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This tea smelled AMAZING loose. A friend of mine had bought it, and when I went to visit her earlier this weekend she let me try it. I took a big whiff, and was absolutely mesmerized by the almond-cinnamon-sugar cookie smell. I steeped myself a large cup of this one, using two full scoops instead of 1 1/2. It steeped up a wacky candied apple kind of color—bright pinkish red, with some few hints of yellow mixed in. Anyway, I took it with me to the couch to let it cool off, sniffing as I went. There was a LOT of sweetness, totally adding to the whole candied apple picture, with some hints of cinnamon. I realized that I couldn’t smell the almond quite anymore, but I wasn’t worried.

I took my first sip… and then took another one, just to be sure. Yep, it was still there. This tea had the completely unmistakeable taste of oatmeal. Apple flavored oatmeal. With maybe a LITTLE caramel in there somewhere. No almond, not even a little. I looked through the reviews, and no one else seems to have had that experience with this tea, but… it was uncanny how much this tea made me think I was drinking oatmeal. It was a little bland, too, like someone had forgotten to put cinnamon in the oatmeal, or had tried but not put enough. I do encourage you to try it yourself, because your taste buds might not react the same way mine did. I don’t think I’ll be buying this one, but I’m glad I got to try it. I may give it another go at a later point, maybe blended with something else.

Aha! I found you. I sampled what I believe was this tea today at The English Tea Room (at least, the description from the menu and the description here on Steepster were almost identical to one another, both specifically mentioning Spanish orange and white chocolate). They’re not terribly good about advertising exactly where their teas come from… I’v known for a while that they do source at least some of theirs from the Metropolitan Tea Company, but I was rifling through Culinary Teas’s selections, and many of them look and sound familiar, so I think they source some from that company as well. Anyway, I had a pot of this with my chocolate chip cherry scones (divine!) and my eggs benedict (sumptuous!).

The aroma of the tea was very much white chocolate, which impressed me, but I couldn’t detect very much orange. The same held true when I tasted it—no matter what I did to it, I couldn’t make the orange flavor come out. The white chocolate was there, though, and the tea base seemed to be light and not overpowering. Tasty, but I wished I could’ve tasted the orange. So, meh.

Had this one in the cast-iron today with about 1 and 1/3 scoops of spearmint. I’m rather fond of adding spearmint randomly to this one and other straight middle-of-the-road green teas. We have a TON of loose dried spearmint, which we use a lot in iced tea. The hubby bought four ounces of the stuff a while back, not realizing that four ounces of spearmint, which weighs hardly anything, would be a severe overload. Oh, and did I mention we also have a spearmint plant that is extremely prolific? X-P So this was my daily attempt to tame the stash. Steeped twice (so far).

So, I have been EXTREMELY impressed with all of Lupicia’s fruit-flavored blends I’ve tasted so far. This one is no exception! The loose leaf smells like a fresh pineapple, none of that dried or candied stuff. Fresh pineapple being one of my favorite snacks in all the world, you can imagine how happy that made me. It’s so much better than eating candy. :3

Anyway, this tea is immensely satisfying as a dessert tea. I’m actually missing the oolong flavor just a little, so I’m going to re-steep this to see if maybe the oolong comes out a little more (it being a Taiwanese oolong really intrigues me, even though it’s not a very dark one). This tea gets two thumbs way up!

So, I’ve been somewhat underwhelmed by the maple-y flavor of this tea before, so I decided to up the ante today and do a double-strength steep. I used a rather larger than normal size mug, just to be on the safe side. My plan was to steep it for as short a time as possible, but I ended up steeping it a teensy bit longer than my gut told me to… and the result was VERY astringent, even with sugar. I attribute this to the fact that there’s basically tea dust in the bag, instead of distinguishable leaves… a quality issue that RoT teas frequently have. :/
Anyway, the tea was WORLDS better after I added about a tablespoon or two of milk to my cup. Mmm, maple-y goodness! I didn’t even really have to sweeten it all that much (been trying to do less of that anyway). The pecan flavor isn’t all THAT strong, but it’s there. So, the moral of the story is that milk makes this tea quite delicious, but without it, it’s almost not worth drinking.

The hubby pulled this one out for a post-dinner tea this evening. Sitting here waiting for the water to be hot, I took a good whiff of the teabag. I kinda wish I could smell the oolong, but all I get is the pomegranate (which smells quite juicy and enticing, don’t get me wrong). :) My sense of smell has not QUITE recovered from the sinus funk I was struck with last week, so the subtlety could very well be escaping me.
At last! it is steeped. And now it smells really floral to me… which only seems to confirm that my olfactory sensors are just bonkers right now. I’m still liking what I smell, though, so I guess that’s good! The oolong smells really fresh. And I love how transparent and good-quality the Harney tea bags are- you can see the leaves unfurling just as well as you can in a loose tea infuser. :)
Wow, I will be resteeping this one! The pomegranate and oolong are so well-balanced in the flavor. So yummy! Definitely worth your money; a very mellow and unassuming flavored oolong.

Was gonna choose my Yogi Immune Support with echinacea tea this morning, but my fingers grabbed this one instead. I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed it, despite having not been fond of the strawberry flavoring in the past. I agree with some other posters, the amount of tea in the bag leaves a little to be desired. I almost steeped mine with two bags instead of one, but decided against it at the last second.
Anyway, perhaps the fake-tasting strawberry doesn’t bother me so much when I’m sick. The chocolate flavor came through okay, and the rooibos hid in the background most of the time. Enjoyable enough. :)
Side note: I’m surrounded on both sides by snoring cats. XD

I had this later in the day yesterday, when my throat was not quite AS sore. I mixed a little Pineapple Kona Pop in there too, because I like that tea more when blended with things. It’s fine on its own, but its flavor profile is a little shallow. A lot of pineapple, a little hibiscus, a little rosehip, but not much else. However, mix it with something like Blueberry Bliss or Sevenberry, and it adds a little something to an already pretty good fruity herbal tea.
Anyway, enough about that one. I’m actually not terribly fond of Sevenberry by itself either, but mixed with PKP, I drank it quite eagerly, despite having oversweetened it just a bit. The rooibos in heavily flavored teas doesn’t bother me so much, which I suppose is one thing that Teavana does very right, in my book. Sevenberry is pretty heavy on the fruit, with some help from a few other herbs to give it that tart winey flavor that Teavana was going for. It’s about as close as a tea has ever gotten to tasting like grape juice, at least as far as I’ve experienced. Worth trying, but not my favorite.

I drank this yesterday, so this is backlogging. I suppose my lack of “wow” could very logically be blamed on one of two things: my tastes being off because of sinus issues, or the tea being a little old and having lost some of its spiciness over time. At any rate, it was chamomile, and while I’m sick I try to stick to herbals. The weather here suddenly got cold and dry, and I woke up two mornings ago with a whopping sore throat and sinus woes. My tea reviews until this clears up might not be very exciting.