Northern Wilds

Tea #8 from the HHTTB

ooh, minty. If there is ever a flavored tea I will love, it will likely contain mint. I love mint, Peppermint and spearmint. Most of the mint teas I’ve had are heavy on the peppermint, so spearmint is a nice change of pace.

The tea doesn’t smell so minty, though. It has a unique herbal and woody smell. It’s not bad, but if that was also what the tea tasted like, I don’t think I would like it so much.

The dominant flavor is definitely the mint. The cinnamon and clove impart a spicy sensation, but I don’t detect them directly. As some others have noted, this tastes mostly like an herbal blend. I wouldn’t have guessed that it had an oolong base if I didn’t know.

It’s probably not such a quality blend in terms of the balance of flavors, but I like it nonetheless.

This one is weeeird… I can’t decide if I like it or not. Admittedly, I did cold steep it and leave it in my fridge for probably a week… so maybe this isn’t the cleanest trial.

It smells kinda like root beer and kinda like toothpaste. Which, y’know, isn’t really a bad thing, because I kinda like the taste of toothpaste, but those are not two things that I expect to go together, at all…

It kinda tastes like toothpaste, too. But there’s also something autumn-spice-y and something a little bit fruity and something a little woodsy to it… Unfortunately, it also has a hint of whatever that weird taste is that I tend to associate with mold. I get that with rooibos a lot. Dunno what it is….

I dunno. It’s just so… strange.

… more coherent tasting note to follow. Hopefully. >.<

Eeek, NOT a fan of this one. Don’t like the dry leaf aroma in particular, and although the unpleasant scent doesn’t carry into the flavour, it’s really hard to drink something that doesn’t smell nice. To convey what I’m meaning, has anyone ever left brewed fruit tea out in the infuser just a little too long, so it starts going bad? Yeah, that’s how this comes off to me. Kind of a metallic, unpleasant scent. I have no idea what the culprit is in here, but…. bleh. I should probably just toss this one.

Queued post, written April 18th 2014

This is chosen primarily because I keep finding it in the box and having no idea what it is. So now I’m going to try it and get it out of that box for good. Bonnie shared it with me, and when I say ‘shared’ I mean seemingly ‘sent me the rest of her sample pouch.’

I am uncertain about this blend. It has a number of things in it that I don’t even know what are, some things that are okay and some that are decidedly meh. And it rather… smells. Husband says it smells like Pears soap, but I don’t know what that smells like. I’ll give him the soapy association, though.

Things do not get better after steeping. Husband has changed his stance to ‘minty bath soap’ which… I’ll leave it up to you to tell me if this is better or not. Sceptical cat is sceptical.

I’m not sure what I think of this. It’s definitely minty and there’s something else that gives me a strong dark chocolate association. (To my relief it doesn’t actually taste like soap) As it cools a bit, though, it just becomes more and more minty. There is supposed to be oolong in here somewhere but you could have fooled me.

We found this somewhat drinkable, but not otherwise to our tastes.

Tea #26 from Considering a new TTB
This seemed like such an interesting blend, but the balance of flavors ends up tasting like that cup of tea that I’ve left forgotten by my bedside for a few days, then accidentally take a drink of it in the middle of the night because I’m thirsty and it’s convenient. I’m sure we’ve all done that before, right? It doesn’t quite taste moldy, but has an off sort of flavor.

On the plus side, there is finally a Verdant blend that I’m not allergic to, this calls for a minor sort of celebration!