t Leaf T

Thank you to Sandy for this tea! This is a lime flavored green. It is very good, and the flavors are well balanced between the green tea and the lime so the lime doesn’t overpower the green tea flavor. Someone on steepster had recommended this company to us before Sandy left for New Zealand, and the teas from them have been consistently good!

This tea is scaring me. I had Feijoa in icecream and enjoyed it. I don’t think I like it in my tea. If you haven’t heard of feijoa before http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acca_sellowiana

I think the distinctive odor of the fruit is what throws me off about this tea. It is the only thing I can smell and I don’t find it to be a particularly inviting smell. I can’t decide if it tastes bad to me or just unusually foreign. So I am not going to rate but just say you really should be a feijoa lover to enjoy this tea. I think I will leave my feijoa to icecream.

I have only had chai once before and it was a very strong smelling chai with turmeric and black pepper in it. The aroma didn’t appeal to me but the flavor but was better than I expected. I highly prefer the seasonings in this chai by t Leaf T. I drank it without additions this time, but next time I think I will take Sandy’s advice and try it with a little honey and milk. Good Sunday afternoon tea!

Another tea that is too bizarre to even contemplate rating! There really should be a weird squiggly-mouthed spiral-eyed Steepster rating face for such unrateable teas.

The aroma is faintly sweet, with the fennel reminding me of a good curry. This is really not a smell I want from something I am about to drink, but I brace myself and go for it anyway.
The mixture of the three herbs together create the most insane sensation in my mouth that I have ever experienced. At first you get the savoury notes of the fennel with a hint of peppermint and you’re thinking, hmm this is a bit weird. Then as you swallow this great syrupy sweet liquorice root thing rises on the back of your tongue and hangs down your throat. After experiencing this 3 times, I couldn’t handle anymore. I might play around with brewing times later when I have gotten over my initial trauma – perhaps this is another herbal blend that should be brewed for a shorter time than recommended?

What a strange beast of a tea! Now let me just say that the orange flavouring in this is bang on and they haven’t added any other weird stuff to make it taste sweeter or creamier, but because nothing else has been added it falls a little flat. What could you add to this to give it a rounder mouthfeel though? Hmm.
Oh, there is also the fact that drinking this makes me feel queasy as it is exactly like drinking hot orange juice. So if you yearn for the taste of warm oranges, then this is the tea for you! Just don’t add milk because that would be all kinds of wrong.

I seem to have been quite adventurous in the herbal department and have tried some truly frightening teas lately. Nettle leaves. Both the wet leaves and resulting infusion have a revolting earthy, wet grass aroma – which tell you that what you are about to drink must be incredibly good for you. The flavour itself is surprisngly mild and slightly astringent. The real kicker is the aftertaste though, which I had to get rid of by gargling some ginger root. The note I jotted down about this tea simply says “Bad. So bad”.
I’d consume this for health reasons only, but how badly do you want the so-called health benefits from this? Blergh!

Not being a fan of either chamomile or lavender tea, this was a surprisingly nice blend! The chamomile helps mellow out the lavender’s assault on your senses, while still maintaining that “I’m drinking flower water” flavour. This wouldn’t be my first choice to drink, but I did manage to finish the entire cup.

I love the smell of lavender, but drinking it is an entirely different matter. Surprisingly bitter and incredibly strong, I couldn’t even finish my tiny cup of it. The recommended brewing time of 7-10 minutes couldn’t be more wrong, but I’m in no mood to try rebrewing (plus the instructions shouldn’t be that off).
Lavender is an incredibly handy thing to keep around to add to and blend with other teas, but on its own? No thank you.

Huh. Having never needed to have a toned uterus, I’ve never tried raspberry leaf before but I thought I’d give it a go. The leaves are scary as hell, they look like dusty moss collected from the bathroom in an old abandoned house that was the scene of a brutal murder 50 years ago and is now said to be haunted.
Thankfully the taste is more reminscent to a weak green tea than haunted moss. Mild, slightly offensive tasting, thin bodied, but palatable. I’d only drink this for its health benefits really, it seems pretty pointless otherwise.

Normally its quite exciting when I get to try teas before they hit the shelves, but I can’t say I was impressed by this blend. With a name like “Imperial Breakfast” I was dreaming up a fantastic smokey Chinese blend, something to really knock my socks off. Unfortunately my socks stayed firmly on my feet. Don’t get me wrong, its a “nice” tea – but when you combine two fairly bland teas (Golden Monkey & Mangalam assam) the result is yet another fairly bland tea. Light bodied with a hint of malt, drink this one plain and keep your socks on.

A moderately sweet, smooth and natural tasting vanilla – its a shame its wasted on this rooibos blend! The vanilla cuts through that woodchip flavour, but if you thought you had managed to dodge that pesky red bush entirely, you are sorely mistaken! It creeps up on you and lingers, like a long hug from someone you dislike.

Chocolate on the nose, and a delicious chocolate-apple taste that is just begging for a black tea base – I may need to experiment later. But where is the chilli? One shouldn’t judge a tea by its name, but it makes for a disappointing cup. It should be called Choco Apple… Chocapple… Chapple… or something less ridiculous.

Sorry to say, but rose petals make for a fairly dull drink. Rose buds pack more flavour than these if you’re after a rose tea, but the petals are so handy to add to or blend with other teas and tisanes! Sometimes if I’m feeling floral, I’ll add a pinch to my favourite earl grey…

Rooibos will just be one of those things in life that I will never understand, like nouvelle cuisine or daggering. Its piney on the nose, medium-bodied with a piney aftertaste. I’m unsure the rooibos itself actually any flavour to it, leaving you just as unsatisfied as a plate of nouvelle cuisine or a spot of daggering on the dance floor.

I did everything short of gargling with this tea and could not discern the slightest hint of smokiness at all. And then I gargled with it and still got nothing. A smooth, light and slightly sweet tea that is best drunk plain and unfortunately doesn’t taste like much at all. For that smokey taste you need to hit up the Extra Russian Caravan from this company.

Look, I expect my tea to really wow me. I prefer the complex tasting, the stunning leaf both wet and dry, the interesting mouthfeel, the lush round flavours, the lazer light show, the tassel twirling. This is a perfectly acceptable tea, especially to accompany a meal, but it lacks pizazz. I find it neither here nor there, so will leave it unrated.

The recommended brewing time for this tea is 3-5 minutes, but I think over 3 takes it into tannin territory. I really really really didn’t like this, even with it being touted as “China’s finest black tea”. It tasted heavy and almost metallic, with a furry aftertaste that stayed on the back of your tounge. Though I imagine Ceylon drinkers would enjoy a cup of Keemun, also if you are partial to Formosa Oolong or drinking blood.

Last time I tried this, it didn’t taste like anything but the bag was a very old and dusty open one. For todays tasting I opened a fresh packet at there was little difference. This tea is quite strange, you get a ghost of a flavour but its not quite there. Theres hint of malt on the back of your tongue, but its far too delicate for me. White tea drinkers or fans of Darjeelings wanting to try a Chinese black should defintiely give this a go.

The name and ingredients are more exciting than the taste, which is blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sweet and faintly floral. Definitely drink this plain, milk will just overwhelm it completely. I’d recommend this if you’re a fan of subtlety spritzed with rose from afar.

This tastes fairly medicinal with a peppermint tang, but its what you would expect from a medicinal tea. Brew a pot of this to cure what ails you, if what ails you is nausea (though I hear chamomile might help with vaginitis).

Delicious tea; nice on a rainy day in late summer.