Riston

Aha! I figured this one out.
For some reason I steeped this at a slightly higher than normal temp. Probably around 87 or so. Maybe 85. And it was amazing! very sweet and flavourful. A nice balance between berry and vanilla.
This one never really impressed me before, and I’ve been experimenting… mostly with lower temps, not higher ones. So I never bothered writing a review.
Also, the description is right, the leaves are huge, but broken. Not many whole ones.
Anyhow, will see if I can make this one sparkle again soon :)

1 teabag used

Dilute sour- this would probably benefit from a shorter infusion.

This is a pretty decent fruity green tea. The green tea isn’t bitter or overly grassy, present but sitting politely in the background. The strawberry might be a little candy ish but that didn’t really bother me and the floral elements translated as creamy or milky to me. Strawberry yogurt green smoothy is sort of how this seemed to me.

Thank you Sil for sending this one my way

Thanks to Debi for giving me a sample of this tea! :)

This tea really surprised me. I thought it was going to be crazy tart due to the hibiscus but it wasn’t the case. It really did have a cherry flavour (although it is in more of the smell than taste) and the slightest amount of tart aftertaste (I was careful about my steeping time). This would be great iced and I may look into it in the summer time when I’ll probably be drinking more fruit teas,

Got this at the Toronto Tea Festival. The Riston rep made it very clear that this tea was a best seller. They didn’t have it as a sample, so I bought it purely on the reputation he said this tea had. When I got home and logged it in my Steepster ‘cupboard’ I was very disheartened to see that the reviews were all negative, so it makes me wonder what the reputation was based on!
He did suggest I have the tea with milk and sugar. So based on the reviews stating it had a bitter taste, I brewed it very quickly so as to avoid that and added milk and sugar. It turned out quite nice actually! Like a lightly brewed English breakfast with a hint of strawberry. The strawberry does taste a bit like strawberry flavouring, but it’s not horrible.

Sipdown! But no change in numbers because I guess I didn’t record this one. Sigh.

Anyways, picked this up at the Toronto Tea Festival. This is the first tea I’m actually trying from Riston – I have samples of others (teabags and a tin split with Sil), but haven’t gotten to them quite yet.

The aroma was actually pretty flavourful once the water hit the teabag (prior there wasn’t much) – the tea looks to be flavoured with black/dark purple fruits, e.g. blackberry, black currant, blueberry – and what I smelled most was a juicy sort of black currant. Tastewise, it’s not bag for a bagged tea, but even with my standard green infusion parameters, which are pretty conservative (82C/2min), the base is bitter. However, it is quite fruity – again very black currant, with a punch of lemon. I really wish the base behaved, because this could actually stand as one of the better flavoured greens I’ve tried. I may try a re-steep, but with the base bitterness, it will probably just head down the drain.

May attempt to infuse for a longer amount of time in the future.

Creeping astringency but not very pronounced. Black and green tea flavours are blended nicely. A more pronounced black tea taste would go better with the lighter strawberry flavour. Overall, a bit thin tasting and dilute.

So I cold brewed this yesterday with the intention of getting one more sipdown in on “Sipdown Saturday” but ended up going to a Brazilian grill and by the time I was done dinner, it was way too late and I was way too full to have anything else so I strained this and left it for today. Then life got in the way once again and I spent a few hours with my sister just relaxing and watching shows in bed and then I spent the evening helping her boyfriend dig a hole for his mom’s new shed. So, I finally got around to drinking this now and honestly, I am happy to be finishing this up. As a cold brew, it is more strawberry flavored than it was hot but still there is a touch of bitterness I am not digging and mostly I am just left feeling underwhelmed by this blend. Thank you Sil for the sample but this is one more tea I can cross off my list. 145.

Thank you for sharing Sil but this tastes kind of like what I’d imagine strawberry potpourri or strawberry perfume to taste like. Not my favourite but I am always happy when I can try new things. Maybe this may be better iced?

So i finally got around to trying this one the other day, expecting the worst lol However, it’s actually not that bad. This is not quite the same tea that we had at the tea festival in my opinion but i’m wondering if that’s because they added sugar or something to it. Brewed as a GREEN tea, this works out nicely with a strawberry flavour that comes through. If the others brewed this as a black then i for sure see how this would have turned bitter and foul.

However, that being said, this isn’t the lovely tea that we had at the tea festival. That was one light and fruity and delicious. this one is..ok.

I have a head cold. Bleh. My throat is all hoarse and I keep coughing.
So I made this with a bit of honey. I thought it was only half/two thirds of a teaspoon but it turned out overly sweet. Whatever. It was soothing and thats all I really wanted. Well that and a flavour strong enough to blast through my dampened taste buds!!

