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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.

This poor tea. I’ve rather abused it today. Totally imprecise (too close to boiling) temperatures and unmeasured steep times. And you know what? It’s still darn good.

I used half a teaspoon for 4 ounces. I’m currently on my third steep and it’s still holding up nicely. I’m getting a lot of rice flavor and savoriness, rather evocative of miso soup. As usual, Den’s Tea impresses.

Thanks to adagio breeze for bringing this tea to the States all the way from Britain!

The dry tea smell like strawberry and hibiscus. There’s a lot of stuff in the mix – I’m seeing coriander seeds, what looks like small bits of dried strawberry, dried citrus peel, what looks like dried peach (I tasted this after brewing and it tasted peachy), and a few other ingredients I can’t identify.

As Lindsey pointed out, there’s no online description or brewing instructions, so I had to wing it. I used ½ teaspoon for 4 oz, brewing it for 3 minutes in water that had cooled slightly after boiling. The liquid is a deep reddish-pink. The flavor is all hibiscus and strawberry. There may be a touch of tartness mid-sip, but that could be wishful thinking. There is a slight but not overwhelming aftertaste of strawberry candy.

Overall, this is just ok. I think it would be nice as an iced tea – probably sweet and juicy. Too bad I’m not a huge fan of iced tea!

Oh noes! Only one or two cups left in this bag! Oh, wait, that’s why I bought a second bag. Thank you, past Kaylee.

I wanted to pick out something special for my 100th post. This definitely fits the bill. A wonderful combination of savory and sweet, this actually makesa a quite nice breakfast tea. It’s a relatively delicate, not at all astringent alternative to the typical breakfast black tea. Nom nom nom.

I bought this sampler back in December 2010. I gave the Earl Grey to my partner and finished off the green tea and the blood orange a while ago. Somehow the Pirate Chai took longer to work through. These tins are great though. The chai held up quite nicely in one even after 2 ½ years. The tins are also super cute and great for storing opened Teavivre samples.

This tea’s ingredients are not listed anywhere but appear to be clove, orange peel, black tea, and maybe cardamom. It tastes like there’s cinnamon in the blend, but I can’t make it out visually.

I used 1 tsp for 8 oz, steeped in boiling water for an unmeasured amount of time (probably about 5 minutes). Spi-cy! The clove slams into you up front, the cinnamon takes center stage mid-sip, and there’s just a smidge of citrus throughout. I can’t make out much about the black tea base other than that there’s just enough astringency to make it clear that this is a black tea (the pain in my stomach also confirms that it’s a black tea – I’m a bit of a dummy for drinking this at all). I’m not tasting the cardamom, but that might be because I’m not quite sure what cardamom tastes like…

I added some rice milk halfway through, but I don’t think it improved the flavor any. If anything, it made the tea less enjoyable. Somehow how the creaminess just didn’t mesh well with the spiciness. Maybe brewed too strong? Not enough rice milk? Needs sugar? Whatever the issue is, I liked this tea better straight than creamy.

The aftertaste is all spice and tingly lips. Lovely! This would work better as a morning pick-me-up than an evening tea, though.

I decided to treat myself to tea and scones at the Upper West Side location. Pricey, but lovely.

One warning – they automatically make this with milk unless you specifically request otherwise. They readily brewed up a new pot for me, though. Without milk, the color of the tea is a tad darker than clover honey. It smells like gingerbread. Perfectly autumnal.

Upon first sip, the immediate taste is spicy. I thought it was cloves, but there aren’t any in this tea so I guess it’s the ginger. The cinnamon kicks in mid-sip and blends quite nicely with the spiciness. It’s a strong flavor, but I love it. I can’t make out anything about the base tea other than that it is quite smooth and acts as a lovely palette for the ginger and cinnamon. There’s no astringency. The aftertaste is primarily ginger with a touch of cinnamon.

I only drank two cups of a three-cup pot, so I took the rest to go. I added some rice milk when I got home and nuked it for a minute (heresy, I know). Quite good. I think it would have been even better with some brown sugar, but I don’t have any. The rice milk did add some creaminess and a touch of sweetness that really complimented the spiciness nicely.

This is really interesting as a chai because it uses a green tea base rather than black. I quite enjoyed it. Still, not so much so that I feel an obsessive need to keep it in stock (unlike the Alice’s Blend and Casablanca).

Oh. My. Goodness. This tea has just been an oasis for me at work. I’ve been brewing it up in the morning and bringing it to work in my handy dandy spill-proof travel mug, which has the added benefit of keeping my tea warm for hours. This is a particularly important feature because work has been extremely hectic. It actually has taken hours to finish a mug. And this stuff is good to the last drop.

I brewed some up at home today so I could write up a proper tasting note. I like to brew it longer than the recommended 3 minutes, and easily get at least two steeps out of it. The smell is just perfectly rosy. The color is the same golden tone as clover honey. The taste is like rose candy with a hint of vanilla. Perfection.

I just noticed that I described Alice’s Casablanca blend as actively making a bad day at work better. So I guess these two teas complement each other as work accessories! This sounds like an excellent excuse to keep both teas on hand at all times and get a little temp. kettle for the office.

The smell of the dry leaves is sort of generically tropical. Hot, the tea tastes like mango and a touch of pineapple, but very artificial. Maybe a touch of floral flavor as well. Icing the tea yields improvement. The smell is all mango and quite natural. The flavors come out a bit more as well. But it still tastes artificial to me. A lot of other tasting notes indicate that they didn’t find it at all artificial tasting, so I wonder whether there’s some difference in the brewing or I’m just being overly sensitive. Either way, this tea gets a “meh” at best.