African Solstice

I love this herbal tea, the initial perfume coming out of the holed lid of Solstice teapot by Tea Forté ALWAYS reminds me of Crème brûlée / Crema Catalana so I am already in the right mood before starting sipping it. Then this strong vanilla perfume diminishes and even the taste reveals the other ingredients. I like to have my teas plain as much as possible, but I love to add some milk or a little bit of sugar to this one.
No need to remove the leaves from the pot, the infusion doesn’t get bitter.

Ohmygosh, how have I not had this tea before? My amazing sister Kyra (she has a steepster too, idk how to link people here) gave me a little tea sampler and this was part of it. Holycrap this is the best tea ever! It’s sweet and delightfully delicious. It almost has a hint of mint but I can’t tell. it’s so good. I can’t even get over it. I’m making myself another cup.

This tea smells good. All I taste is rooibos with a slight aftertaste of berries. All together pretty bland.

New to better quality teas and gave this one a try. Still trying to decipher my preferences. The vanilla aroma is overwhelming, has a chemical quality to it, and in my opinion it makes a sickening mix with the berry notes in this tea. I do appreciate that lack of bitterness with a rooibos tea even with a long steep, but this blend is just not my thing.

This is a berry-flavored rooibos with a nice flavor, though I’m having trouble placing the flavor of berry. It might be strawberry…or a blend. Unfortunately, I taste a hint of cough syrup in the cup :( I find all Tea Forte blends a little on the strong side, so maybe that’s it.

nice tea for relaxing after being super productive

Steeped 6min. 1 Tsp raw sugar. Hot.
Berry front. Vanilla finish. Very mellow, pleasant and smooth.
Non medicinal which is awesome considering that berry flavor teas usually taste medicinal to me.
I have a cup set from tea forte that holds 4 ounces instead of 6 and the explanation on the package said that there dessert teas specifically would brew in the smaller cups better to enhance the flavor. I’m strating to think that all of the teas from tea forte would brew strong pleasant cups in less water.
I’ll give that a shot with the next cup.

The benefit of drinking something blindly is you don’t know what you’re supposed to expect. Based on the name of the tea, I figured it would be a rooibos based tea and examining the pyramid, my assumption was confirmed. I guess there are supposed to be berries in this but I don’t see any in the pyramid. I only smell rooibos but the flavor is vanilla. There is a light berry taste as well. I find it to be a good balance and probably one of the better rooibos blends I’ve had. I’m reminded of a creamy hard candy I had in the 90’s, whose name is escaping me. I think they were put out by LifeSavers candies. Might have to Google that later.

I’m down to the “I really don’t know how I’m gonna feel about this” pyramids from my Tea Forte sampler, and I hesitated to give African Solstice a go, particularly when I saw that rosehips were a key player. I was braced for a mugful of tartness, but this is surprisingly sweet. My taste buds can’t detect anything but a general “unspecified fruit” flavor, kind of like that one single good chew of Fruit Stripe gum before it goes tasteless. Same with the roses—a nice team player in this rooibos-based blend, but they don’t stand out.

None of that sounded very complimentary, did it? It’s a really nice evening cup, especially out of my new favorite hissing mug (just the favorite one that hisses, not my very favorite). Go ahead. Say I’m nuts. I think this little ceramic mug, which had been stashed in storage for ages, was from a donation center when we were trying to cobble together a kitchen after our tornado. Brown with little curlicue hearts on it. I don’t know if it’s the porous texture of the ceramic, or the shape (it tapers inward the tiniest bit at the lip) or the slight flaw in the inner glazing … but whatever it is, it hisses when it’s full of a warm cuppa. Shhh. There. Hear it?

Sipdown #2! Glad to finish this one off. I loved this blend as part of a sampler I got waaaay back in college, so I got a tin of it a little while later. Definitely got a worse batch of it as this time it felt way too fruity, artificial, and kinda thin. The sample on the other hand was creamier, earthier, and rich with that vanilla rooibos flavor I’m usually so in love with.