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Sample sipdown! Thanks to Stacy at Butiki Teas for including this with my last order.

This is a really lovely tea. Another home run for Stacy (and props to Sil too!). The dry leaves smell beautifully of strawberries, though a little fake. There are some nice big chunks of strawberry in the blend though! First sip – tastes just like real strawberries. Sweet, juicy, tangy. There’s a touch of graham cracker flavor too, which rounds out the sip nicely. The tea gets juicier as it cools, inspiring me to try this iced. Putting the rest of the mug in the freezer to see how it tastes cold.

So tasty cold! Very strawberry. Not as sweet as the DavidsTea Sweet Strawberry, but nice and tangy. Very juicy too. The graham cracker flavor is gone, though, so this tastes more like a straight strawberry tea. This is definitely better as an iced tea than the Davids. I’m reluctant to decide which one I like better hot, since the Butiki isn’t actually a straight strawberry tea. The Butiki is definitely more complex and interesting though.

Many thanks to whatshesaid for the sample.

I thought I’d be clever and have this with some actual popcorn while watching the new Arrested Development. Maybe that’s the reason this didn’t actually taste like popcorn. The dry leaves smell of apples and cinnamon. The brewed tea pretty much smells and tastes the same. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a good apple/cinnamon combo in just about any form, but I was hoping for something more popcorn-y. The actual popcorn I’m eating might just be obscuring the popcorn flavor of the tea. No ranking until I try it alone.

Mmmm tiramisu in tea form. This is just dead-on. There isn’t even much more to say. Very creamy, strong caramel/toffee and cocoa flavors. I’m also detecting vanilla and coffee, though neither of those are in the ingredients…

Many thanks to whatshesaid for the sample!

My notes from the first time I had this:

This tea is definitely a special treat. It smells amazing – exactly like pistachio ice cream, all roasted pistachio with a hint of sweetness. The flavor is equal parts cream and pistachio goodness. It survives a second steep nicely. Just steep it for a good long while and the nuttiness really comes out. Yummy!

Notes from the second time:

I must have used a different proportion of leaves to nuts, because the green tea flavor was much more prominent this time, with a grassy note and very faint pistachio flavor. The creaminess only came out on the end of the sip.

I decided to add vanilla agave to see if that would help. The agave brings out the creaminess beautifully. The nutiness comes out more too, though still not as prominent as it was last time. Ah, but the second steep brings that flavor out in scores. Amazing. Now it just tastes like drinking a roasted pistachio. No creaminess, but let’s see what the vanilla agave does to a nuttier steeping. Ok, it no longer tastes even remotely like ice cream but my goodness is this delicious! the vanilla and pistachio complement each other so extremely well… happy Kaylee!

Note: Don’t drink this cold. Just don’t.

I had such very high hopes. I wanted something sweet and light for a bedtime tea and this seemed like a good candidate. The dry leaves are very pretty and smell like actual peaches. Quite misleading, since the actual taste of the tea is very artificial. Maybe I overbrewed, because I also found the fake peach flavor overwhelming. I can’t say much for the white tea base because I couldn’t really make it out. I tried diluting it with ice and even adding a splash of seltzer, but nothing could salvage this tea for me.

This might be improved with a shorter steep and a squeeze of lemon to add some natural sweetness while cutting the artificial taste.

Many thanks to TastyBrew for the sample.

This is actually a very dessert-y tea. Sweet, silky, lightly buttery. Definitely picking up a strong, but not excessive, vanilla element. Minty aftertaste. I didn’t know an unflavored oolong could taste like this! Very nice.

Thanks to Stacy at Butiki Teas for the sample.

This sample courtesy of Laurent at Nina’s Paris.

I grabbed this out of my cabinet without knowing what it was and simultaneously realized that it’s a genmaicha AND decided to prepare it as a black tea. Not sure what I was(n’t) thinking. So boiling water, 4 minutes.

This stands up just fine to boiling water. It smells lovely, all toasted rice and sweetness. It tastes basically like every other genmaicha I’ve had, except with a touch of sweet that I couldn’t quite place until I read that the ingredients include caramel. That’s definitely what I’m tasting here. Not picking up on the vanilla at all. The black tea is contributing maybe a touch of astringency, though I’m not sure whether that’s actually there or the ingredients list is influencing me.

Overall, this is quite tasty. Still, probably not something that I would actively seek out if other quality green tea is available. I can’t quite say why, except that genmaichas taste pleasant enough but just aren’t my favorite type of tea. Nice, but not a staple.

I had this at Alice’s Tea Cup the other day and loved it enough to bring some home. It’s just a lovely combination of mint and citrus. The tanginess of the bergamot really complements the mint. Not sure what kind of mint this is – peppermint maybe? Whatever it is, it lingers nicely on the tongue. A touch of honey really brings the flavors together.

I’ve had this as a bedtime tea a few times now, but always forget to log it because, well, it’s bedtime.

As always with Butiki, these are high quality ingredients. There’s just nowhere to hide when a tisane consists solely of lavender and chamomile – the ingredients either stand on their own or they don’t. Thankfully, there’s nothing hiding here. The lavender and chamomile are perfectly balanced and perfectly in sync. If you like those ingredients, this is the tea for you. If you don’t, mosey on along.

This has become my go-to bag tea at work when I need an energy boost. Hot, it tastes very woodsy. As it cools slightly, the taste becomes entirely seaweed. Later, the seaweed taste mellows into a nice vegetal flavor. This tea is great for work because it stands up well to oversteeping, has a pleasurable flavor profile without being distracting, and seems to be particularly energizing.

This was an impulse buy at the corner bodega for $3. I haven’t had a ton of experience with cheap bagged green teas, but I dare say this is one of the better ones. Definitely blows Bigelow out of the water.