Tazo

Hmmm…I am an avid of fan of ginger and green tea, so I thought hands down I would love this. Not so much. It’s not terrible, but not bad. I’m not sure what it is that I don’t like about it. Maybe it’s the pear? I’m not sure..either way..I just find this tea weird. I drank the whole box, and was hoping I would like it more. That wasn’t the case.

Firstly, I LOVE the smell of this. Just a little sniff of it helps me to wake up in the morning. The chocolate and orange notes are just plain old delicious. Don’t over steep because this will go bitter FAST. I drink this most mornings I have class and/or work and it helps.

I could have sworn I reviewed this already…

I’m not a huge lover of Tazo teas in general, but when I saw a 20 filterbag box of this on clearance last month for $2.96(on a trip to the U.S.), I couldn’t resist giving it a try. As expected of a white tea, it has lightness to it; both in color and in taste, but the flavors of the tea, vanilla, and apricot are nicely balanced. The aroma is wonderfully fruity, and on several occasions it proved to be a good tea option for guests who are intimidated by my loose leaf collection.

For best results I don’t let the water get anywhere near the boiling point, otherwise I find it can turn bitter. I also have to be careful not to over-steep this one, which is one of my bad habits that I haven’t consistently dropped yet. What can I say…life is just too distracting.

I’m finishing this box today, which on one hand is a good thing, because I’m trying to finish off some of the odds and ends of tea before the big move in a few weeks, but if I see it at the clearance price again, I’ll have a hard time resisting a repurchase(I love clearance stuff). It’s a good convenient bagged tea, but on the down side it has some flaws: the tendency to go bitter when the steeping parameters are a little off; it tastes like a Spring/Summer tea, and won’t fare well in my cupboard year round; and it doesn’t resteep well. So I can happily resist buying this at full price.

So far I’ve been good(ish) with not buying more tea over the past few weeks, but sometimes I feel like I should be in a support group :P

I like apricot, and this one smells nice. I decided to try it as a cold- brew. It has a light, creamy fruit flavour. Most refreshing.

I was at a meeting today where they offered this tea at the coffee/tea station. The last time I tried it, there seemed to be some scent/flavor contamination from a Pu’erh (yeah, fishy Earl Grey!) but before I receive some of the full leaf from a swap, I wanted to try a Pu’erh-free teabag to compare.

This was actually close to par with the fishy one, if you can believe that! I didn’t have a way to time my steep or control the temperature of the water, so I just had to guess. It was a short break, so the steep only lasted something like three minutes. I was pretty surprised at its bitterness, and the savage bite of its astringency. The bergamot overwhelmed the black tea base, and the three packets of raw sugar I added didn’t make a dent.

I finished it, but mostly because I was thirsty and didn’t want to interrupt the meeting by getting up. So much for the second try!

had this tea at brunch with my friend Emily.
she is the first lady i ever met that drank tea enthusiastically.
and for my birthday, she made me a freakin quilt!! http://instagram.com/p/dUJE4Vo3x7/
i mean seriously!?!?! she’s the awesomest person ever!

i also drank an entire carafe of bellini myself. yo birthday yo.

a cup from starbucks.
i’m kinda convinced that american’s don’t drink as much tea as the rest of the world ONLY because they don’t know how the hell to brew it.
everyone thinks that longer/bigger/more is better. i even see my roommate do this with coffee in his french press. he just let’s it steep and steep and steep. (also aren’t you supposed to not stir the grinds but let the water pour do the mixing? idk)
oversteeping is a painful reality.

this is a perfectly fine bag of tea and i should probably enjoy tea more when i go to starbucks because, you know, those coffee drinks are really too sweet. sugar-free or not.

The box’s bright colors caught my eye. I like citrus teas, so I decided to give it a shot.

On its own, the tea is terrible.
With a few scoops of sugar, however, I love it. My absolutely favorite tea.

Tried buying another box the other day, but they didn’t have it in stock.

Wake up tea at work. Not in the mood for my guayusa blend as I had it yesterday, not feeling Stormy Night (too cozy) so this one it is. This might be a sipdown? I will have to look when I get home. Blargh, bitter as usual. I imagine this one is better without boiling water, but meh. It’s a hardy tea bag. And it will wake me up. Haha see previous notes on this tea!

ETA – Not as bitter once it cools. Slowly waking up, although some matcha might be in order lol.

Sooo I am pretty much out of my loose tea at work that has caffeine, I have one bag that might be mate, but I don’t want quite that much caffeine, I tend to crash more from that one than be woken up lol. So I took out a bag of this tea…..ehhh, not my favorite. I actually think this one tastes better with boiling water, even though it’s a green tea lol, so that probably isn’t a good thing..but it’s caffeine, and I am soo sleepy today (probably from planes this weekend) that I will take anything. So I will refrain from making my bitter face at work and sip this down for the buzz. The flavor is actually ok under the bitterness/tartness haha, there’s even a hint of pear, but not my favorite, I actually prefer this one iced. I should like this tea since I’m a ginger fiend, but this one just doesn’t have the same taste as other ginger teas do. However, I am waking up. Huzzah.

