Cucumber Melon Green Tea

Thanks to tea-sipper for sharing this one! The flavor is lightly fruity, and I feel like I can sense the cucumber. I’ll definitely have to give my sister a cup of this the next time I see her! I wish I could taste even more cucumber, but this was pretty pleasant!

Ok, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to think of this one. It smells so dang strong in the bag that I was sure it would be overpowering.

Nope. This is wonderful. It is very clearly cucumber melon, with a pronounced natural sweetness, and a good balance of the cukes and the melons. It’s just so delish. The flavor also lingers so it doesn’t just fill you with flavor on the sip, but afterward, the flavor dances on your tongue and sticks around for a while. This is just… wow. Great stuff. This may be a permanent addition to my collection.

Absolutely glorious tea. A+

This one was a wild card when I bought a box of teas to sample from ETS. I thought either I will feel like I’m drinking a hot soupy bath & body works type of fake cucumber or it will be the more epic version of cucumber water. Lucky for me, I found it to be the later. Of course I made this iced. Of course I also made it more watery than probably intended, but, the cucumber flavoring still pack a punch. It’s my new favorite iced tea.

So I technically had Shakespeare’s version of this tea thanks to Mastress Alita (thanks again!). But I love it so much I had to stock up and English Tea Store has the same blend. It’s on sale for the month at an already amazing price. I’m also happy to report that the tea still tastes the same! CUCUMBER. MELON. I’m always happy when different harvests are similar. So many cucumber slices, whoa! Also, 52Teas had a blend similar to this one (the general idea anyway) that I also love.
I’ve been eating a ton of actual cucumber from the garden lately, as I’m the only one around here that can tolerate cucumber…. and the garden will give about… FORTY or so cucumbers this year. So I made a cucumber dip today. And I’ll be making little tea sandwiches at some point. I also just like dunking some cucumber pieces in a dip of cream cheese, sour cream, and a bit of olive oil. Nothing too fancy. Also, one blueberry bush in the yard (spindly in my opinion) had about three pints of blueberries over the course of a month. I absolutely appreciate that blueberries don’t all turn blue at once… it’s gradual so you can enjoy blueberries for about a month even with one plant, if you’re willing to look every 2-3 days.

Green March! I purchased this tea blend from Shakespeare’s Corner Shoppe in San Diego, California, when I was there on a vacation last fall. It was their “featured flavor” the month that my friend and I visited for our high tea, so we were offered a cup of it while we were waiting for our teatime goodies to be served. I’ll be honest, this is totally not the kind of tea I’d be interested in off the name (I’m not a fan of raw cucumbers, though admittedly I don’t mind them cooked in things or flavoring water, and I also don’t care to eat raw watermelon based on texture, though I don’t have problems with the flavor of watermelon, though find most artificial watermelon flavorings, like that used in candies, pretty sketchy) but if someone is offering me free tea, unless it has a migraine trigger or bananas in it, I’m going to take that cup. And I was surprised how much I liked it! So I picked up a bag of it from the shop after the tea before we left.

This shop does have a few custom blends, but most of their teas are sourced, with this one being no exception. Since Shakespeare’s Corner Shoppe is a UK products novelty store as well as offering high tea services, I’m fairly certain they are using English Tea Store as the wholesaler for the majority of their blends. The ingredients and the look of the leaf is identical, and I can’t find this blend offered by other popular wholesalers like ITI and Metropolitan, so I’m pretty sure I’ve located their source.

I remember enjoying this tea as an appetizer during my high tea, but I find I don’t enjoy it quite so much as a warm cuppa now. It comes across with a very strong flavor that I find is just a bit too strong for me when I’m drinking a warm cup of green tea; I prefer more subtle fruity touches with a strong base of sweet, warm grassy notes when I’m drinking my green tea warm, and find that most flavored green teas are too overwhelming with their flavors, completely overpowering the tea base, and the heavy warm fruit flavors often just feel off to me somehow. This was no exception, and the flavor just felt strange and off-putting as a hot brew.

Iced, however, I really enjoy the flavor of this tea! This may be one of my favorite iced teas. There is definitely a certain refreshing touch of cucumber here, like quenching cucumber water, like I really enjoy. The watermelon flavoring doesn’t really taste like watermelon to me; rather, it is more like the Japanese “melon” flavor, something that comes across a bit like a cross between cantalope and honeydew. It’s very naturally sweet, and doesn’t require any sweetener; just chill and drink! (Though, I imagine adding some fresh sliced cucumber would probably make a lovely addition to an iced pitcher of this!)

This is one that I’d just forego warm and go straight to the iced tea pitcher.