The Republic of Tea

I wanted this to be a tea that I’d actually enjoy drinking…but for me, it’s ended up as a medicinal-only tea. I do think the ginger and turmeric help with aches and pains, but not as much as my homemade ginger tea does, although I don’t always have the time or energy to brew my own from scratch, so this fills in the gaps. This tea tastes very flat. The green tea in it seems to be of poor quality to say the least, and the ginger cannot be felt at all. The turmeric gives a pleasant aroma to the cup, but it’ll stain your mugs yellow which is kind of gross. (The stains wash out fine with baking soda, but ugh.) I can’t drink this at all without dressing it up with some honey and lemon, so yeah, not a good tea. My search for a palatable ginger-turmeric tea that I don’t have to make from scratch will go on. I will not buy more of this and would not recommend it to anyone.

Blackberry & Sage are two of my fav ingredients I was horribly disappointed by this :/ if my grandma drank this tea every day, having to smell it would be my least favorite part about visiting

Incredible smell of freshly baked.. cinnamon rolls with no cinnamon? Tastes much like a horse barn, very lightly, but in a good way. One of the best teas I’ve tried :-)

I think it’s been a while since I drank this tea on a day that wasn’t my birthday, which is kind of weird/interesting thing to think about!? It was a late night cuppa though and it just perfectly hit the spot with it’s simple and straight forward notes of vanilla cake and sweet, soft lemon. Such a spot on and delicious tea!

Two teabags tossed into a 16 oz nordic mug and left to do their thing…

Doubling up on the teabags made the vanilla note come out REALLY strongly, and the resulting tea tasted so heavily like that creamy Betty Crocker vanilla cake frosting (with a hint of lemon) that I really felt I was getting the cupcake vibes more than I ever have before with this tea!

Such a light/airy vanilla lemon! Truly delightful and smooth.

Birthday “Cake Tea” Tasting 4/8

Let it be known that in an office filled with “serious” tea drinkers, often labelled as tea snobs, this bagged tea was actually probably the second favourite tea from the whole tasting! No one seemed to care at all that this one is bagged; we all just deeply appreciated the rich, natural tasting lemon and vanilla pairing with the hint of buttery coconut. It’s a solid tea, and one of the few bagged teas that I will proudly fess up to keeping on hand.

Yet another lemon tea to add to the hoard of sick teas…

I figured this would be an ideal time to burn through some of the teabags of this one; in fact I even doubled up on the teabags in my Perfect Tumbler when I made it because I knew that it already wouldn’t taste as strong given the sick haze surrounding everything I taste right now. Even with the double up, I still couldn’t taste this one. It was legitimately the blandest/wateriest tasting tea that I’ve had in months.

I don’t blame the tea though; I blame the cold.

Latte, with honey.

This makes for a delicious fucking latte! It’s already a very light/fluffy sort of flavour profile and when you add milk that’s also literally light and fluffy from having been frothed it feels like you’re drinking this really creamy vanilla/lemon cloud. Like, it’s just such a pure, feel good kind of profile with this whimsical innocence to it.

I really, deeply loved this one!

(And added bonus of it using five teabags; which means a quicker sipdown in the future)

Smooth, sweet, and creamy.

I’m sipping on this one right now while exploring the new album that Poppy just dropped. Really enjoying the two songs I’ve made it through so far – and while I didn’t intentionally pair this tea with the album (because the album drop was a total surprise to me) I have to say that the soft, delicate vanilla and creamy lemon notes of this tea are actually pretty perfectly meshing with the music!

Poppy’s voice is really soft and light/bubbly. I mean, her whole aesthetic is this sort of vaporwave/pastel goth sort of thing? It’s hard to describe.

Anyway this is the song I’m listening to: https://youtu.be/gfuQDsyvKak

Suffice to say that if you’ve heard Poppy’s music or tried this tea you’d understand how the two match up/line up perfectly together!

Evening cuppa!

Wanted something fruity, but also sweet to kind of sate some late night cravings. This one was a good fit because it tastes like sweet, lemony buttercream! This time around, a bit more of a lemon grass flavour over actual lemon, but still really tasty! I’ll need to try it with a spot of milk at some point, you know to really push the buttery/creamy elements to the extreme.

Side note – I’ve been REALLY into lateral thinking problems as of late but I’m running out of new ones so if anyone knows any tricky ones I’d love to take a swing at ’em?

If you don’t know what a lateral thinking problem is… here are a couple examples:

A woman is listening to music while walking. When the music stops, she dies. What happened?

The woman is a blind folded tight rope walker for a circus. The ringmaster plays music for her, and when he stops she knows she’s safely crossed the rope and can walk off onto the platform. On this particular day, he messes up and stops early. She walks off the rope, midair and falls to her death.

Or…

A man pushes his car until he reaches a hotel. He knows at that exact moment that he’s bankrupt. Why?

He’s playing Monopoly…

Stuff like that!

So I went to Chapters to buy books, instead I ended up buying tea and no books.

Fuck. I have a problem.

Anyway; mostly it was the packaging of this one that got me interested – although the ingredients themselves sounded good too. The price was really good because it was on sale, so I figured it was worth the gamble even though these are teabags. And you know what? This was really pleasant!

It’s very delicate, light and airy overall – but the flavours are solid and clearly defined. Bottom line, it’s creamy vanilla, sponge cake, and sweet lemon! I think it actually does a shockingly good job of conveying the flavour of a fluffy, well baked lemon cupcake! Mmm! And… and! No traces of the base tea, either! This would be a really good one for someone who doesn’t like rooibos, and is looking for a dessert flavour for evenings/before bed.

Not overly complicated or nuanced; just a good, delicate but clear flavour! Yum!

Good! I drink dandelion root tea occasionally to help my kidneys and I usually hate the taste but the vanilla in this does wonders. I even crave this occasionally.

Really good! Usually I drink raspberry leaf to help with menstrual cramps and while the leaf all by itself is all right, it feels a bit like a chore to drink it. They’ve added some fruit to this one to complement the grassy notes of the leaves and it works really well! I probably wouldn’t drink this without the intention of helping my cramps but it makes that time of the month a little bit better. :)

See my full review on Sororitea Sisters:
http://sororiteasisters.com/2017/04/15/have-a-cup-on-lord-grantham-with-downton-abbey-tea-blends-rebpulicoftea/

Loose leaf – bought from the bulk aisle @ the fancy grocery store.

Large black tea leaves with yellow strips of dried mango.
Not a super scented tea.

Added more sugar than I do for other teas.
Added milk.
Tasted like a melted mango ice cream bar.

Had a little less than half a pot left at the end of the workday – sweetened it, faux-iced it in a giant tumbler for the drive home. Cold, milky tea is odd, but not bad. Wouldn’t necessarily need the milk if drinking as iced tea on a regular basis.

*faux-ice: those plastic, chemical filled, reusable ice cubes that come in weird shapes, like flamingos and fish shapes.

It does live up to its All Day moniker – a good, comforting, reliable tea to drink throughout the day.

Added milk & sugar.

I may have oversteeped it a bit or added more leaf than needed, as this pot was somewhat more tannic than when I usually make it by the cup.

Delightfully, pineapple-y Milk oolong. Very creamy through to about 3 steepings. Beautiful packaging. http://imgur.com/a/1C5LF