Nature's Tea Leaf

This evening I was looking through my shu (shoe) box and noticed I still have a lot of these flavored puerhs I purchased from Nature’s tea Leaf. This seemed like a good one to revisit after tonight’s dinner, which was pinto bean and avocado tacos with vegan queso. I don’t think they drink much puerh in Mexico, but maybe it will be good for my digestion.

I remember liking this before. You can see bits of dried orange in the tea, which would seem to indicate this is a natural blend or mostly so. The tart juiciness of the orange is a nice compliment to the dark earthiness of the puerh. Because I am weird, I decided to add some soymilk to this and now it tastes like an orange creamsicle. Not bad… I really need to be drinking more of this. I should remember to stick some dried ginger in it next time around.

3rd Flavored pu’erh here from Nature’s Tea Leaf.

The tea I received looks like a big leaf pu’erh. I’ve had a few before and didn’t really love them, but this blend is kind of nice.

There are dried orange peels in the tea and the flavor is VERY orange-y but natural. I can’t help but think this might be good with some ginger and a little less orange, but this is still pretty nice especially as an after lunch tea.

I decided to do a second steep of this, which turned out pleasant enough and slightly less orange-y. Also it was good with a touch of turbinado sugar. It would be interesting to try this as a chilled tea, I will have to try that someday.

Loose
Appearance: green white large leaf, fuzzy,
Aroma when Dry: fruity, creamy, notes of citrus
After water is first poured: creamy pear notes
At end of first steep: slightly sweet (eastern) honey, creaminess
Tea liquor:
At end of steep: faint meadowy yellow
Staple? No, would buy again
Preferred time of day: any
Taste:
At first: light, velvety, citrus notes, slight creamy closing notes, melon notes show
As it cools ? citrus notes fade, tea gets creamier in texture, lingers longer.
Additives used (milk, honey, sugar etc)? No
Lingers? Yes, velvety floral notes with citrus

Second steep (5min): still has velvety texture, not much flavor left

This has a weird weird flavour to me. I can see how it is milky and I can see when it steeps that it has some kind of milk in it, but I don’t know, maybe I’m picky with my milk more than I thought. I only ever buy organic skim milk. The ‘milk’ in this tea tastes very strange to me. It’s not…bad, exactly, but I don’t think I like it very much. I added some more sweetener, but it just made the weird milk flavour more pronounced and put the black tea more in the background, so that wasn’t very helpful. I don’t think I’m going to try to resteep this.

Sorry I wasn’t able to get a picture from the NTL website.

Of course once I get a bunch of new teas I am keen to try them all, so I thought I would give this mango pu-erh a whirl.

This actually smells very nice and natural in the bag. I steeped the tea for 2-3 minutes (sorry don’t have an exact parameter).

Yum! I really like this. The mango flavor is very sweet and natural and it doesn’t overpower the pu-erh. It has a chocolate sort of taste. These two flavors go fairly well together. I decided to add some soymilk to this because I was wondering how it would be as a latte. I think I prefer it plain but it is nice with the soy, it’s kind of like a tropical milkshake.

Overall, good! I think I would get some more of this. The marigold petals are a nice touch. I much prefer this flavor over the cherry.

Having the flavored pu’erh of the afternoon as I’m still wondering why I have two boxes full of pu’erh that I never seem to drink! Since they don’t really go stale I guess they aren’t exactly at the top of my “must drink soon” list. I don’t like this as much as the orange blend I had yesterday, to me the cherry tastes too artificial. I wonder if I will ever finish off the bag I have of this?

I’m glad it’s Friday though ’m just feeling tired, for an unemployed person I am pretty busy with classes, volunteer work and applying for jobs. I think BF and I are going away for the weekend and it will be nice to just get away for a while. :)

My new tea arrived – hurrah!

Okay I was skeptical of this from the get-go, but I really wanted to try it. I opened up the bag to take a whiff… to me this really smells like cherry cough syrup.

I steeped it for around 2 minutes and after tasting it, I still got cough syrup flavor. I decided to steep it for around 1 minute more and then added a bit of turbinado sugar to it, which definitely helped the flavor somewhat. From what I can tell the pu-erh is good but the cherry flavor really overpowers it. I will be tempted to find some chocolate syrup to put in this.

It isn’t as good as I was hoping and seems a bit artificial to me but overall it’s fairly decent. If anyone else wants to try it I’d be happy to swap some of it.

I’ve learned to be wary of chocolate teas over the years. They always seem to promise a lot more than they deliver. Republic of Teas chocolate always tastes artificial and waxy, and Teavana knows no restraint when it comes to sweetness.

Enter a sample of this tea. What’s this? Simple black tea with real quality chocolate curls (I may or may not have tasted one straight out of the packet) and a hint of vanilla? No mockolate flavor? Only 3 simple components? Promising!