Vanilla rooibos is my favorite kind of tea. I picked up a tea bag thinking it was going to be really good but it was just a little too sweet for my liking. I like tea with no honey or sugar so I found this to be a little overpowering. The flavors are good though- I love the combination of cinnamon and apple but I wouldn’t call this tea a vanilla rooibos.

Pleasantly surprised by this tea. The tea selection at the place I just went for lunch was limited to Bigelow and a few flavors of Tazo. I selected this as the least adulterated flavor of Tazo. It is very light, but turned bitter when I left the tea bag in too long (No problem! Just add more water!). A very pleasant flavor and the lotus flower wasn’t overpowering.

I wish it was caffeinated though.

Blech! One of the worst teas I’ve ever had. It’s too bad, because it smelled so irresistably good out of the package. After steeping it made me wonder what happened. The tea is quite flavorless and has an unpleasant chemical aftertaste. I won’t be buying any more of this. In fact, I’m contemplating throwing away the rest of the box.

While I was moving my office & sorting through the stuff on my desk, I came across a $30 Starbuck’s gift card from 2 years ago, buried among a variety of other things. WOW! It was a HoliDaze gift from one of my students, & a nice one at that! Of course, I don’t drink coffee, but Starbucks does sometimes have some really nice traveling tea mugs.

I left the house around noon to meet up with one of the local farmers that I get eggs & things from, went to the PO to mail a few parcels for a few steepster friends (you know who you are!), went to Kohl’s to spend my Kohl’s cash, & then hit Starbucks on the way home. My favorite travel cup from them is porcelain on the inside, stainless on the outside, & they had one on sale! So I got that, & just for old times sake, I had them fill it with soy chai. It’s been months since I had soy, & I don’t really care for the mouth of it, & my chai was lukewarm. Oh well…

No flight would be complete without a venti iced soy chai from Starbucks, although I’m finding it to be much much sweeter than I recall. I’ll slowly sip this all the way to FL, while reading “The Tea Goddess”, a book I dloaded to my Kindle a few months ago.

On Sunday, I went to a hotel for breakfast to meet my great aunt, who I’ve actually never met before. Her husband’s son was getting married here and a week before they found out we lived here, so they invited us to come eat breakfast. It was pretty neat! She reminded me a lot of me, as I do a pretty crappy job of staying in contact with people…you wouldn’t believe how much grief I’ve been given for this being only the second time I’m visiting this year.

So because this is one of those very Starbucks integrated hotels, Tazo was the tea. It was a pain because the cups were so tiny so judging how long to even steep this was impossible and it got grossly bitter with the bergamot. I tried to salvage it with some honey, but it did not help entirely.

And someone else there just left their tea bag in the cup while they drank it? blech.

This was the only black tea option, pretty much the ONLY thing there with caffeine too…who wants a tisane or decaf green in the morning? No thanks.

This has been my go to iced tea mix for some time. Though I have been experimenting with icing pretty much every tea I buy, this is one I know works well and keep a pitcher of in the fridge. Tazo Black was my upgrade from Lipton, after I tried an iced tea from Starbucks one day and really enjoyed it. It has a better flavor, and a slight kick that cold brewed Lipton does not have. My husband enjoys it with sweetener, while I drink it plain, and both ways are great. We brew it as per the directions on the box, which is more of a pain that cold brewing, but I can’t argue with results.

I go through iced tea like it is water in the summertime, and because I don’t add sugar, there has to be a good amount of refreshing, rich flavor to keep me interested. This tea has that, and will have a spot in my fridge until it is unseated.

A mediocre Earl Grey at best. Alright as a latte (soy milk for me); otherwise not distinguishing. Even as a latte, pretty mediocre.

I like black teas better than black teas, but I was in the mood for a green tea this morning- probably because I had painted myself green to run as She-Hulk in a superhero 5k. Green was my mood.

This was a decent bagged green tea that I got at Starbucks. Has that seaweed taste that I find in most greens. It was also little bitter and dry, so not my favorite cup.

Had some of this left from a while back; probably our winter vacation. The boys like a treat when we are away and it is easier than brewing chai the traditional way with spices in a pot etc. I find the mix too sweet for my taste so I always have to add double the amount of almond milk into it (1 part concentrate to 2 parts almond milk). For the convenience not a bad product.

Sipdown!!
Thanks to threewhales, who I actually haven’t seen on here for awhile. This was part of our trade awhile back with the steepster book club. It’s an interesting blend of bold, tart, & a little floral in the there too. Not something I’ll buy, but not bad for a change of pace.

My only questions (not to anybody in particular) is why is this considered a seasonal blend, other than the name? I usually think of seasonal blends as having holiday-like spice flavorings, but this is just a straight mix of black, green & oolong.