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Mmmm! I can’t believe the monks were allowed to drink this, it’s sinfully delicious!

It’s a bit creamy from the vanilla, and definitely fruity, I really like it!

Though I have to google “grenadine” because surely this wasn’t made with that syrup that they used to put in my Shirley Temples when I was 8. No way were the monks allowed to drink that stuff.

This is something I will have to buy! All you who hate monks blend, feel free to send it my way! :)

Happy Saturday to me! Thank you Sil, for another winner!

(about 95 degrees for 3-4 min)

This was really good y’all. Very blueberry and definitely cakey. Not sickeningly sweet cakey, but genuinely blueberry crumble up in here.

I brewed it as per the directions but given that everyone seems to find it more of a green than a black, I am wondering if I should lower the temperature and possibly the steeping time for the next cup I make.

It didn’t get bitter when made with boiling water so that was good! I’m not the biggest fan of green tea (more so because I always oversteeped it and used boiling water before I knew better, not because it’s got problems), but I really loved this.

Another Della Terra Tea for the win. I will have to compare with my other DellaTerra fave, the Blueberry Creme. Yum.

(what’s with tea companies spelling it like “Creme” vs “Cream” anyway? Is that an American thing?)
((That isn’t related to this tea whatsoever but it’s midnight so I’m ramblin’ on.))

Yum! I really enjoyed this. I think the white tea base really let the toffee flavour shine. I like that this is called ‘Toffee Dreams’ and it actually does taste like toffee. Bravo! It’s about time. The last few flavored teas I tried were disappointing and did not do their names justice.

This tea doesn’t lie.

The base is really tasty too. I give this tea two thumbs up. I would actually purchase this one!
Thanks to Sil for the sample!!

(85 degrees for about 3 min, looking forward to a re-steep!)

Edit – O HAY tasting note #50!! :)

Edit again – I shouldn’t have reviewed this before drinking a real genmaicha. This is way better, way sweeter. It’s what all genmaichas should taste like. Not quite a rice Krispies square and I’d definitely like more of a marshmallow flavour, but for a not super sweet and slightly marshmallowy version of genmaicha, this is great. I’m enough of a woman to admit when I’m wrong (except to my husband of course), so disregard below. I will bump the rating up from 70 because this has to be compared to a regular genmaicha, not some other sweeter dessert tea. I’m still tempted to throw a giant marshmallow in my cup to take it all the way, but I won’t. Now I want to own this tea, crap.

previous, uninformed review follows
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Big thanks to Sil again for a sample of this precious blend!

I have tried genmaicha only once before, and I’ve gotta say that this one didn’t taste a whole lot different than the regular one from what I remember of it!

First steep I really didn’t taste any marshmallow at all. From what I read in others’ reviews, there were two blends of this tea, one had actual marshmallows in it, the one I have does not. The way I feel is if you’re going to call something "Marshmallow __________ ", it better damn well taste like marshmallows! So I was disappointed. I don’t see the point of a flavored tea that really has no obvious flavor. I don’t need to be smacked in the face with it, but if you told me this was regular genmaicha, I’d believe you, that’s how little marshmallow taste there was.

Second steep actually tasted a bit more marshmallowy, which I guess was news to me considering I recently mentioned how I’ve never noticed a difference in taste between subsequent steeps of anything. So color me surprised.

In case you were wondering, my words taste good!

If you’ve read any of my reviews you know I prefer flavored teas to straight ones. I wouldn’t consider genmaicha to be a straight tea anyway, obviously, but this blend just tasted like slightly sweet nutty, crunchy toasty rice. It had a lot of the puffed rice in it, so that would explain it. I would have liked to try the blend with the actual marshmallow bits in it.

Will compare this to the plain genmaicha I have and be back to report my findings. For now I’ve gotta take points off for no major marshmallow taste. I might change that later!

(85 degrees C for about 3-4 min)

Mmmm! Sipdown! (Bet you couldn’t even tell I only recently learned what that word meant!)

I have all these teas I’ve been hoarding for way too long, they’re probably close to stale but since I’m not one to throw out something I still deem useable, I am making iced tea out of all the fruity ones.

I think I used to drink this hot but I’m sure it’s much better cold. It’s a deep pink colour and I really taste all the berries! It’s so fruity it tastes like juice! People seem to complain about hibiscus a lot, but I honestly couldn’t tell you what that tastes like, at least, I have sort of an idea but it’s certainly not strong enough to offend my delicate senses.

I wonder if Davidstea will ever bring this back! I give it 2 thumbs up for a juicy summer drink. So flavourful I bet you could even throw some vodka all up in there, get your drank on. Sorry. I went there. Yay Friday!!

Edit I’ve had this tea for so long it has the old school aqua DT label with a cute description, before they were obligated to list the ingredients…. My bag said nothing about rooibos. Couldn’t taste it at all! So my review the other day of the soapy tasting honeybush tea had nothing to do with the temperature!

Huge thanks to the amazing Sil for sending me a sample of this to try!

So I haven’t tried too many straight black teas in my life…. Darjeeling, Tetley (ew), Assam. Not much of an extensive background as far as that goes. I wanted to try this based on the reviews.

I never understood how people are able to taste all these different levels of flavour in a straight tea. Now with this one, I get it. I don’t have the knowledge to be able to tell you exactly WHAT I’m tasting, but it’s slightly floral, slightly nutty, a little bit smokey or leathery almost (not in a gross way, in a distinguished way!) …. Not really getting any cocoa but can see how someone might draw that conclusion. It tastes kind of dirty, not in a bad way, earthy I guess is a better word. I can tell that I’m drinking something that grew in the ground, haha.