This tasted like syrup. Sweet, berry like and not bad at all!
a teeny bit wax like when cold but I expected that from Riston….
I think this would go really well in a tea popsicle.

Yep. This tastes bitter to me too. I don’t dig it so I’m dumping the last half out of my cup and filling it up with Whispering Pine’s North Winds! (which was waiting in reserve in my timolino!)

Thanks Sil for letting me try it out! It sounded like it SHOULD be good.
(170)

Not bad for a bagged tea.
The good: It’s fluffy and fruity! Probably strawberry, maybe raspberry.
I let it cool quite a bit, and I kinda like it that way.
The bad: I taste a bit of plastic waxiness, with just a hair of bitterness at the end.
Overall, I wouldn’t ever buy it, but would certainly have a cup if it was free or offered at a social gathering where the gen pop isn’t tea snobby like us! :)

Hot, this was like a lemon candy… but not a good one. Maybe one meant for soothing coughs and sore throats. You know, with that thick syrupy medicinal kick to it.
Cold, it was closer to lemon cleaner. Hey maybe I should have used it to polish my furniture instead of tossing down the drain

Sipdown (161/167)!

This has been at a sipdown-able level for around a week now, but I’ve been terrified to make the hot cup worth I’d set aside because the cold brew was so damn bad. I did it yesterday though, and I prepared a timolino worth for work.

Actually, it really wasn’t so terrible hot. Calling that cold brew drinkable would be a mighty fib, but this wasn’t so bad at all. There wasn’t a sensation of drinking slime or sewage; instead it was actually pretty solidly strawberry flavoured – I’d say more candy/artificial strawberry than realistic though. Downside? There was a harsh bitterness in the aftertaste that was scarily unpleasant – but not even close to the cold brew so it was bearable in contrast.

I would not drink this again and I don’t think I’d serve it to friends or family, but if you are going to have it my strong recommendation is you prepare it hot – and regardless I’ll lift my rating a bit because the hot brew was significantly better.

So, this is the first tea I pulled from the blends sent to me by the lovely Sil in our swap. I picked out three I wanted, and gave her free reign on sending whatever else and this is one of the things she sent. It’s something I’d have never picked for myself so I was hoping I’d be pleasantly surprised.

It seems a lot like the Prince of Wales blend I had from The Metropolitan Tea Company, just with strawberry flavour instead of currant. I didn’t particularly care for PoW but this smells pretty good so I was being open minded. I cold brewed it, and strained it this morning for work.

Unfortunately; this is foul. Basically it tastes like seaweed, rotten strawberry, and sludge. I literally gagged after my first sip. So, of course I dumped it. Sadly it’s not a sipdown; but I only have enough left for one small hot cup so I’m skeptically hopeful that the hot cup will be a bit better.

I’m gonna call it though: I’m thinking this just wont be for me.

Backlog-
This was really good when hot, but like the cherry one, awful when cold. Good thing I already resigned it to the timolino!

This was really good today. Perfect balance of tea and cherry. Noms.

As for my meds… All of the bad side effects and none of the useful ones (at this strength). Self aware panic attacks are the strangest sensation. Like I’m high on something. Floaty and panicky for no reason at all… At least I was warned about this! I’ve had them before, but it usually centers around some difficult situation I’m mired in. Oh well. These episodes should pass in a few weeks, I’m told. Small price to pay, overall, :)

Ok so here’s the deal. Piping hot, I looooove the flavour here. It’s the perfect level of tartness. Like a cherry pie! Mmm so good. But I can’t drink much tea when its hot like that, I take teeny tiny sips. And then it gets cold and looses flavour. Harumph.
I need to remember to drink this one first when I make more than one at a time…

Nice. For a bagged tea that is.
Hot, it tastes just like a cherry candy with a black tea twist.
Cold, it gets quite plastic-ish, but adding a bit of sugar helped. This is one I would love to enjoy iced but I don’t think it will go over so well. Sad.
Also, I can kinda taste the tea bag. Atleast I think that is what the faint cardboard note is anyhow! I hope it is that… If it wasn’t for those two factors, I would most definitely rate this in the high eighties as the cherry flavour is the perfect amount of tart and spot on cherry, when hot that is.
Bah. I’ll be happy to grab a cuppa this when I just don’t wanna think and plunk the bag into my mug, or when I’m in a rush dashing out the door.

1.25 tbsp for 375 ml

Bitter-bland flavour- slight berry taste. I haven’t had much success with this tea using a number of different infusion parameters