95 Tasting Notes
I decided to give this tea another shot. I made a pitcher of iced tea with it, and honestly, that’s where it really shines. It is far, far better cold than hot. Iced with a little sugar, the chocolate and mint flavors both come out a bit more. Not quite “Thin Mint”, but close enough.
Bumping up the rating a little.
Well, this is okay. Not bad, but not great either. Just…okay. A lot of S&V’s flavored teas are really nice, but this is one that falls short of the mark.
I think I prefer peppermint’s bite more when it comes to chocolate mint, since that usually comes out tasting like a thin mint or a peppermint patty. Spearmint’s a little too tame. Given the choice I’ll take H&S’s chocolate mint over this, or even Greenfield’s.
This was one of the teabags packaged as a sample with my Stash order. Should be renamed “clove water”, or maybe “double clove chai”. That’s all you taste and all you smell. Cinnamon? Ginger? Nutmeg? Nope! All clove, all the time.
With sugar it tasted like purple jellybeans, which, admittedly, I like. Not enough however, to ever seek this tea out again. Stay away if you don’t like a lot of clove flavor.
The second of my Design-a-Tea samples. I don’t know why I keep trying with caramel flavored teas. I feel the same way about them many people do about chocolate teas; they just can’t measure up to the real thing. That said, I like chocolate tea. Anyway.
It smelled like nothing dry and like banana candy when brewing. That was fine with me since I like that taste. Flavor-wise it was very, very mild with only hints of banana and caramel coming through as it cooled. The black base is nonexistent and that’s saying something considering how light the flavoring is.
Two samples down, three to go. Not particularly impressed so far.
So I decided I’d give Design-a-Tea a shot and get some samples. Couldn’t hurt, right? I was curious to see if their pear flavoring measured up to S&V’s, and pear with honey sounded like a nice combo.
This? This tastes neither like pears nor honey. It’s like drinking perfume. I don’t know if it’s the pear or the honey flavoring that’s so flowery, but it’s incredibly floral. Not even pleasantly floral. Soapy floral. No joke, thanks to the scent I thought that I’d somehow gotten a rose tea when I opened the sample, and Design-a-Tea doesn’t even have rose as a flavor option. Sticking to Simpson & Vail if it’s pear tea I’m after, because this is incredibly far off the mark.
Just a lazy afternoon sipping tea and listening to doom metal. Isole’s pretty awesome. Anyway. Disregard the “Earl Grey” part of this tea’s name. There’s very, very little bergamot in both the flavor and scent. This is, first and foremost, a peach tea.
That said, it’s not a bad tea. The peach taste is strong and accompanied by some sort of creaminess I can’t really put my finger on. Like I said, not all that much bergamot; it’s pretty much lost under the peach and there’s the barest hint of it in the aftertaste. Trying it iced doesn’t change this at all. Either way I’ll gladly finish off my 1 oz. bag, but I wouldn’t go for it if I was wanting Earl Grey that day.
Maybe I’ll throw a bit of plain Earl in with it one time and see how it goes. Couldn’t really hurt, right?
Divinitea’s been pretty hit-or-miss for me. Sometimes you get really good teas like the Persian Plum Rose, and then you get ones that are just…meh. Sadly this falls into the latter category.
It’s terribly finicky to brew. There’s not enough lavender in the mix to stand up to the base tea, so if you steep it a little too long it’s overpowered entirely by tart, astringent black tea. Not really what I was looking for. Too short a steep time and it’s little better than colored water.
I’ve gotten my best results steeping it for 3-3 1/2 minutes and adding sugar. The lavender gets slightly more prominent as it cools, but it’s still very mild. If you like a subtle lavender flavor, this tea might be something you’d want. If you want something strongly floral, skip this one. It’s not for you.
I probably won’t keep drinking it, but if nothing else I figure the remainder will make a nice tea rinse for my hair.
It’s time for “impulse buys at Netcost” again! I was there to stock up on Ahmad’s Apple Refresh tea, since it’s so hard to find just plain apple-flavored teas lately and no other store around here has it, when I spotted this on the shelf. I figured hey, why not try it? If I like lavender Earl and rose Earl, another floral Earl can’t steer me wrong.
It doesn’t really smell or taste that different from Twinings’ regular Earl Grey. Maybe a little lighter due to the inclusion of the jasmine green. There’s a little bit of floral aftertaste to it, but maybe I’m just imagining things.
It’s a nice lighter alternative to their regular Earl. Just don’t go into it expecting much in the way of jasmine flavor.
Mild fruit scent, mild mixed-fruit flavor. Nothing to really write home about. It’s not a bad tea, but it’s nowhere nearly as good as the description makes it sound. Drinkable, but not memorable.
On a side-note, I wish the literary teas came in smaller 1 or 2 oz. packages as well. As it stands, you can end up with a sizable quantity of a tea that’s merely okay.
