Blackberry Sage

I had this tea for breakfast this morning, with cream and sugar, and was quite happy with it. The scent of the tea is strong out of the tin, but brewing it tends to produce a mellow blackberry taste — not tart, but more like the flavor and sweetness you’d get from a blackberry pie rather than a fresh blackberry. The sage is a really lovely addition to the blackberry flavor. I don’t get a strong black tea flavor — and that’s just as well, since it turns out I don’t really like most black teas.

In the past, I’ve experimented with a range of brewing times — everything from swirling the bag until the water takes on color (say 1 1/2 minutes) to letting the bag steep until I’m done cooking breakfast (at least 8 minutes, probably more). It definitely gets bitter with longer steep times; I think a good steep time for a stronger flavor without the bitterness is probably around 3-4 minutes. I try to keep it to that time if I’m adding anything like honey, cream, or sugar. If I’m drinking it straight, I keep it to 2 minutes. I’ve also tried this tea iced, and I enjoy it that way.

I’ll probably continue to stock this tea for a long time, because it’s a comfort tea — perfect for me on my groggy, slow mornings or when I just need to curl up in bed with a book during a rainy day. Like most comfort foods, it might not be the best quality or have the most robust, complex, delicate flavors — but sometimes you just need a reliable, homey stand-by.

Smells delicious. Tastes like water with some lingering sweetness aka tastes like nothing. I can’t say for sure what kind of sweetness comes up. This isn’t tart or strong like most other fruit teas, which is a good thing since I don’t particularly like the strong tart tastes…. and I usually don’t like fruit teas. This one isn’t bad. It is very faint, and it is early morning and I don’t want to think. But I need to. Let’s see if this tea is enough for today! I have to work this Sunday! Nonetheless, I wouldn’t buy a can of this.

Every time I’ve considered getting something from The Republic of Tea I’ve looked at the price then recoiled from sticker shock. The only reason this tea made it into my cupboard at all was that I saw it while on vacation and shopping with my sister. For some reason, my usual penny pinching instincts went out the window and I started spending like a sailor.
This variety is only so so when served hot but I love it cold brewed. I like it straight with nothing added to sully it’s clean, refreshing, summery goodness.

I drink the majority of my tea cold brewed. Method: pretend you’re making sun tea, but instead of placing the jar in the sun, place it in the refrigerator instead. It diffuses nicely over the next hour or ten (depending on how strong you like it) and doesn’t get that nasty rancid taste that so often happens when the sun tea sits out in the heat.

I love Blackberry sage brewed this way. I like the scent, the way the sage keeps the blackberry from becoming too cloying or koolaid-y. I especially like that it’s an unusual combination and different from anything else in my cupboard, so it’s a great change of pace.

There’s a jar in my fridge and I’ve looked forward to it all morning. I finally poured myself some just before writing this. Ah, good things come to those who wait…

Adorable packaging but bland flavor. It’s a very basic black tea similar to any bagged tea from the grocery store. Almost impossible to find much flavoring otherwise, especially in the berry and sage department. Too weak for me to rate it higher or suggesting to purchase it. It does, however, have a cozy smell. For a memory recall, I first found this over 12 years ago now when working as an eighteen year old at Books A Million. I love their iced Blackberry Sage Italian Sodas with whipped cream and from working there began to get drawn to hot tea.

No one liked this tea… five people, all blech, and we tried it multiple ways—first exactly as instructed, then different steep times, sweetened and not… it just was a big cup of bleh to us. It was so sad, because it smells like it’s going to be great then ends up being an aromatic cup of bittersweet—literally a bit of bitter and a bit of sweet, almost muddy flavored water. The faint berry taste seemed very fake and candy-like… not in the good spicy candy taste that happens when vanilla and spicy chais mingle, either. It’s just bad stuff for us. Glad we got it on sale when a store was downsizing the shelves of tea for summer; otherwise we’d be out a lot of $ for what ended up being given away (none of our guests would go for it!)

Playing catch-up with my adventures in tea-scribbling today. Steepster, my dear, my dove, my duckie, why can’t you let us post-date entries?

Blackberry Sage was an experimental purchase for me. After thoroughly enjoying this very same tea at a restaurant — in iced tea form, which is important to note — I was determined to have it for myself. Home-steeping resulted in two observations: one, this tea is surely better iced, as icing tends to make flavors more subtle and sweet, and two, the blackberry flavor of this tea is a little too artificial for my taste. In a flavor nutshell, Blackberry Sage is more akin to drinking blackberry fruit juice than, say, drinking a black tea with an infusion of blackberries — and thus, as a hot tea, it’s not quite a favorite. The hint of herbal flavor here is a nice touch, though. I often wish I could use such notes in my own blends. (Alas, alack, a tea business I do not have.)

That being said, this can be a very nice choice when prepping one’s morning commuter mug. A workerbee can mug it up with this tea, add more (cold) water later in the day, and then enjoy a refreshing berry-flavored water. Thank you, muses of strange beverage ingenuity!

And now, my near-compulsory tea haiku:

Warm blackberry juice?
Summer can’t come soon enough.
Word to iced mother.

This tea is fantastic unsweetened. The interplay of fruity and herbal flavors tops my charts.

It’s not a strong flavored tea either in blackberry or sage, but I like it.

Meh. I’ve had better tea; which is sad because I do enjoy Blackberries and Sage. Apparently, my love for blackberries is eating them, while my love for sage is burning it.

Republic of Tea: it’s not you, it’s me.

While over at a friends house watching The Office & Community (both hilarious shows btw) I was introduced to this tea. Being the only one in her “stash” that seemed better than Tazo or Lipton I decided to give it a try.

The smell of this tea is absolutely delightful. Obviously blackberry surges through every fiber of this teas being, however the sage does add a nice balance to the aroma that would otherwise be pretty fruity.

Now since this tea is technically a “dust” tea it’s a little frustrating trying to find the full range of flavor you’d desire from a tea with this name. Anywho.

Steeped at boiling for 3 minutes this tea, while fantastic on the side of smell, really needed some help on bringing out an enjoyable flavor. Due to the mild steep I wasn’t expecting the taste to come off as bitter as it was, however once reconciled by the appropriate amount of cream & honey this tea wasn’t that bad. Any ideas on the steeping time?