Tazo

Backlogging
I drank this tea at a customer location because it was the only non-black available. If I kept the steeping time very short, it wasn’t so sour/bitter. I have to say that some days this tea was as delightful as the others have stated, and other days, it’s like they included too much of the white under the rind. I agree the smell is wonderful and the look & clarity of the bowl beautiful.
But overall this isn’t a tea I would buy in anything other than dire straits because it seems a roll of the dice on taste.
I drink all my teas plain, no milk or no sugar, until I’ve decided it’s not salvageable any other way.

This is really not a bad chai tea for a teabag. Its spicy and I can taste the cardamon and cinnamon in it. Its a little peppery and smells good. This is another of my wife’s teas in the cupboard and I need to go and buy some loose leaf chai.

This pretty much is a straight mint tea. If there was Tarragon in it, I couldn’t taste it.

Sipdown no. 12 for the year 2014, and my 550th tasting note. :-)

This is a fitting blend for it, as it was really the first “tea” that I felt I’d been successful in steeping (i.e., it had flavor!) and was what led me to try everything else. At the time I had no idea that rooibos was so forgiving-so it was a huge (though misplaced) confidence boost.

I owe it much, so parting is bittersweet.

Hmmm. My notes aren’t really about Vanilla Rooibos Parfait… they’re about plain old Vanilla Rooibos (full leaf) in a slightly different package, but hey, the ingredients appear to be exactly the same so who knows?

We had a few sachets left in my BF’s tin and I thought the peanut gallery would like this one. No. 1 didn’t at all. No. 2 didn’t like the smell but said he likes the taste, then confessed he really doesn’t. I’m a little baffled by kids who prefer plain green rooibos with a dash of honeybush or plain red rooibos to this, which has a lot more going on in terms of sweetness from the vanilla to the cinnamon to the apple. But that’s what makes parenting interesting….

I quite enjoyed mine. A nice little blast from the past.

Had the last bags in my tin last night, which is something of the end of an era. This was the first thing I tried when I started my tea adventure last February and at the time I fell in love with it. Though I’ve long passed the pixie dust stage with it, it will always be special to me, though I’m not sure I’ll keep it stocked given my ambivalence toward rooibos. But this isn’t truly goodbye, at least not yet. I was so excited by it when I first tried it, I bought my boyfriend a tin, and his is still pretty full. :-)

I wonder how mood affects taste. About a month ago now, I tried this for the first time and I was totally starstruck. I even went out and bought my boyfriend a tin after raving to him about it. In the interim I had one or two experiences with it that weren’t as exciting, and then tonight the magic was back. Not sure why, but interesting to ponder. Perhaps it was that I was more relaxed. The other couple of times that weren’t as enjoyable I was on the rushed side. Perhaps it was because I’d had more tea experience and so more to compare it to. In any case, bumping the rating up a couple of notches based on tonight’s experience, because though my experience of it is uneven (or perhaps I’m just indecisive ;-)) it’s a keeper.

This was what got me interested in giving tea another shot after a number of failed attempts. Now that I’m branching out it isn’t quite as stellar as my first impression, but I’m still enjoying it. The vanilla is very present in the aroma, but not so much in the taste. Still, the taste is pleasant — cinnamony, sweet, full. I can’t explain it, but to me it tastes “red.”

I noticed that a number of folks are keeping track of their sipdowns, which seems like a fun idea. I haven’t put all the teas I own into my cupboard so I can’t use that as a measure. But I can keep track of all my sipdowns for 2014, which could be amusing.

By my count, this is 2014 sipdown no. 8. I’m having the very last bag here at work.

I’ll remember it fondly, though I’m unlikely to buy more. If the blend ever changes to be heavier on the apricot and lighter on the vanilla, I might be persuaded to reconsider.

Look what else I found in my work stash! I thought it was gone because it hasn’t been part of my home stash for a while. Turns out I have a few bags left.

I concluded a while back that while they were neck and neck for a while, I prefer the Berryblossom White to this. I find the flavoring of that one a bit more subtle, and the vanilla in this one somewhat more pronounced and the apricot somewhat less pronounced than they should be. Still, it’s pleasant enough for an afternoon at the office.

I’ve been drinking more of this lately, as part of the protracted project to finish up my original bagged training teas.

The more I drink it, the more I have realized that vanilla is really the primary flavor here. The apricot is more of an afterthought and the tea is most noticeable when it’s a day old, which is to say, it starts to sour pretty much immediately (yeah, I admit it, same way I finish up the rest of day old Diet Cokes I do that with tea too).

Though it is heads and tails over the White Cucumber with its rather nasty pickle overtones, this is at most a passable bagged white flavored tea. I won’t have to hold my nose to finish my stash or anything, but it’s something I’ll wave goodbye to without much of a second thought when I get to the end.

Dropping the rating some.

