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I’m trying to find this tea on Stash’s website with little luck. I wonder if it’s been discontinued.

I got this teabag in a swap, I believe, and only have the one so this is my only shot to see how the tea measures up. So, of course, the first thing I do is oversteep it. Champagne Oolong is described on the tea bag as a ‘pale golden color reminiscent of fine champagne’ but if I were to pick a color I’d say my tea is more of an amber. Oops. I didn’t even leave the tea in the cup too long, no more than 7-8 minutes? The temperature may have been off, I suppose…

I definitely get a fruity note from this tea. It makes me think of a very faint cherry on the first taste, but as I drink more of this blend I’m refining that opinion to something more along the line of a muscat grape. The flavor left on the tongue after swallowing is more of a vegetal/grassy note.

This is a nice tea. I mean, even for a bagged tea it’s got a lot of flavor. (Perhaps because it’s been oversteeped. >_<; ) It wouldn’t rank a favorite but it’s waaaaay better than the usual junk Bigelow tea bags I find at work.

My pal that works at Teavana (imabandgeek4eva) picked up a bag of Tung Ting Jade Oolong Tea for me when it was discontinued, which was pretty cool! The very first time I used the leaves, I put a spoonful of little round rolled leaves in my teapot and thought “Gee, there’s no way those little tiny things are going to flavor a whole pot!” and added another scoop or two. Now, if you’ve never had Tung Ting then you’ll be tempted to do the same when you try this – but don’t! The leaves unfurl and expand like crazy in hot water, so when I peeped into my teapot after a few minutes the entire thing was full of leaves and completely oversteeped! >_< Well, live and learn, live and learn…

So when I brewed the tea today, I was careful to use a more reasonable amount of leaves, and I may have gone a little too light because the flavor’s not very strong today. But then, I also took the leaves out after 5-6 minutes instead of steeping for hours and hours, as I sometimes do, so I think this is closer to the “proper” flavor of the tea. It’s light and rather vegetal. It’s nice, but one of the reasons it has taken me so long to log it is because it’s also rather bland/neutral and difficult to describe.

A nice tea. Rather nice with a drop or two of lemon juice, which most oolong teas (in my experience) are not.

It tastes like ass.
That’s my initial reaction here.

I mean, I’m not expecting greatness here. This is from the same company that brings you “Chinese Restaurant Tea,” a delightful name for a blend that is pretty decent, actually. But this tastes pretty bad. Very grassy, but not in a good way. This is like the scraps of grass that get blown on the sidewalk by the mower and get trodden on by people until they’re blobby little green smudges on the concrete. Also left out in the sun too long. Yucky and slightly rotten.

I’ve had genmai cha tea before, and it tasted OK, but in this incarnation it’s pretty nasty. This is a teabag, FYI. It was pretty cheap. And it turns out that there’s a reason for that.

GROSS!

I just LOVE this tea! The combination of strawberry and mint is so refreshing and light. It’s a perfect iced tea, which is how I usually get it made by Teavana’s barista.

Several of my coworkers have commented after drinking this tea it helped ‘clean things out and purge the system’ but this was usually only after drinking 2-3 cups. I’ve never had any noticeable effects on my food processing, but then I’ve never drank that much in a single day, either.

A sweet, nutty oolong. I never really picked up on the fruitiness of the blend that Teavana claims is present, but then Teavana also claims this will help me diet ‘naturally’ and I haven’t seen any evidence of that, either. Crazy ol’ Teavana.

When I used to order this at Teavana’s drink bar, I’d always get it slightly sweetened because the barista had a tendency to scorch the leaves. Now, when I drink it at home, it never needs any additives. It also oversteeps well, for those of us with a tendency to abandon our tea leaves for extended periods of time. The flavor gets richer and deeper but never overwhelming.

This is such a lovely ice tea. I mean, it’s practically melon juice – I can barely taste the tea in this – but mix it up with some milk and tapioca pearls and it is a perfect summer drink!

Right now, in the middle of November, it’s still quite nice when it is hot and milkless. Today I totally oversteeped it – I put the tea leaves in, went upstairs to watch a documentary about Haunted Savannah, and came running down the steps half an hour later to save my tea – and it tastes fine. It’s as honeydew-sweet as ever, with just the slightest bitterness from the overheated white tea leaves, but that only serves to help balance the flavor even more. Yum yum yum, it’s like a taste of summer.

So honestly? Guanabana tastes exactly like what it sounds like – the marriage of guava and banana. It’s a tropical, fruity black tea. It’s also rather sensitive. When I steeped the leaves for five minutes, the tea had a nice balance and pleasant flavor. When I steeped the leaves closer to ten minutes (webcomics can be so distracting) this cloying musky note that I associate with guavas overwhelmed the brew.

Trivia fact: “Guanabana” is also known by the name “soursop,” but there’s nothing sour in the flavor so I’m betting that’s why Adagio went the other route.

When steeped for the proper amount of time, I could taste the creamy banana-like notes blended with a bright pineapple – sweet and slightly tart – and a dab of that guava flavor. (Y’know what sucks? I’m trying to think of words to describe the flavor of guava but I’m coming up with nothing besides ‘sweet’ ‘tropical’ and ‘musky.’ Help?)

It’s quite lovely, but finicky, which is a problem for me. I am a very careless brewer.

Bleagh! Ugh! YUCK!

I don’t know what I did wrong but this is just nasty. Blackcurrant Tea smells about right – fruity and rich – but it tastes AWFUL. I can’t even describe the yuck, except that I don’t want any more of it.

I can’t believe I’m taking another sip, but I’m trying to figure out why I think it’s so nasty. It just tastes bad. Almost sour and earthy. It honestly makes me think of vomit. Maybe that’s just my body telling me what it wants to do if I don’t stop drinking it.

At any rate, ugh. I don’t like this tea at all!

For a bagged supermarket tea this is not bad. It has a strong peach scent when brewing. The drink itself is mild. I’d compare it to a bottled Snapple Peach Tea. The black tea element is there, neutralizing what would otherwise be a heavy, syrup-like sweetness, but it is not the dominant flavor.

I’m drinking this hot, but I think it would work better as an iced tea. It’s nice.

To borrow some phrasing from my work, if this tea were a gift it would not be a “WOW AMAZING I’LL REMEMBER THIS FOREVER” gift, but it would be a “nice gesture.”

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Edit to add: As this tea is cooling down, it’s getting a rather dusty note in the aftertaste. It’s weird and kinda gross. D: Knockin’ that rating waaaaaaay down!

‘Tricky Treats’ is a Halloween limited edition from SBS Teas. I don’t believe it was available this year, or if it was it came and went so quickly that it’s no longer on the website! That’s rather too bad, as it makes it hard to provide information about the tea, but I’ll try my best.

So in my bag of this blend I can see black tea, flowers (chamomile would be my best guess?) , little chocolate candies, cloves, cinnamon, and candy sprinkles. There’s also random chopped up bits of this and that, but I don’t know them by sight.

This is a sweet tea. It reminds me a little bit of a mild cinnamon candy. There’s the familiar cinnamon tingle, but the blend is more complex, with a rich ‘mulled spice’ flavor that is sweetened with the sugary taste of the multicolored sprinkles.

Side note: I’ve never seen sprinkles in a tea before. First time for everything!

Honestly, I think this blend really captures Halloween. It’s an adult flavor with warm spiciness and just a hint of trick-or-treaters’ candy. Quite yummy.