The ordering of my first run of TeaFrog samples coincided with a pretty stressful period at work, so I added this to the samples order. Of course, then I didn’t get to it until things were much less stressful. But so it goes.
The mixture of herbs in this one is pretty eclectic, and I’m sure I haven’t knowingly had a tisane with any of these ingredients except lemongrass before. I took St. John’s Wort in capsule form for a while a long time ago, but never had it in a drink. Makes me wonder what this is going to taste like. I fear it will be unbearably medicinal.
The smell of the herbs, though, is pleasing enough. It’s savory and sweet at the same time, which is interesting. Herbal mixtures don’t usually come down on the sweet side for me unless they contain fruit or mint, but neither is present here to explain the sweet note to the fragrance.
It makes a light yellow liquor that smells mostly of lemon, but has a savory (thyme? sage?) aroma underneath. And it tastes…. not bad! Not medicinal, mostly a very light lemon flavor with some cooking spice flavor around the sides. Not as strongly savory as either verbena or the Sleep Tight from TeaGschwendner. In fact, there are some sweet, non-lemon flavors that pop every now and then on the tongue.
In general, this is a class of tisane that I’m finding I’m not strongly attracted to flavor wise. I like the idea of them, how they sound in theory. But in practice I’m almost always left scratching my head and wondering why I didn’t have something with a chamomile base instead if I want to be calmed or made sleepy. As these go, though, this one gets points for being reasonably tasty and non-medicinal.
I’d definitely try and take some comfort tea with ya. :)
Only if you don’t think it will cause trouble for you crossing the border. Would be a bummer to have to deal with hassles like that.
Of late, I’ve been relaxing my standards a little and taking decent bagged tea when I travel rather than loose. A little less fuss, at both airport and hotel, and considering the quality of most hotel water, why ruin the good stuff?
Honestly, Japanese water can’t be worse than Santa Barbara water, that stuff is so full of sediment it’s a wonder it’s not solid. And if this program is as grueling as they say it is, I am gonna need some heavy duty comfort tea.