TeaGschwendner

Advent day 19. Who is Gwendalina and what’s up with her baked apple? There is another tea company that has a tea under the same name. Huh. I feel like I may have steeped this at too high of a temp. The apple was subtle for most of the cup and came out more as the cup cooled. It was an okay cup.

Advent day 18. Took a few sips before adding cream and honey and was greeted with a concentrated brew with spices. After adding to my cup I get a deep tea taste with a mixture of spices on top. The spices are blended so well that I can’t really pick them out individually. It’s a warm and comforting cup, but I feel so so about it in general.

Advent day 15. This is a strange blend! I get sweet spices mixed with savory. Fennel is prominent in the sip, but there is almost something like rye in the finish. I don’t know about this one. It puzzles me.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6HoCI5gnCw/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Advent day 14. Cream is a hard flavor for me to pick up on when it’s on it’s own. I feel like I can grasp another flavor being creamy, like fruit, but just cream seems so neutral. The flavor seems to translate to mild malt. There is something kind of ashy in the sip too and that is distracting. Adding a creamer makes it… creamy. I don’t hate it, but I’m not at all impressed either.

Advent day 13. I love coconut teas! I’m used to them in a combination with almond, which this tea lacks, so I’m having to sort out the difference. When my cup was hot I got a good amount of coconut, but also something almost raw dough like. It was strange. As the cup has cooled that taste has changed and there is a more perfumey note in there. The coconut is bright and pleasant, but I feel like there is an extra something missing that would take it up a level.

Advent day 12. I’m loving on this tea! Opening the package, I was greeted with a bright rich scent of jasmine in the shape of cute little curled up leaves. I don’t know why balled up leaves is so adorable, but it is. When steeped I get a really smooth and strong floral flavor. It is buttery on the sip, slightly grassy at the end and has pure jasmine lingering in the finish. I remember getting jasmine teas as a kid at Chinese restaurants, but it was always over steeped and came with that bitter tang. Somewhere in the back of my mind that is always the expectation with jasmine teas, so it’s always a delightful surprise when I get a delicate yet bold and flavorful jasmine without those negatives.

Advent day 11. If it wasn’t for the numbering system this company uses for it’s teas, I’d never have been sure if “Honeybush Emily” was the same as “Smooth Strawberry Dream”. It’s confusing. The tea it’s self is great! It has a bright baked strawberry flavor to it on a caffeine free base that is mercifully not rooibos. I was a bit awed by how tasty it was. It flattens out a bit when it cools, so drink this one hot!

Advent day 10. This has a really nice bright apple flavor. It has the same bright flavor once steeped. The rooibos flavor isn’t dominating, but it’s there. It’s not bad for a rooibos, but it’s not my favorite.

Advent day 7. This is a cute looking tea. The leaves have been rolled up into adorable little balls of various size. Flavor wise, it’s very subtle. I don’t get much from it. After reading the description I can imagine a hint of chestnut. It’s smooth and slightly sweet, but I’m not finding much too it. :/

This is the real advent day 5 tea, not Sencha Claus. Whoops.
Anyways… this is a bright and strong tea! It has a grassy flavor without the bite. It has a light bean taste, but not in an unpleasant way. I’m not super into straight green, but this one is alright.

Advent Day 5, Sencha Claus. Heh heh heh, clever. Dry this smells super fruity, like fruity cereal. The almond comes out much more in the cup with a slightly bakes flavor and mixes well with the fruit flavors. The tea base is light, but has a mouth drying sensation after each sip. I don’t quite get what I think of as sencha in this cup, but it’s a pretty tasty cup.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5v9VMAAvwo/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Edit: Awwww crap. I opened door 6 instead of 5. Advent fail.

Advent day 4. Plain, this tastes a little malty and like bread, but has a slightly bitter bite towards the end of the sip. I figured it was a good candidate for cream, but I’m not sure if that was the right choice. There is an almost peanut shell taste. Once I sip on past the shock of the flavor change I find a slight fruitiness to the cup. Is that right? Was my steeping basket contaminated from last night’s cup of Fireside Mocha? It’s hard to tell, but I have drank to the bottom of the cup as I ponder it all. It wasn’t a bad cup, but not quite remarkable either.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5rFCmhgX9C/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Advent day 3. I’ve been cheating . I’ve been opening the next day’s tea in all 3 advents the night before to plot my course of action for the morning cups. I’ll open them and smell them and tuck them back away. When I opened this, there was so much tropical fruit scent that I feared it must have hibiscus in it. I was relieved when I steeped it that the water didn’t turn that tell tale pink! It’s been a stressful morning and I have been sipping this from my travel thermos while distracted. Now that I’m sitting for a few I’m noticing a lovely passion fruit flavor. Lupica used to have a passion EG, Loke Lani, that was wonderful and this brings that tea to mind. I can taste a bit of the tea in the sip, but the finish is all passion fruit. I’d consider a purchase of this and I’d be tempted to add a little Earl Grey in the mix. Not sure where the “fire” in Tropical Fire comes from, but this is a solid tea either way.