This might be one of the best chocolate teas I’ve had. It isn’t perfect; there’s a certain dusty aftertaste that I’m not loving. But the chocolate melts into the tea, giving it a smooth and creamy texture, and the tea and chocolate combine wonderfully. This is not hot chocolate masquerading as tea. This is real chocolate-infused tea, and a very balanced one at that.

I’ve found that adding a bit of milk and cream cuts down the dusty/bitter components. Overall, a great tea for dessert.

Thanks to Nature’s Tea Leaf for a sample of this.

I’ve been having all sorts of random health issues lately, and when I saw this herbal tea, it really intrigued me. It’s supposed to work for a variety of things including IBS and sore throat, just to name a few. I had never had it before, but I was willing to give it a shot.

This is definitely one of the more fun herbal teas. The tea “leaves” themselves are really interesting. It reminds me of cotton. You’re supposed to get 2tsp of it, but it’s really difficult to get exact. I just plopped a bunch on measuring spoon and called it a day. The tea brewed up this nice light-pinkish color. Very intriguing, since you don’t see that too often in tea.

The tea itself has a nice taste. There’s this light sweetness that I enjoyed. It doesn’t really need any additional sweetener and it’s fine on its own. The tea did have a nice soothing effect, as well.

If you want to have some fun, I recommend this fun little experiment:
Brew this tea in T-Sac. Steep as normal, and then take the T-sac out when ready. Let it cool. Then, when it’s cool, feel the t-sac. It has this crazy jelly/gelatin like feel. It reminds me of one of those fun toys at the Science Center. Call me crazy, but it provided amusement for me. Your mileage may vary.

Eek! I got this free from Nature’s Tea Leaf for reviewing like a month ago, and just realized that I hadn’t posted a tasting note. Sorry!

The dry leaves are slim and tender with a cool green-gray color and are covered in a downy white fur. This is the second silver needle I’ve tried, and it seems to be much fresher than the first.

The tea brews a nice daisy yellow-gray, and the wet leaves gain a soft, grey, leathery appearance that reminds me of baby lizards.

The taste is sweet and smooth with notes of fresh linen, green peppercorn, and melon. The tea is very slightly floral and reminds me of freshly trimmed gardenia bushes.

This tea was wonderfully soothing and brought me back to center after a long, stressful day.

Thank you Nature’s Tea Leaf for the free sample of this! :)

I am really trying to get past my dislike for white tea’s so, so delicate flavor. Sometimes it’s okay if there is a lot of FLAVOR there, but with this vanilla white tea, the faintness of everything drove me crazy! The vanilla scent is there, but the flavor isn’t in your face vanilla like I like with my teas (but if you’re not an in your face vanilla person this might work for you!) In the end, I ended up mixing it with some peppermint oolong/black mix I had… now THAT was tasty!!!!

Thank you Nature’s Tea Leaf for the free sample of this! :)

There is something about this tea that I really LIKE, but something about it that makes me not LOVE it, as well… I REALLY enjoy the smell. In the bag, it really gives me high hopes! I think my problem lies in the fact that I really WANT it to taste creamy and desserty, but alas, the tea is not destined to be a dessert tea (it really SHOULD, though, because if I want to lose weight I want to be curbed from sweets with my tea!!!). It does have a nice, smooth, base, however, which makes it pleasant to drink. So, like I said, I LIKE this tea a lot, I just don’t LOVE it.

As I said in my last review, I thought each cup of this would be a different adventure and boy was I right! This second cup I brewed (despite INTENTIONALLY putting lots of flower pieces in my infuser) tastes VERY vegetal and grassy. Actually, it tastes almost exactly how I would imagine drinking artichoke water after they’ve cooked! It’s not UNPLEASANT by any means, but I’m actually more intrigued by the flavor than I am IN LOVE with it. I’m guessing this tea will have many tasting notes from me if each cup is so drastically different!

BACKLOG: Thank you Nature’s Tea Leaf for the free sample of this! :)

When I first opened this bag, my exact words were, “Ooh, I don’t know about this flavor…” I’m usually a strong black tea kinda girl and don’t really enjoy teas I can’t add soy milk to (basically, I mostly enjoy dessert teas) BUT, anything that can potentially soothe my tummy is worth a shot. Anyway, onto the tea! I am pleasantly pleased by the flavor! It is light and refreshing, yet at the same time soothing. There are so many ingredients that shine through, it’s hard to pinpoint any specifically, but they all mingle together nicely. Overall, it’s flowery and maybe almost citrusy. There are so many different components in this tea, every glass will probably be a new adventure! I’m looking forward to it! Now, if it helps me lose weight… well that’s another story! ;)

This one was a sad sipdown. I’d been hoarding this but it was time to let go. Not enough leaf for normal so it’s considerably underleafed but it still tastes good. I’ll miss it and I might think about getting more when I’m ready to buy from this company again.

