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So I could have sworn this tea was in my cupboard, but apparently it’s not on Steepster… nor could I find it on Culinary’s website. I got it a few months ago when I won the $100 gift certificate, which I used to indulge in some dessert blends I usually wouldn’t buy for myself. This one popped right out at me, since caramel apples are some of my favorite fair food and they have such a high calorie content recreating them in tea-form seemed like a good way to relive the experience without all of the sugar. I made this last night while hiding out in the bedroom: I am SO tired of this heatwave, and it’s the only room of the apartment that gets fully cool when it’s in the 100s. On the plus side it’s arctic chilly in there, so I can have a hot cup of tea without feeling like I’m on fire!

This is a great dessert blend, and you can clearly taste the caramel and apple notes, along with a rich, creamy undertone. It’s quite indulgent, especially with a little cream and sugar. It doesn’t need much since it’s naturally quite sweet! Like many of their black blends that I’ve had, boiling water is a big no or it ends up a bitter mess, but brewed at a more gentle 195 this is heavenly. Frankly there’s not much “tea” taste and more “holy wow this tastes like a melted caramel apple” but sometimes that’s really exactly what you want.

This is my 100th tasting note! Didn’t think I’d get here so soon!

Rose Marzipan was one of the teas in my Fire Sale box, and I was thrilled to see it in there. This is a discontinued blend, but one I’ve been wanting to try for a while. I’m pretty vocal about my love of rose blends, but I also adore marzipan. When I was a kid my parents used to get me the little fruit-shaped ones for Christmas every year. Actual marzipan seems really hard to get in tea-form, most “marzipan” teas just taste like almond. As a side note, I’d really love a rainbow cookie flavored tea—marzipan, chocolate, raspberry or apricot jam…. I have some in the fridge, and I think I am going to consume them immediately after writing this.

Anyway, back to the actual tea! The dry leaf and brewed tea smell very similar: heavily floral, but the rose is a little different than what I am used to. It’s kind of… sugary, like rose candies. Rose-flavored Turkish Delights! That’s what the smell is. And underneath, there’s heavenly marzipan—not almond, but pure and delicious marzipan. It smells better than it tastes, though it’s still good—it just loses some of those delicious candy notes. It’s mostly rose (sweet, though not as candy-like as the smell) and there’s a definite almond undertone. So close to marzipan, but not quite there! It’s still delicious, though I spend more time sniffing the mug than I did drinking it! Overall very pleasing, mostly because it appeals to some of my favorite tastes. I want to try the blend that replaced this now, though I’ve heard it’s not quite as good.

This is from my Fire Sale box from Rachel (iHeartTeas). I’ve been looking for a good, cheap, everyday lemon blend for a while: the bf and I both love citrus, but most of the current blends we have are either variations of earl greys, grapefruit (which he hates), or lemon teas with green bases which require cooling off the water. After dinner I’m always a little lazy and don’t want to get into complicated brewing, so it’s nice to have a few simple standards.

Well, this is definitely a contender for an everyday lemon tea! The base is smooth and mild, but with enough body to stand up on its own. There’s a hint of maltiness, and I’d hazard to guess that it’s a Ceylon base. It’s nice when the “tea” part of a flavored blend is strong enough that you can distinguish specific qualities in it! The lemon is nice, also mild, not overpoweringly citrus but with a bright and vibrant taste. This is nothing special or complicated, but it’s pretty damn tasty.

I try to taste my teas in the order they come in, and I still have several left from a few assorted sales. This came in today, though, and I just couldn’t wait. I’ve dubbed this “kitten tea” and there was no way I wasn’t going to rip the package open after dinner and brew some up.

I saw other reviews that said this smelled like lemon pound cake, and it does, frosting included! It’s kind of intoxicating, and I wanted to keep sniffing it. It doesn’t really taste like pound cake (which I suppose is good, so you don’t get an overly dessert-y flavor), more like lemon meringue or a fresh-baked lemon pie. It’s sweet, citrusy, and so fresh tasting. The marshmallow tastes like the real homemade kind, airy and not too sweet. It comes in at the end of the sip, and sandwiched between the lemon and marshmallow is a gorgeous green base. You can tell this is a high quality tea, and it holds up to the strong flavors so well.

