I was looking for something to sip down tonight since my paycheck is tomorrow and I’m anticipating that, though I haven’t decided where yet, I’m going to be placing at least one medium to large sized order with someone. I’m torn right now between 52teas, Butiki (but we’re talking $100 order for this one), Della Terra, CeasersTea, Harney & Sons, and TeaCupany. So many places to try out…
Also, I’m gonna stop at my local DAVIDsTEA and replenish my Cranberry Pear and pick up more Gingerbread and White Chocolate Frost…
Anyway, I completely forgot I even had this tea bag – probably because for whatever reason it never got logged into my cupboard. I remember exactly where I got it from, though! Last time or second last time or whichever it was when I visited Robyn at the University I stole one of these teabags from their cafeteria (shhh). I remember that was right around when I got my Teavivre samples from Lala and I was on a “try all the jasmin!” type of kick that weekend.
So, sipdown! I steeped following directions on the teabag: 100 degrees celsius steeped for 1 1/2 min. To be honest, the teabag dry smelled disgusting: like some God awful combination of moss, lawn trimmings, medicinal orange flavoured stuff, and cheap jasmine perfume. Yuck! Steeped, however, this smells much more pleasant. The orange smells juicier, like when you’ve just finished cutting a large bowl of orange slices and there’s that very slight orange juice mist kind of hanging in the air. The passionfruit mingles nicely with this.
I’m not a huge green tea fan (though I am learning to tolerate flavoured greens), and there’s still a fairly cheap and unpleasant vegetal smell coming off the tea, but I’m tolerating it because it’s not as nasty as the dry teabag smelled. The jasmine smells ok and marries nicely with the orange and passionfruit – but it’s just a touch perfumey smelling.
I keep smelling pine and mint too, and that might be throwing me off. However, I know that’s not part of the tea – it’s from the vapor rub/muscle relaxant I just finished applying to all my aching limbs. Mostly I feel like jello right now – which is VERY nice. I have a feeling I’ll sleep well tonight but I don’t want to jinx it.
Ok – taking little baby sips now: the tea is still very hot and I don’t want to burn my mouth. It’s actually pretty good. The jasmine doesn’t come off as too artificial in the taste, although while the orange and passionfruit still taste juicy they have reverted a little bit back to the “medicinal” quality. It’s not unbearable, though. Not at all. The green tea isn’t too strong for me, and I appreciate that. Basically, everything marries together really well. Only real downside is that the aftertaste reminds me of those really grainy and chalky orange flavoured chewable vitamins. Not so fond of that…
However, considering this is Lipton and it’s really cheap, I could MAYBE see this as something I’d buy (or steal) more of just so I could have a cheap bagged jasmine tea with some other additional flavours for when I’m so lazy I just can’t put in the effort for a good cup of loose leaf, or to take with as a travel tea. However, operative word there is cheap.
Splurge and go for the Butiki, you won’t regret it! With the extra money you are paying for the quality, you will save on free shipping. It all evens out in the end really! Or you could catch the sales on black Friday :)
I vote for Butiki! :)