This is definitely a sipping tea. When I sip it and let it linger on my tongue before I swallow, this is the most delicious of the chocolate teas that I have tried so far. A definite dark chocolate flavour with notes of vanilla in it. I did let it cool quite a bit before drinking and I only let it steep for 3 minutes so not all of the chocolate melted so I’ll try another steep after this. I did add a bit of milk.

The tea did taste weirdly bitter if I drank it at large swallows. I don’t know, the pace of it flowing across my tongue made it bitter or something? And the aftertaste was bad too. Dainty sips for this tea, definitely.

ETA: Second steep, added a bit of sweetener this time to see if it made a difference in the ‘drink fast’ taste and it did! Now it’s super delicious. A very nice dessert tea.

Very… interesting. I’ve never had dried bilberries in a tea before, and it’s a little interesting that they’re brown. I would have expected them to be blue. I’m not sure that they come through in the tea very much. What we get is a strongly floral tea with a lemony finish. I wouldn’t say I entirely dislike it, but I would say that it’s a spritzer and a fancy label away from being perfume.

Additional notes: I’m trying this one again with much different parameters. I know when I tried this years ago I definitely let the water cool much longer. I wanted to try it the way I steep Teavivre’s oolongs. This one is still very tasty! It seems some green oolongs do very well with boiling water. All of the steeps were very full flavored and never bitter or astringent. A lovely standard oolong.
Two teaspoons (for mug)// just boiled // rinse // 1 min // 2 min // 3 min

thank you again for the samples, Naturestealeaf.com! This is delicious! The leaves are a gorgeous green (my favorite color) wrapped into little buds.

First steep// 3 minutes// The steep color is a buttery lemon yellow. The taste is as buttery as the color, mellow yet vegetal and fresh. A bit spicy (but that may be from the chai that I had earlier in this infuser). The tea reminds me of a milk oolong I had… maybe because this type of tea would be the base for a milk oolong. This one is sweet and a bit creamy, anyway!

Second steep// 4 minutes// This steep is much less vegetal, much more floral and peachy. Love it!

Third steep// hotter & 4 minutes// This steep seemed to go back to the milk oolong flavor, but this time less vegetal. Still a bit floral, but not as peachy. I think this is my favorite steep. It’s very complex!

I could probably keep steeping! I would imagine there are MANY more steeps left in this. I’d really like to experiment with an oolong one day and just keep steeping the same leaves until there isn’t any flavor left. I think I’ll wait until I have a brew basket though. (I ordered from Tealux instead of Upton, so now I’ll probably have to wait longer to order from them. darn. I must have SOME limits.) I’ll just never stop being amazed at the differences in each steep of an oolong!

Loose
Appearance: curled dark grey-brown leaf light blue -grey lavender buds noticeable.
Aroma when Dry: sticky sweet, syrupy, earthy, floral
After water is first poured: dusty sweet floral.
At end of first steep: balanced lavender with slight earthy undertones
Tea liquor:
At end of first steep: purple hued brown
Second steep(about 3 min) flavor: Balanced floral lavender, light woody notes, no sour tang.
Third Steep(2-3 min) flavor: floral. slight bitterness, woody notes deepen again slightly.
Staple? No
Time of day preferred: unsure, likely evening.
Taste:
first notes: floral from the lavender, slight woodiess, followed by an odd tang…then slight sourness
As it cools? Notes mellow a bit, tea gets dustier.
Additives used (milk, honey, sugar etc)? No.
Lingers? Yes, both the sour/tangy quality, and the lavender stay, but the floral fades quickly.

Loose
Appearance: twiggy, many shades of green, large leaf and stems
Aroma when Dry: Nutty, woody, slightly floral.
After water is first poured: Buttery, nutty
At end of steep: buttery, nutty, sightly floral
Tea liquor:
At end of steep: Light grassy green
Staple? Yes
Time of day preferred: unsure, first tasting.
Taste:
first notes: buttery, rosemary brings a foresty touch. Light floral finish
As it cools? notes mingle, but do not blend into hiding. gets earthier, with a slight sweetness.
Additives used (milk, honey, sugar etc)? No.
Lingers? Yes, slightly woody, bright hints of floral.

The dry leaf of this tea smelled awfully grassy and on the verge of being a little fishy. I personally do not like my green tea to be too vegetal so I’m a little concerned. I don’t smell much vanilla at all in the dry leaf either.

Sipping… Mmm! This tea is smooth and sweet. It actually reminds me a little bit of 52Teas’ marshmallow treat genmaicha. It doesn’t have those toasty notes, but it still has that nice sweetness. As far as the green tea is concerned, it’s definitely vegetal, but is mostly masked by the vanilla. I’m pleasantly surprised! I suppose I shouldn’t judge a tea based on the scent of the dry leaf.

Many thanks to Nature’s Tea Leaf for the sample. I look forward to finishing the pouch!