Mango Rose

I suspect that Willy Wonka is secretly one of the Tea Guys. I popped open this sample and thought Caaaandeeeee! Not only is it a candy, but it’s like Runts. With some Nerds and SweeTARTS thrown in ta boot. But mainly Runts.

Post-steep it still has that distinct Wonka sugary candy smell, but the rose is more prominent. It’s like Willy Wonka thought “Hey, I could turn roses into a candy and then turn that into a green tea!” If you hate rose, then avoid this one. If you’re craving mango, then avoid this one. I can tell it’s rose, but mango is just a vague presence.

I have a crazy sweet tooth (Nerds being a favorite) and this tea satisfies that particular sugar craving. I’m on the third steep (still good, but probably this tea’s last) and the green tea has been able to keep up if not grow in flavor during each steep. This final steep is like a really sweet green tea. Mmm…candy tea… TG

This is such a gorgeous tea. The green and white leaves are full and fluffy, strewn with cornflower and marigold petals. The rosebuds are large and intact, and… yellow! Rose in tea is always pink/red (or at least the many rose blends I’ve tried), so I was surprised to see yellow ones here. It adds an extra pop of color to an already-colorful blend. I know the look of a tea doesn’t really affect the taste much, but starting out with something this pretty definitely sets the mood in a way.

When I had Lupicia’s Mango Oolong, it tasted very rose-y to me and I loved it. I think I like floral a lot more than most people, so of course I set out to find a mango rose tea. There are quite a few out there, but I don’t like placing orders for only one tea so I decided to wait around for the right blend. Thankfully Tea Guys had many kinds that seemed to call to me, so into the cart this went—and it showed up 3 days later, pretty fast shipping.

I cold brewed this since I love cold rose teas, and hot mango has never really worked for me. It doesn’t really smell like rose or mango either in leaf form or after a 12-hour steep, and the color is so pale, like dew on the ends of grass. But it definitely tastes rosy and fruity! The white/green blend is what I taste at the beginning of the sip, a little grassy and fruity. Not mango fruity, but that kind of generic soft fruit taste you get from some whites. Then the mango comes in, juicy but not that strong, followed by soft rose. It’s really quite floral, not exactly a surprise with so many rosebuds in there, but the rose is at the end and it doesn’t overpower the other flavors. The mango is subtler than I thought it would be, but I had the same feeling when I tried the 52teas Mango Ice Cream so maybe my mango-related tastebuds are off? It’s delicious, just not as boldly mango as I expected.

Good morning Steepsterites.

I’ve been looking through the Bits and Bops Basket and found a few things that it’s unlikely I’ll ever drink, so I’m making a tough decision to just throw them out instead of having them lying around for years and years and years. I have a box full of ancient cheap tea bags which will probably eventually suffer the same fate, but I’ll get to those later. I only did the Basket now because I was searching for inspiration for the first pot of the day.

I eventually decided on this one, which I think came from Wombatgirl. I opened it up and sniffed the leaves, and decided that this was actually a very weather appropriate choice. Possibly would have been more so yesterday, but it’s close enough for jazz.

It smells sweetly floral and fruity. It could easily have been a soap-y smell, but it’s not that floral. Something pointing in that direction though. More importantly, it smells girly and extremely summerly. Extremely so. And this is where we get back to the weather, because yesterday was so far the warmest day of the year where I live, with upwards of 20°C outside. (I got my windows washed, yay, with minimal stripage, yay!) I can pick out the fruit and I can recognise it as mango, although it does get a little camuflaged by the floral aspects. If I hadn’t known it was mango, I’m not sure I would have been able to guess much more than ‘something tropical and fruity’.

After steeping the aroma has completely changed character. We now have something sugary sweet which can best be described as a bubblegum flavour. There are no specific floral notes in the aroma to speak of, and the mango notes have been warped somewhat. Again, however, knowing that they’re there helps being able to identify them underneath the funny bubblegum smell. Turning it into a smell of pure mango can be done, but it requires the cup to stand around and develop for a bit and then deep concentration. It turns more mango-y after having rested for a moment and less bubblegum-y.

The flavour is surprisingly floral, considering the fact that it’s almost not there at all in the steeped aroma. Again, we haven’t quite moved into soap territory, but there is certainly a heavily perfumed aspect to it and it leaves a funny, slightly bitter aftertaste. Like if accidentally got just a tiny amount of shampoo in your mouth while washing your hair, and then you can taste that still for a long time. It’s not quite that unpleasant, but it’s what it reminds me off.

The fruit that is so heavily present in the aroma is a different matter. It seems to have had business elsewhere because it’s not really here right now. There are the shadows of it flitting about in the mouth at first, but the more I sip it, the more it seems to come out. And the more it comes out, the more it reins in the roses. I’ve only had a few sips at this moment, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the mango would become a good deal stronger as the cup develops.

But then again, I do tend to like those subtly flavoured ones. Except I can’t really bring myself to call all these roses ‘subtle.’ They’re anything but. I should have liked to have been able to identify the actual tea underneath the flavouring but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me. (Oh hello! Big pigeon sitting close to my window!)

I’m feeling a little ambivalent about this one. I like the fruit aspects, especially if it develops a little more than it is right now, but it really is very floral. I would have liked it better if it had just been green tea with mango, I think. To me the rose addition seems a bit overkill.

This is the last of my Tea Guys teas that are wholesaled/repackaged by Par Avion Tea; this one still has the same name (Mango Rose) and unlike some of the other blends, it looks like the blend hasn’t really been updated for this one, other than the inclusion of the preservatives (or at least Tea Guys making it known they add them now… who knows if they were always in the older blends and just not listed on the labels). I actually sipped down the others, so this is my last one to finish off, huzzah!

The leaf smells quite rosy, but I suppose I’m picking out a faint fruity note beneath the floral, but it is pretty muted beneath the florals. It smells like a rose green to me, which is fine, I like rose green tea, so I shouldn’t have too much issue sipping this down regardless. I tried making a warm cuppa this morning, but honestly I can’t remember much from it; I’ve been so scatterbrained and preoccupied with everything going on in my life right now that tea is kinda just being pushed to the side at the moment, and I didn’t really have the will to really drink it at work this morning, and then my thermos went tepid.

I had a cold brew in my iced tea thermos, though, since I now have to pack lunch and take it to work since I can’t drive home on my lunch breaks for the time being. The cold brew, at least, was fairly nice; it tasted mostly like a sweet rosy tea with a light pineapple flavor in the background. I wasn’t really getting mango from it, though. I definitely enjoyed T2’s Green Rose more, which I think hit a better fruity/rose balance, and if I wanted something in my cupboard scratching that itch, I would get that tea. But again, this makes a nice enough iced tea I’ll at least have no trouble finishing this off.

Honestly, all of my Tea Guys (repackaged by Par Avion Teas) have been either bleh or meh at best. I don’t know if that is age (for my part, these were gifted to me in December of 2017, so I’ve only had them a year) but my friend found them in a small novelty gift store, so who knows how long they had them… or maybe I just don’t like what this company has to offer in the way of their blending.

I’m really torn by this tea. I think it’s beautiful and delicate tasting. I absolutely love the flavor. The mango, for me, comes more as an after taste on the exhale, and the rose is the initial flavor I pick up. I really, really love floral teas, and this one is right up my ally. Just a little funky smelling out of the bag. I’m noticing that with a lot of Two Tea Guys Teas, not sure I’ll be ordering from them again, but this tea is worth trying for sure!