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This tea brews up surprisingly dark for white tea, and I was worried that it would end up being harsh. However despite the appearance the tea base was still quite smooth with a slight vegetal tone to it. The peach flavour wasn’t as distinctive as I thought it would be from the smell of the dry leaves, although the tea still had a pleasant fruity taste that I enjoyed. This might be another blend that would be good as an iced tea.

I picked this tea up when I was in Kelowna a few weeks ago and looking for a good decaf fruit blend to turn into iced tea. Unfortunately most fruit teas have a ton of hibiscus in them as a cheap way to replicate raspberry/pomegranate/cherry/random-tart-fruit-of-choice and while I’ll admit it’s more agreeable iced, I’d prefer to do without it altogether. So I was pretty pleased to score this tea.

Like I usually do with a new tea even if it’s destined to become iced tea I’ll try it hot first. The strongest flavour in this blend is the peach but I can also easily pick out apple and apricot as well. The honeybush mixed with the fruit gives the tea its own natural sweetness, and the decaf black tea gives this blend some substance but its subtle enough not to take over. I can already tell this is going to be a hit iced.

Another 52Teas sipdown! I made the last of this into a jug of iced tea which both me and my tea-picky boyfriend enjoyed. It’s 36ºC outside right now so it was a very welcome refreshing drink.

Sipdown – actually it’s a sipdown from yesterday but the site was undergoing maintenance so I couldn’t log in. I hope Frank decides to re-blend this tea one of these days as I would totally buy another pouch or two.

I’d say this is a fairly standard genmaicha, though on the upper end of the quality scale. I’ve grown to like drinking it with supper actually, as it goes very well with savory foods (I guess that why they serve it at all the sushi places). It have a nice roasted, slightly malted flavour that melds well with the grassy, green base.

This is a bagged tea but not half bad for all that. And it’s rather convenient in the morning when I’m in a hurry and too sleepy to want to fuss with loose leaf tea. I’ve found that, even if the ingredients are similar, each masala chai is at least slightly different in taste. This one has a toasty flavour a bit reminiscent of an English breakfast tea and the cinnamon is a particularly prominent spice. It’s a good tea to wake up with.

This tea comes across as a fairly unremarkable rooibos blend. I’m not terribly fond of the woodsy taste of red rooibos, but the blueberry flavouring alleviates it somewhat. I got this as part of a 4-set of tins that was being sold at my bookstore (staff discount – woot!) but I doubt I would purchase this blend by itself.

It’s hard to find a good cherry-flavoured tea that doesn’t taste either like cough syrup or hibiscus, but this blend manages it surprisingly well. It has a lovely sweet cherry flavour and a hint of floral rose and cherry blossoms. I’m glad they went with a white tea base rather than a grassy green tea like many cherry teas are.

I’m not sure how long this has been chilling in my tea cupboard, but it was sealed the whole time so it doesn’t seem to have gone stale. I’m definitely getting more banana than bread out of this blend, but luckily I like bananas. There also a hint of nuttiness in the background and just the right amount of sweetness. It’s great with milk and makes a good breakfast tea IMO.