Advent day 2! I didn’t like this when it was hot, but now that it has been sitting around for several hours it is better. I can smell an almost fermented orange. Reminds me of the preserved orange peel candy in Asian markets. This has a similar taste with the earthy addition of ginger. It’s not a ginger with any sort of bite, it’s an older ginger. I’m trying to think of nice things to say about this tea. I want to like it, but it isn’t doing it for me.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5mXYPVALxY/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Also known as weihnachtskräuter, or 1181, this tea is in day 1 of the advent calendar. It was a challenge to figure out what the English name for this was, especially because they don’t offer it on the US site. I hope the rest of the teas are easier to identify. It tasted like it has some chamomile in it with that licorice root sweetness to it. I steeped it for 4 minutes and the flavor was really light. After letting it steep much longer than that, it had developed more flavor and was enjoyable, but wasn’t something I was wowed by.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5ifODdg67W/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

This had been on my wishlist for quite some time, and since I was ordering more Green Coconut (the weather is slowly warming up, and this is a solid, refreshing tea in iced form), I tacked O’Conner’s Cream onto my order. I really think Teagschwendner should offer smaller amounts for online ordering (100g minimum? Really?), but I just went for it.

Basically, it’s an Irish Cream-flavored black tea. I happen to love that, and I also happen to love flavored blacks in general. Not to say I don’t love unflavored, “pure” teas, but there’s room in my cupboard for pretty much all kinds of teas. Except rooibos. I will never love rooibos.

Upon opening up the package, there’s a strong alcohol scent from the flavoring. Not the first I’ve experienced this, but it’s still disturbing. If this goes as I expect, after awhile that will dissipate and the flavoring will be intact. If you love Bailey’s, then this is the tea for you. I imagine this would be a great tea for one of those raw, damp, November days when you crave something comforting. Definitely has a taste of whiskey and cream. Does it crowd out the black tea flavor? No, it still tastes like tea. Would I drink it black? Nope – this cries out for milk. Just the way I like it. Great dessert / treat tea.

This is either from MissB or Sil – so thank you!

I’d put off having this one for far too long as I’m not fond of many herbals, but it looks like this has nothing I dislike in it, which is nice! My initial impression was that this was straight up lemongrass, until I realized that the lemony flavour wasn’t quite right for that. I can’t really taste any vanilla, but I also may not have had any vanilla bean pieces in this cup – the smaller pieces in my baggie remain there. This was all large chunks. Despite the lack of vanilla, this is actually fairly tasty. It’s nicely lemony without being bitter, and quite refreshing. I’m drinking it room temp, which puts it more in the “iced” realm, and I think that’s how I’d prefer this, though I feel like it would be pretty tasty hot with honey, too. Pretty pleased with this one.

Disappointed. Went into the shop to get a cup to go and was told this was a straight milk oolong – no flavoring added. Even the label on the container made no mention of added ingredients. One sip and I could tell that this is definitely not a straight tea. It’s drinkable, but has a slight sour, artificial note to it. Milk oolongs are smooth and buttery, and this really lacks that smoothness.

Sipdown (600)!

I’m still on the hunt for the perfect rich, creamy and decadent caramel tea. This one isn’t it, but it was fairly close to what I wanted. I mean, it tasted a lot like caramel and was pretty sweet/rich – but it also had a ton of briskness and maltiness from the black base, and was quite astringent. My perfect caramel tea shouldn’t be brisk and astringent – it should be silky smooth and creamy. So, a decent attempt but not the one.

10/10 name, but 5/10 tea…

Very “marzipan” in terms of flavour, which I suppose makes a lot of sense for a German tea vendor. However, there’s a bitterness to this that is unpleasant to me; I think it partly comes from the almond, partly from the orange, and partly from the green tea itself. I’m sure a little bitterness might be a nice contrast to the sweeter marzipan and may be intentionally present – but this is enough so that I don’t find it hardly drinkable.

Pass.

Sipping on this now.

There’s something very lovely about the dry leaf aroma; it has a brightness to it and a sweetness to the citrus elements. I’m admittedly not super familiar with the taste of pomelo so I wont even bother to try to comment on the authenticity/presence of that flavour note but I do detect something grapefruit like that is sparking curiousity for me…

Steeped up, I unfortunately find this to be a pretty ‘run of the mill’ flavour. There’s an undertone of something nice and citrus-y (grapefruit?) with more body to it, but it’s really swallowed up by the mid sip which is just HEAVILY dominated by lemongrass, and a little apple? Nothing stand out to me – I wish there was something a little more interesting going on in this for me. However, I can find lemongrass teas much more easily if that was a profile that I wanted…

Meep.

This tea is… Why!?

I guess putting gummy bears in your tea must be a novelty thing or meant to appeal to kids? However, it baffles me because I can’t imagine they impart a lot of flavour or melt down all that nicely; and if the amount of gummy bears isn’t JUST RIGHT in the blend then you have cups missing them (and they at least feel like a crucial ingredient based on the name) or they take over the cup given the size/weight!

I steeped this up though, and tried to keep an open mind. It tastes fine; but not particularly “gummy bear” like in terms of flavour. While it definitely get sweeter and mellowed out a little bit as the tea cooled, I found the profile to be an essentially hibiscus and orange dominant cup with a lot of tartness and general acidity. Not bad at all, but super generic and not really worth the novelty of buying a ‘gummy bear’ tea IMO.

But I guess it made for a cute photo so I suppose that’s a win!?

EDIT: Worth noting that this would probably be decent iced.

Received this as a gift and fell in love with the presentation – the tin is just so elegant and it’s a lovely tea to look at. And sniff. I swear, my habitual tea sniffing will eventually be to the detriment of my collection. :D

Anyway, about the tea…did a quick brew earlier to give me something to sip on while emailing. The cherry aroma comes across very strongly in the final amber liquid, but the actual flavour is pleasantly mild. You pick up a lot more of the grassy/woody tones of the green tea with only a gentle overlay of fruitiness.

No issues with bitterness and I’m inclined to believe it would take sweetener well.