Tazo

It’s been a while since I’ve had this tea. I found it at Target one day. Since green tea is my favorite kind of tea and I like Tazo Zen, I figured I’d try this. I really enjoyed this tea for two reasons: the green yerba mate and the spearmint. First, I had yerba mate in other drinks, but never knew what it tasted like until I had this tea. It’s flavor alone is almost enough to make this a good tea. Second, I’m not a big a fan of spearmint. It is subtle in this tea and marries well with green yerba mate. Not only that, but it help cover any of the grassy bitterness that can be associated with lower quality green teas. I really enjoy this tea, but I have found a comparable taste in the Detox Tea offered by Capital Teas.

I love this tea!
I usually brew a batch then chill. To me spearmint/lemongrass taste best cooler than hot!

Fond memories of this tea. Admittedly in high school and even continuing into college I drank this with an obscene amount of sugar. Like 2-3 tsp/mug. And always Sugar in the Raw, or a stick of sugar cane. It doesn’t taste as nice with white sugar.

It doesn’t have the same effect when unsweetened, but I mostly don’t mind. Camomile is a tea I can deal with in a tea bag. Mostly I think because the loose version…. little flowers floating in my cup kind of freak me out. I vaguely wish for a loose version because I really like the blend, but I probably would stick it in a tea or strainer to avoid looking at it.

Backlog:

I wasn’t all that impressed with this tea. It is alright … certainly not horrible but, it wasn’t a great tea either. Not one I’d waste my time with in the future. More lime taste than cucumber, with crisp, light white tea notes.

Great Canadian Travelling Tea Box (pt.1)
I had this tea on Sunday ( March 23rd)

Dry Leaf: the tea is in a tea bag, so I couldn’t see much. In terms of smell, the tea gave off a minty and licorice-y scent with hints of lemon grass and citrus. The scent was soothing.

Steeped: The smell changes when steeped, it makes it more licorice-y. The water is nice and yellow. The taste is also strong in the licorice sense, and there was also a sour overtone. I am sort of on the fence about this tea.

Caffeine-Free/Decaf Traveling Tea Box

I brewed 8oz of this with 1 bag and then put it in the fridge to cool. My first thought was, why did they take something that smelled absolutely delightful in the bag and make it into something so gross?! Maybe if you like licorice you’ll enjoy this, but cold it tastes like orange and licorice which is not a great combination. Plus, who decided to put spearmint in it? Because everyone loves the toothpaste + orange juice taste. No, just no.

The only way this was palatable was adding a boatload of sweetener. These bags will be heading on their way!

I had this as an iced tea lemonade at Starbucks while the boy and I ran errands yesterday. I am not a coffee or a latte drinker, and they have been unable to make refreshers for a month (you know you live in a small town when…), but this is a nice alternative. I adore the tartness from the tea mixed with the sweet lemonade. It has inspired me to make my own calorie free version at home. I plan to mix Teavana Passion Berry (which is the same thing) and Crystal Light lemonade. Jace may question my brilliance, but this plan is sure to succeed. Now all I need is the snow to melt so I can implement it!

I love this tea. I sweeten it quite a bit, though.

Fruity, tangy. I like.

If you like cinnamon, you’ll be happy. My coworkers snitch it out of my teabag basket.

It makes me somewhat sad that in Starbucks stores they now refer to Passion as a Teavana tea: Passion Tango. NOT!!!!! When probed, the barista will insist that the recipe has been modified somewhat, but I don’t believe it. In protest, I have ceased logging my in-store iced Passion experiences.

This batch I prepared at home, using six filter bags, as a part of my campaign to use up all filter bags before the end of the summer. They make a good iced tea, no doubt! I’ve prepared mainly cold brew pitchers of late, but since I had boiled too much water for one of my pots of tea, I decided to use the extra hot water to infuse these bags double strength. Once it had cooled, I refrigerated the strong liquor to pour over ice. It’s a good way to make iced tea, I find, since the best concentration is achieved as the ice melts—which it always does in this heat.

It is rare for me to leave the house without first having imbibed some form of green tea, but it happened today. I awoke rather late (it was nearly noon), and since I had eaten ice cream sandwiches (plural, that’s right…) last night, I wasn’t even hungry enough to eat lunch, so the need for the obligatory post-lunch green was obviated given my squelched appetite.

My first “brew” of the day ended up being a venti (unsweetened) iced Passion chez Starbucks. As usual, it was very good. I defy anyone to identify the alleged difference between this “new” iced tea, which they refer to as “Passion Tango” and credit to the Teavana company, and the iced Tazo Passion with which I have a long and steamy relationship. Well, not exactly, but I do tend to drink it on hot and humid days like today!

Memories light the corners of my mind …

Another iced Tazo Passion today. In defiance of Big Starbucks Brother, who has redefined this as a Teavana product, though it is exactly the same as the Tazo from seasons past, I’ll continue to post my enjoyment of this infusion under the Tazo Passion banner!

The summer has not even begun, and I’ve already logged four iced Passions! I predict that this infusion will take over Refresh as my number one logged tea in the steamy months to come.

Passion is always lip-puckeringly tasty, plus it serves as an excellent palette cleanser after whatever monstrosity I may have consumed first. I usually order this tea as a free refill on my rewards card, but I also have the large iced tea bags at home.

Another venti iced Passion for me today. I love the tonicity of this infusion and wonder why anyone would add sugar!

