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I made a huge mistake when I made this tea. Not because it’s terrible but because I’ve been trying to reset my vampire-like schedule for days now. Yesterday, I finally managed to stay up all night and throughout the day, until 7pm or so, and then I went to sleep…only to wake up suddenly and completely at 1am and be unable to get back to sleep. Ugh. I was going to lie there and try to stick it out, but then I remembered that I bought a bunch of herbal and caffeine free tea samples from Tea Guys to try, since I’m not usually adventurous about fruity and flavored blends…and that I had some Peruvian leftovers in my fridge. That sort of decided me, so I figured that I would brew up one of them. In a state of half-consciousness I waffled and eventually chose this one. Ginger. Peach. It sounded sweet but kind of cozy.

Unfortunately…I did not read the little packet and realize that there was black tea in this. Of all of the blends I chose, I magically picked the one with caffeine in it and then poured four cups of hot water on top of two tablespoons of it, which is almost but not quite the whole sample. Ugh. I suppose today is round two of staying awake all day.

Fortunately, the tea isn’t bad. I mean…I’m going to be honest here…I really don’t have a lot of experiences with similar teas to compare it to. Yes, I’ve been drinking flavored tea (mostly iced, when it’s flavored) all of my life…I’m southern, we do that. (We also tend to add enough sugar to give a small country of people insulin issues, but regardless…) But that doesn’t mean I was paying attention to them beyond their ability to be consumed as a beverage during a meal!

That said, I had no trouble finding the peach or the ginger in this, so it seems to be basically just what was advertised. When it was very hot in the cup, the peach flavor came across a bit oddly. It reminded me of baby food…you know that nutty stewed smell from peaches in baby food? It was sort of like that. Not bad, but not ‘fresh peach’, not tangy…more mellow. The ginger is definitely a stronger flavor, but not overwhelming. Then again, I’m one of those people who buys chunks of crystallized ginger to snack on, so obviously it’s a flavor I’m pretty fond of. I even like the aftertaste of this tea; that’s where the ginger seems to come out most — what I now think of as an exhale-note, something I taste most when I exhale, clear my throat, or cough. Vanilla is like that for me, along with certain other sweeteners. What I really want to do is try this iced and see if the flavors are still as strong. This seems like it would be an outstanding summertime iced tea. I haven’t sweetened this at all, but I’m guessing it’d be delicious with honey particularly. There’s a part of me that wonders if it wouldn’t be particularly good over ice, sweetened, and with just a tiny bit of milk…as strange as that might sound.

I first set the rating for this tea somewhere down around 50, but I think I’m going to push it up a little bit closer to happy-face. I’d rate it higher save that I don’t really have any ratings for flavored blends, so I suppose some conservative caution is in order. Also, I need to stop rating things right on top of one another. The more tick-marks I add to this rating bar, the less easy it is to choose where a new one should go.

Of note…my sample says Ginger Peach, but the tea blend on the website says Ginger Darjeeling Peach. I assume it’s the same blend though. The ingredients look exactly the same.