Aries

I’m basing this off the fact that wheezybee said Laurent had indicated Belier was Aries. I’m not sure if thta’s true, but the result is this is getting filed here. It’s been a few days of waiting to find out from Nina’s Paris if Belier was it’s own tea, such that i’ve forgotten much of how the tea tasted. I know that i enjoyed it a bunch but i can’t speak as to whether it was cherry flavoured. i don’t recall seeing and flower petals, as that’s more often a NO for me instead of a yay! I’d be willing to try this again when i can track immediately the taste. But i know i enjoyed drinking it, so yay!

Thank you Laurent for this free sample with my last order.

The dry tea smells like rooibos, a bit nutty.

The tea while brewing, smells very creamy, nutty – almost like hazlenut, hints of vanilla.

The hot tea tastes like sweet, nutty, creamy rooibos. As it starts to cool, I get the taste similar to Sakura Japanese cherry blossom tea. I do not get any sour cherry taste until the aftertaste. The aftertaste is very much like the pucker you get after eating a sour cherry. As it cools to a luke-warm temperature, it retains the sweet cherry blossom taste but looses the sour cherry aftertaste. It stays creamy-tasting. I do not get any metallic taste often associated with rooibos.

I was pleasantly surprised by this rooibos blend.

This is the second of the samples I received from Laurent of Nina’s. Since I tend to bounce off the walls half the night if I have too much caffeine, I’m always interested in new caffeine-free alternatives.

This packet was labeled “Bélier”, and when I couldn’t find that on the website I emailed Laurent, who told me it was this blend. I was a little surprised, because it smells more like a fruity caramel to me and lacks the colorful petals, but that may be due to the small sample size.

I used two teaspoons of tea in my 16oz infuser mug and added my usual tablespoon of raw sugar. I wanted to make sure I didn’t over-steep, so I paused at six minutes. It was still a little light, so I went the full eight.

Now that it’s steeped, I’m having an easier time picking out the cherry. I guess I was expecting something more… potent, since the last cherry tea I tried tasted like cough syrup. This is wonderfully light and fresh. It’s just slightly woodsy and pleasantly sweet, and it makes me think about the tiny chips of wood that would fall from grandpa’s carving knife, and how wonderful it was when he taught me to whittle too.

Overall, this was pretty enjoyable – and even more so because I can have it without going into super-hyper mode!

Backlog #2: This was one of the samples I got from Nina’s Paris and I was hesitant to try it after I looked it up because I am not the biggest fan of cherry. But I wanted to try it before I had it with my fiance.

My first mistake was smelling the dry tea. It smells like Robitussin cough syrup. That made me a little nervous. But once you brew it, the tea smells utterly fantastic! I would love to bottle the scent and smell it when I’m having a bad day because it smells like a mix between freshly baked cherry pie and a Yankee cherry candle. (both scents that I love so your mileage my vary)

Once brewed I tried it plain and it tasted like cherry, but it wasn’t a bad cherry. Little tart for my liking so I added some sugar, just one teaspoon of sugar so I didn’t have some tea with the sugar. It was nice and pleasant. The cherry flavor was balanced and not too overly cherry. I was actually liking it pretty well.

And then I started to read a book with my second cup and I let the tea cool down. Boom! Insta-cherry. Very strong and the sour cherry popped out. Once it cooled it was just way, way too much cherry for me.

So, if you like cherry then you will love this tea. I’m not the biggest fan because I’m not the biggest fan of cherry. Which is sad because I think this would be an excellent iced tea.

This does make me interested to explore their other rooibos blends because it was very balanced and it didn’t taste woody. Plus they have the zodiac so I can see if I like what they have for Scorpio.