I tried this one several different ways and by far the most successful was (believe it or not) steeping for 15 minutes. The flavors blended best after this amount of time, so that neither the apricot nor the vanilla dominated, and the tea was present, albeit as a backdrop. It has a gentle aroma and flavor. The apricot/vanilla lingers for quite a while and changes over time, first becoming quite sugary, then frutier, then sugary again.

I am doing an internal happy dance because I’ve basically put this one to bed. I have one more cup’s worth or so left from the initial bagged tea stash. It was one of the first I drank when I started this adventure last February, and one of the first I took an active dislike to. I kept drinking it to see whether that would change. Although I got used to it, I can’t say it grew on me. Or I could, but I’d have to end the comment with “like a fungus.”

In truth there’s no ready explanation for why I should dislike this tea as much as I do. After drinking my way through more than a box of it I can say I can taste pretty much all of the ingredients, so that’s not the problem. I think the main problem is either in the ginger or in the green tea and I’m going to go with the ginger. (The pear is subtle enough that it can’t be objectionable by any standard.) The ginger doesn’t have that fresh, sharp, ginger aroma or flavor, nor does it have a particularly sweet or candy-like taste. Either would have been an improvement.

The ginger here seems to me to be tired. And stale (not literally). Like it is mustering all its strength to exert power and so doesn’t have the will left to try to taste good. It certainly is powerful. It all but pushes the green tea taste out the window.

I’m not at all sorry to see this go. Happy dance! Happy dance!

I’ve been trying to like this one, as I like all the flavors in it individually. So it stands to reason I’d like the combination, no? Though it has grown on me over time (and with better water and better steeping rigor), I generally find the ginger spice overpowering and though I can smell the pear, I can’t taste it. I can’t really taste the green tea either, except very lightly in the finish. But the little bite at the tip of my tongue from the ginger spice is kind of interesting…

Look at me with a tisane! Be sure to pay attention, Steepsterites, as this is not something that happens that often, but it’s too late really for tea when I’m trying to re-learn getting to bed at a proper hour, and I wanted to try something else of what TeaEqualsBliss sent me.

I dipped my sleeve in the cup (no, not on purpose), so it’s not starting well.

It smells strongly of spearmint and I can’t really find any tarragon. It’s like a mix of toothpaste and that chewing gum that my mother prefers. Daunting… Maybe it can help on my stomach reflux though. (Oh avocado… so yummy, yet so deceitful!)

It tastes a bit like that chewing gum too, but it’s not as overwhelmingly spearmint-y as I had expected. I think it’s because the tarragon is lying down a base and controlling it. It’s just spearmint-y enough to give me that prickling on the tongue and brief fresh mouth sensation. The latter doesn’t seem to last very long after swallowing, but then again, it’s a tisane, not a tooth-paste replacement.

Tisanes don’t really interest me at all, and I don’t buy them unless for someone else or because I want to mix with stuff. Although I’d be unlikely to purchase this if the brand was available here, I still like it rather more than I thought I would.

This is a green tea, so I prepared it as such, with lower water temp and less steeping time. It isn’t the best I’ve ever had, but my experience was not as negative as that of other reviewers. Liquor color was a gentle, light orange/green. Flavor was sweet, very slightly vegetal, with an orange finish.

If you use more water per teabag it is better… meaning it has less astringency and bitterness.

This tea seems really bitter to me.
Why is this popular?

Had a cup earlier this morning. It’s pretty refreshing.

Steep Information:
Amount: 1 teabag
Additives: none
Water: 12 ounces hot spigot water
Steep Time: a little over 5-6 minutes, enough time to get to train stop from store and take out bag
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Smell: cinnamon, clove, ginger
Flavor: ginger, pepper/cardamom, cinnamon, clove, black tea
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: ginger pepper burn, followed by a warm cinnamon and a slight bitter tinge probably from oversteeping
Liquor: dark brown, maybe a little red tint

Probably should not have gotten this so late as now I’ll be up all night, but I couldn’t resist. I do think it would be better with some honey and creme so it would be a proper chai, but if you ask for that they give you the concentrate (my favorite Starbucks drink-Chai tea latte!). I think this would be a nice tea to make chai at home with.

Post-Steep Additives: none

As soon as the water pours in you can smell the orange peel. I taste mostly the orange and not the black tea or the cocoa peel, but it is still a wonderful tea.

Steep Information:
Amount: 1 teabag
Water: boiling, let sit 1 minute, 12 oz
Steep Time: a little over 1 minute (http://steep.it/)
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: mint
Steeped Tea Smell: vegetal
Flavor: lemongrass, mint, vegetal
Body: Full
Aftertaste: mint
Liquor: translucent brown-green

not really exciting or delicious, a lemon-grassy green tea.

Rating: 2/4 leaves

Blog: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2011/11/tazo-teabag-green-tea-zen.html