I’ve definitely never had anything like this tea before. I am drinking my second steep now, and to be honest it just tastes like the first steep to me, just weaker.

I may as well go all the way and tell you that every resteep I’ve ever had of any tea ever just tastes like a weaker version of the original steep. I’m not getting it when people go on about second steeps tasting like vanilla and whatnot. After all, at the end of the day, tea is just infused hot water. I really like food (REALLY), so it’s a huge stretch for me to try and get different notes out of infused hot water. Especially a straight tea.

The resteep was very similar to the first and I will try a third. It’s unique tasting black tea, that’s what this is. I am not sure I’d order this anytime soon but I will never forget it!

I might return to this later on in my tea journey!!

“This particular review of Laoshan Black was very helpful!” said no one ever.

(Boiling water, 3 min)

Got this as a sample in a swap but I can’t remember who sent it! :( (maybe I should cool down on the swaps for awhile, haha)

I made an iced tea out of this and took it out of the fridge this morning, poured it into my Contigo and off I went. I tried a couple sips on my way to work and was NOT impressed….

First I need to state that I have NO idea what honeybush tastes like. I’ve only ever had it mixed in with rooibos… I used to think they were two words for the same tea but apparently it’s its own thing. All I was getting from this tea was SOAP. I should also add that I steeped this longer on account of it being an iced tea. But I also used more water than I would a cup of regular tea. So, maybe i just oversteeped it and made it taste like soap. But that would be weird, right? Which tea turns into soap??

I thought maybe my travel cup had maintained some soapiness or something so when I got home after work I tried a bit more of the tea that had been left in the fridge… nope. It’s also soapy tasting to me.

I don’t HATE rooibos but I don’t love it either, there are a few blends that I adore though, but it’s the ones where the tea isn’t that obvious. I’m not sure what it is in this tea that tastes like soap, probably the flavoring. I assume I don’t HATE honeybush, as I’ve had it in blends with rooibos. But maybe the taste was just masked. I have no idea.

All I know is I poured this tea down the drain. Not for me! So glad to get to try it though :)

Edit So apparently the two teas do taste pretty much the same? According to the all knowing Google, anyway. Maybe the problem is that rooibos/honeybush is gross to me when it’s cold? I imagine that would bring out the flavor more and since I don’t LOVE it to start with… but I still haven’t read anything that says honeybush tastes like SOAP so I assume it’s the flavoring added to the tea that turned my stomach more so than the Honeybush. Ah well! On to the next!

I thought I loved Whoppers (the malt chocolate balls, not the burgers…I love those too though) , but maybe I don’t love them enough to drink a whopper flavoured tea. I’ve had this twice now, once with milk. It’s VERY malty. Very chocolatey and very malty. I enjoy it, but not sure I needed a 2 oz bag!! So fresh it almost looks wet in the bag. Smells really good, just possibly TOO malty for me. That’s not going to stop me from drinking it though!

Edit to add – It’s almost a little bit BITTER. That was my second steep. I assume it’s the malt flavoring making it bitter rather than the tea base (because I also assume that DellaTerra probably uses the same black tea for all their blends??) but yeah. Definitely not my favourite offering from DellaTerra. Still decent though. Bumping my rating DOWN some because of this new revelation. In the interest of full disclosure, I had eaten a maple sugar sucker a bit beforehand. I still think the tea was bitter though, there was something off tasting about it even the first time I tried it, now I have pinpointed it!

So, this is the first tea I’ve tried from the Tea of the Month club that my awesome hubby signed me up for as a birthday gift (that keeps on giving :))

As a disclaimer this is very early on in my plans to give straight teas a chance. So my frame of reference is small and skewed by many deliciously artificially flavoured teas and therefore you need to keep that in mind when reading this!

I had tasted this immediately after receiving it and also immediately after eating a bbq’d hot dog with extra mustard. That may seem irrelevant (and if you were just thinking about how classy I must be, you are not wrong), but obviously hot dogs don’t improve the taste of tea. So I wasn’t super impressed with my first taste, but I didn’t tell my husband that!

Fast forward to right now when I just had another fresh cup of this, and followed it with a resteep. It’s good! Without the hot dog taste ruining it I can actually taste the green tea and it was a bit buttery! The ginger added a nice flavour and subtle sweetness and after drinking my second steep I was thinking it’s nice to own this and I will enjoy the full 25 grams, even if I have no frame of reference!

I made this at work, not boiling water and for probably 3-4 minutes but not sure of the temperature.

Ohhhh man. Smelling this in my cup now. My second Della Terra ordered arrived today, happy birthday to me!!! Great timing because it’s a rough birthday.
This is fast becoming a fave tea company of mine. Move over Davidstea!!

I’m going to let it cool a bit and then report my findings.

Ok, drinking this again. I made it at work yesterday and again right now, my coworkers practically followed the scent from the kitchen to my cubicle. I could hear them saying “mmmm, what’s that smell?? Something smells good!”

It is so fresh that it looks wet in the bag. That may seem gross to you but it just makes me want to eat it with a spoon . I wouldn’t go that far though, you guys, come on.

It’s almost as good as it smells. And the similarities to Davidstea Red Velvet Cake are pretty amazing because that one is chocolatey and this isn’t!

Maybe they used a similar cake flavouring. You can’t pull the wool over my eyes, I know that’s how it works. Just tell me where you bought it so I can use it on everything else.
It’s very sweet, this tea. Definite brown sugar notes, creamy, I guess the only “complaint” I have is that I can’t taste the pineapple very much. I wish this was a bit more different from the Red Velvet Cake because given the ingredients and intention with this I should love it way more than that one. I do love it though, and will have to do a comparison sometime! Another DellaTerra win!

(Made as directed)