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I had some of this last night to help out a headache (not a migraine, thankfully). The brew is an extremely pale yellow. As to the taste – I know there’s no mint in this, but it totally tastes minty to me. That might be because I store it next to the Whisper of the Woods tea :-) Pine plus mint is actually a lovely and refreshing taste. The underlying tea is oh so slightly buttery and quite smooth. This blend becomes even more refreshing as it cools. Very reminiscent of walking through the woods in that seasonal sweet spot where summer has ended but fall hasn’t truly set in (so, pretty much right now).

Huh. This is tastier than I was expecting. Despite the ridiculous number of ingredients, this really just tastes like blueberry and green tea. There’s a tad of hibiscus contributing nicely to the blueberry flavor without being overwhelming. I can’t taste the stevia, thankfully – I really don’t like stevia anything in my tea.

Overall, this is pretty tasty. As is often the case with Yogi teas, the list of ingredients is fairly lengthy and makes me nervous. This isn’t a tea that I would go out of my way to stock. However, I wouldn’t turn it down if offered.

Thanks to moraiwe for the sample! Another sipdown.

Many thanks to Laurent at Nina’s Paris for the sample. I admit that I was a bit apprehensive about this tea – it’s a black tea (which makes my stomach hurt) AND a berry tea (which I rarely enjoy). Still, it’s Nina’s and I wanted the sipdown, so I decided to give it a shot.

I had the teabag version, which comes in a pyramid bag. Even before brewing, this tea smells utterly fantastic. Although it’s a blend of berry flavors, it doesn’t smell generic or artificial. The brewed tea is a nice deep red berry color. The taste is hard for me to describe… the berry flavors blend together very well, but are also distinctly identifiable. This is really quite wonderful. I can’t make out much about the underlying tea base. I’m not very good with black teas anyway, since I drink them so rarely. I can say that I’m not picking up any astringency and that there is just a slight touch of dryness.

This tea goes quite well with a berry-based dessert (in my case, a raspberry Milano cookie). I’m a little sad to say that this is a sipdown.

After my previous experience with Teeccino, my expectations for this tea were very low. The dry bag does have a lovely hot cocoa smell. The brew is the color of coffee and smells like coffee and chocolate as advertised. I actually got my hopes up that this tea would not be awful.

Well…I was kind of right. It is more palatable than the other Teeccino that I had (French Roast, which I rated 12 and poured down the sink after 3 sips). This does actually taste like chocolatey coffee. Not great, but drinkable. Kind of like bad coffee. A touch of rice milk really pulls the flavors together and makes this cup almost pleasant. I don’t taste any of the chile, but the coffee and chocolate flavors are clear and complementary. I have a much better impression of this company now. I suspect that I would have rated this tea higher if I didn’t still have the memory of that French Roast. I am trying to adjust for that in my rating. Still, first impressions are hard to get over.

At any rate, I’m quite glad to say that this is another sipdown.

I’ve been on a loose leaf green tea kick, so I’m pleasantly surprised at how good this is (and not just for a bag tea). I brewed it for 3 minutes at exactly 175 degrees (bwahaha my new kettle lets me heat water to precisely the temperature I want/need). The color really is sunny! The brewed smell is vegetal and sweet. The taste is vegetal, a tad astringent, and even a little buttery. The astringency gets stronger as the tea cools and it starts leaving a dry feeling in my mouth. Still drinkable, but not as good as when the tea is hot.

overall, this is not something that I would go out of my way to stock, but I wouldn’t mind having this if offered.

Oh, and btw, sipdown!

BACKLOG

I had this on Friday. I wanted to experiment with the flavor a bit, so I tried adding cinnamon to the blend. I admit, I probably overdid it on the cinnamon. Still, I had the same problem adding cinnamon as I had adding vanilla – it tastes fine, the flavors are both there, but somehow it doesn’t quite mesh into anything like a cookie. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any sugar to try it with. I’m not changing my rating because I mucked around with the blend.

Also, I get to call this a sipdown because the rest is going to Sil. Whew, one more tea off the list!

EDIT: I forgot to thank JoonSusanna for the sample! Thank you!

I made the teabag version at work the other day. It’s great in lieu of an afternoon snack. I keep a candy bowl on my desk and this definitely helped me resist the temptation.

Ah, travel mug weather! Such a wonderful thing…

I had this for my travel mug/breakfast tea yesterday. Let me be absolutely clear on one point: this tea is fabulous and I love it. But you know what? I really don’t enjoy it as a breakfast tea. Something about the creaminess and sweetness just does not do it for me. I think a second-steep version might be good for breakfast, because on the second steep this tea becomes much nuttier and less creamy, but of course that’s not an option with my current travel mug. So this is going to stay a dessert-at-home tea.

Not changing my rating though!

This review is for the loose leaf. It’s a bit different from the teabag version, but not so very different that it seemed worthwhile to create a separate page for it.

The leaves are absolutely lovely – decent sized green tea leaves with bits of dried strawberry and citrus. They steep up a pale yellow brew. The flavor is quite nice. Predominantly strawberry with a strong-but-not-overwhelming citrus presence. The underlying tea is sort of grassy and very smooth.

The biggest difference between this version and the bagged is that it tastes much more natural. The strawberry flavor is still assertively sweet, but the citrus provides more balance and the taste is more strawberry preserves than strawberry candy.

Overall, I can see myself enjoying this from time to time as a dessert tea. Or picking out the fruit pieces and blending them with a bread-y tea to try for a toast-and-jam flavor :)

UPDATE: Neither the bagged nor the loose leaf of this tea tastes good cold. Just… blegh.

I’m on a strawberry kick tonight. This tea isn’t too shabby. The strawberry flavoring is very candy-like, but I’m enjoying that right now. The underlying green tea is rather grassy and slightly dry. There’s a slightly roasted aftertaste that’s rather pleasant.

I wouldn’t really consider this a dessert tea, even though it’s sweet. It’s more like a good candy substitute when you’re having a sugar craving.

This is the teabag version. I also have the loose leaf, which is much, much nicer looking than the fannings in the teabag. I’ll try to have that next so I can compare.