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I was thinking about London this morning (I’ll be there in just over two weeks!), so I decided a cup of Tower of London was appropriate. I remember when I first brought a tagalong tin of this back from the Tower of London a few years ago; when I had the tea at home and realized how delicious it was, I was worried I would only be able to get it at the Tower! I was relieved when I found out it’s actually not only available in the states but made my an American tea company. And thus my love of Harney & Sons was born!

And still, this tea remains at the top of my list. Fruity, a bit of sweet honey, with caramel notes. Today I steeped a smidge longer than I usually do, and I’m getting more cocoa-malty notes from the black tea base. Awesome!

I opened my container of this tea today and it looked like I had never taken anything out of it before. Magically regenerating tea!

I still want to do a side-by-side taste test with my traditional EGs, but I have a feeling this one would be near the top. Whenever I have it I really enjoy the cup, with it’s bright bergamot over the warm Ceylon base.

I brewed this one at a slightly cooler temp and a slightly shorter time than my last cup, and it has definitely improved it. No bitterness from the green tea, and a slightly more subdued flavor. It’s a nice, smooth, pleasant green tea with a prominent jasmine aroma and lighter jasmine flavor. This one is a good tea if you primarily want a green that’s been scented; I don’t get much of the jasmine sweetness or honeysuckle notes in this one like you might get from a more heavily jasmined tea, but the jasmine isn’t an afterthought either.

Just the ticket this afternoon; I was pondering a traditional Earl Grey but I’m still not sure if I’m really up for a hearty black tea, so I went with this one. Very citrusy-bergamot, with sharp lemongrass lemony flavor. The green tea is present here but not overly vegetal or grassy. Very tasty.

Steeped this one a little longer this time at a lower temp, and it really brought out the almond. Immediately after steeping I got a very vegetal aroma with an almond background, but as it cools the veggie slides to the background and the aroma is primarily almondy bakery/cookie.

It’s quite tasty, and if I divorce my expectations of a marzipan/almond extract-like almond flavor from the tea, I’m really enjoying it for what it is: a smooth green tea with a nice cinnamon cookie-type (almost a slightly almondy snickerdoodle?) taste.

My first pot of Vanilla Comoro! I’ve been hearing about how awesome it is for a while and knew I wanted to try it, and I finally got around to picking up a tagalong tin of it at Harney Soho last weekend. This is also my first decaf black tea. I was a little surprised to find that the base tea isn’t hidden here, and I taste firstly the black tea and then the vanilla, creamy, caramel flavor blooms in my mouth. Pretty delicious!

Initially when I brewed this cup I got a ton of rose flavor, which was kind of surprising given how many berries and mango cubes ended up in the infuser. But now that’s cooled a bit I get much more fruit flavoring, and the rose is a nice supporting note. This is one of those teas that I’ve noticed shows up from several retailers; at least I don’t have to worry about it disappearing, unless the wholesaler stops making it!

I think my taste buds are still a little blown out from that last tea, so this one doesn’t taste quite as good as usual.
…after a couple of Cadbury Mini Eggs…
Better. I can count on chocolate to smooth over any bad tastes. Now here’s my creamy Earl Grey, although I might have over-steeped or over-leafed a little because it’s a hint more bitter/astringent than normal. Still pretty good, though.

This is the third of my Tea Licious free samples; thanks again! I’ve wanted to try other lavender Earl Greys, so this seemed like an opportunity to do so. The aroma of the dried leaves on this one smells great: strongly of lavender with a bright bergamot behind it.

Brewed, I was surprised to find the aroma had turned kind of… soapy. Now I’ve read many reviews were people complained of finding lavender teas soapy and they write them off entirely because they associate lavender with soap. I have had a few lavender teas now, and I haven’t found them soapy, so I just figured I wasn’t one of those people. This one is seriously soapy. It tastes like soapy lavender water. It’s not residue on my cup, because I actually don’t wash out my cup with soap all that often, I just rinse it most days. I’m not sure what part of the lavender makes it soapy, but apparently there are some blends where even a lavender lover tastes soap. I enjoyed my other samples from Tea Licious, but unfortunately this one I can’t drink.

This is another of my free samples from Tea Licious. The rose part intrigued me, but also listed lemongrass and ginger, a combo I like, and I was very curious. The dry leaf smells like lemongrass and ginger, unsurprisingly; the rose is fairly wiped out. The oolong leaves are very green and crumpled up almost into little balls; I don’t have any rose buds in my sample, but there are definitely petals.

Brewed, the aroma is still very lemongrass/ginger. That carries through to the taste, which is primarily lemony but a bit gingery as well. It’s not peppery gingery, but the lemongrass and ginger meld together to form a very tasty combo. I’d wager that in a competition like this, the usually more delicate rose loses, as it seems to here. The oolong base is very pleasant; a tea with lemongrass and ginger can easily get too ‘sharp’, but the oolong adds a smoothness, almost a thickness to the tea. I guess this is the ‘breadiness’ that people describe with some oolongs. I really feel like this tea is misnamed; call it a Lemongrass Ginger Oolong, and you have it right on the money. It’s delicious, and I could definitely see it filling the lemon/ginger gap in my cupboard right now.