I noticed that Starbucks now calls this brew “Passion Tango” and touts it as a Teavana tea. This suggests that they may be preparing to merge Tazo and Teavana or maybe eliminate Tazo altogether. I prefer Tazo to Teavana, but hope that Starbucks will now consider removing the artificial flavorings from the Teavana teas. They make the brand far less appealing to me and do not really cohere with the generally high quality of the ingestibles chez Starbucks…

Today’s refill chez Starbucks was once again a venti unsweetened Iced Passion. It has the perfect zesty twang to serve as an ideal post-sweet drink beverage. The color of the liquor, both deep and bright ruby red, is also beautiful to behold. My favorite post-coffee refill remains Refresh, and after a Green Tea Frappuccino, I generally opt for iced Zen. However, I wanted to order Passion this afternoon to cover-up memory traces of my recent unfortunate experience involving a barista’s refusal to fulfill my request for a refill of this tea.

Happily, corporate Starbucks took my complaint of a couple of days ago very seriously. True, I sent my complaint to the head honcho, Howard Schultz himself, but I was impressed with the prompt response from his Regional Vice President, who contacted me personally to apologize for the incident and assured me that all Boston-area stores have been put on alert about the refill program. Wow!

In addition, the Regional Vice President also sent me an e-gift to thank me for sharing my experience with them. I am sure that they realize that for every obnoxious person like me who puts pen to paper to Howard Schultz, there are another hundred customers who had a similar experience but just let it slide. So the good news for all Boston metropolitan Starbucks frequenters is that we can expect not to encounter any more baristas who treat us as though we are trying to rob the store when we step forward to claim the refills offered to us by their company as a perk for being rewards card program members.

This tea, of course, is always good news, and I shall continue to drink it over the hot months to come!

I enjoyed an excellent serving of iced Tazo Passion courtesy of Starbucks. Unfortunately, I had first to wrangle with the minion (a barista) of a mastermind (Howard Schultz). Unbelievably enough, I was denied yet again my free refill (on a Frappuccino) by an employee ignorant of her very own company’s policy. She was very insistent that ONLY if I started with an iced coffee could I have a refill, and then it would have to be coffee, not tea. Since I am the refill maven (as documented here at Steepster), who has consumed dozens of free cups over the course of the past year, I asked her whether the policy had changed. She said “no,” it had always been the same policy since she started working there and that she had worked there longer than any of her colleagues. Her smug certainty prompted me upon my departure to call Sbucks customer service to find out what was going on. In fact, I was right and the barista was wrong, so I turned around and went back into the store and handed my cellphone to her so that she could be disabused of her false beliefs about the refill program. It’s really too bad that such a generous refill policy is severely marred by the poor training of baristas. This must be the tenth time that I have had to argue about the company’s very own policy (explicitly detailed on their website)! It really compromises the overall experience to be treated as a lowlife criminal shoplifter by poorly trained/ignorant baristas.

End of rant.

The Passion was quite tasty—not sure, though, whether it was really worth that ordeal! I did enjoy the tangy red infusion while walking a couple of miles to run some errands in the very nice walking weather we had today—in the 60s (not 40s, thank goodness!).

I have consumed a huge volume of Tazo Passion iced tea in the past, but today was my first serving for 2014. Hoping for many more in the months to come as the weather continues to improve until at last the layers of snow atop layers of ice atop layers of snow atop layers of ice have become but a vague memory trace in my mind as I sit sweating in front of a fan.

The concentration of my iced Passion was perfect today. Sometimes I find it overdiluted slightly, but this brew was dark and rich and red. I take mine unsweetened. This is definitely my favorite hibiscus tea—leaps and bounds better than the Zingers.

With the rising spring temperatures, I’ve been in the mood for something other than my usual hot black tea. I spotted this at the store, and knowing that Tazo makes some amazing tea, decided on this one.

As it was steeping, I picked up on a fruity scent with a hint of cinnamon. The color is a gorgeous red like pomegranate or cranberry juice. As my cup cooled down, the cinnamon scent lifted a little and was replaced with a slight tartness. The hibiscus is very prominent in flavor but is balanced well with the tartness. It’s not too tart or fruity though. Everything blends together nicely.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is looking for a light tea for this spring and summer. This also seems like it’d be a good replacement for those wanting to cut back on fruit juices that are full of sugar and calories.

I made it to Whole Foods today to buy some more alternative health care crap.. :) They had this tea and I’ve been wanting to try it though I haven’t had a great experience with Tazo in the past. It’s a box of paper teabags but the bag smells really good after I unwrap it, cinnamon and apple-y goodness. After I brewed the cup, I inhaled the aroma which reminds me exactly of a baked apple. The tisane is good, there’s plenty of sweet apple flavor and lots of cinnamon too. There’s chamomile in here which you taste in the finish. I don’t get a whole lot of rooibos flavor, which could be a plus or a minus depending on your point of view. I might have preferred less chamomile and more rooibos, but I like it.

Overall not bad for a bagged tea. I don’t regret picking this one up… 1 teabag for 8 oz. of water. Looks like I might have found a replacement for the Simpson and Vail apple rooibos that I used to like.

I have no idea whether Tazo still makes Vanilla Apricot White, but I found an errant filterbag in my “maybe I’ll drink this someday” tea chest of stray envelopes without boxes. I don’t recall ever having purchased or consumed this tea, so perhaps I received it as a free sample somewhere…

The tea offers a light apricot flavor, and that’s about it. I don’t detect much in the way of vanilla. It’s possible that this bag is so old that the vanilla evaporated away, but the brewed liquor, which is a lovely peach color, tastes fine—not stale. It just tastes like apricot, not really much else. On the bag it is described as “a delicate tea”, and I’d have to agree.

Loveeeeee this floral, fruity blend. The hibiscus is such a nice touch, and it makes a great sweetened iced tea! I had it the first time at Starbucks, then tried making it at home on my own – haven’t stopped since! One of my favorite summer beverages.