it’s so delicious. Please never discontinue this tea. Ever.

EDIT: Hang onto those leaves. I’m on the second infusion now, and the cantaloupe flavor has become more prominent. This cup’s even MORE delicious than the first! :D

Alright I’ll be honest, despite the glowing reviews and this being the top tea on Steepster, I’m skeptical. But seeing as I received this as a free sample, I have nothing to lose! :)

Well it smells like heaven. At the first sip, I tasted nothing until the swallow, which held a vague promise of something sweet and delicious. I kept sipping, but I guess I just don’t drink green tea often enough (or maybe it’s because of the black tea I just drank a minute ago) but I can’t seem to reach the flavor that swallow keeps teasing me with.

So, admission of guilt, you’re not “supposed” to put any additives in green tea, but I crumbled. I really wanted to taste the flavor. So I put a tiny bit of golden sugar in. Just a tiny sparse amount to wake up the flavor. And there it is! Sweet tasty heaven. :) I didn’t know green tea could taste this way!

I think as my taste buds adjust while I sip this slightly sweetened tea, I’ll try the second infusion the way the tea god intended: straight.