This tea is fantastic, amazing! I could probably drink it every day, but I feel like this is going to be a tea I horde for special days. I’m already considering buying another pouch and I’m only one cup into the bag I have! Oh kitten tea, I love you.

EDIT: So I played around with this last night and got a really great second steep. It’s way more marshmallow-y than the first one, much like how the Cheesecake Earl Grey is more cheesecakey on the second steep. It’s also sweeter, almost candy-like (but in a good way). The mouthfeel is creamier and richer as well.

I also tried something new and cold brewed the leaves I’d already steeped twice. I hate to waste a tea like this which is both amazingly delicious AND a limited edition. I let it steep for around 16 hours, longer than usual for me, but I didn’t know how strong the flavor would be. It’s very lemony and light, with the green base more prominent here than on the previous steeps. The marshmallow is the least-prominent, though some sweetness comes in at the end of the sip. It’s pretty much the opposite of the second steep, while the first was right in the middle. It’s great to see so many different aspects of the same tea!

I got this as a surprise sample from Azzrian! I love sakura flavored teas, so I was kind of giddy upon finding it in my box. It’s been way too hot for hot-brewing tea so I decided to cold brew this—I actually meant to yesterday but it totally slipped my mind, so it was done overnight. I know some people are pretty specific about how long they cold brew stuff but I’ve found it nearly impossible to overseep anything in cold water so my usual time is 12+ hours, I put everything in around midnight and get to it when I wake up (I’m a night owl!).

The leaves for this are so pretty—dark, rich sencha interspersed with these perfect little pearls of cherry blossoms. It’s almost too pretty to put in water! But the smell is too enticing to just let this sit around. Sakura is a lot lighter than that heavy cherry flavor you can get from some teas (and I dislike that) so this blend is perfect for me. Iced it’s fantastic. You get the buttery sencha with the slightest hint of grassiness, followed by the delicate sweet floral taste from the cherry blossoms. It’s fruity, but so lightly so that it’s not at all overpowering. This is a dainty cup of tea for sure. Thanks so much Azzrian for letting me try out this gem!

I’ve been dying to try this tea—I love melon, it’s probably my favorite fruit flavor, both for teas and just for eating! I was lucky enough to get a sample of this from Kittenna in my swap with her, and then I got some more only a few days later from Stacy with my Butiki order! Of course I was over the moon, but somehow I hadn’t tried it out until today.

I cold brewed this with 1 small scoop in a tall glass of filtered water for about 16 hours or so: I was worried it might be a little weak because I used very little tea, but it is amaaaazing. The cantaloupe is the freshest fruit flavoring I’ve ever had in a tea, it legitimately tastes like fresh cantaloupe juice. The cream is very subtle and adds a hint of softness and a rich mouthfeel, and the white base sparkles. This is an exceptional blend, and of course now I want to brew some up hot just to compare…. but a tea this special is definitely not an everyday luxury.

This is one of the samples from my box from LiberTEAS, and also one of the only teas I specifically requested. Rose and chai are two of my favorite things, so it was a winner before I even tried it! She was nice enough to send me the last she had of this blend, enough for 3 or even 4 cups (not counting re-steeps). That sample box was probably the best tea-related things I’ve ever purchased—it’s been about a month since I got it and I’ve been trying to taste one of the samples every 2 days or so, but so far I have only actually run out of ONE kind! Okay, sorry this is sounding like a paid advertizement, I just get a little giddy whenever I look at how much stuff from it I have left to taste/finish~

Anyway, the tea. I love floral teas, creamy teas, and chai: all of those elements are very prevalent here. It’s floral, but not overpoweringly so, and I’ve always found rose to be the “sweetest” floral scent so it adds a nice balance to the spices. The chai part is warming, not too spicy but it has a great mouth-feel. There’s not a ton of ginger and I don’t think any pepper, which is what usually gives you that “heat”. This blend has more aromatic spices—cardamom, cinnamon, clove, maybe a little allspice? They work SO well with the rose. Then there’s that creaminess from the vanilla, perfectly balancing the spice/floral so nothing is overpowering and everything is in harmony. This is one of the best chais I’ve tasted and is most definitely going on my shopping list!

I made a lot of tea last night and this morning, but this is the last of them! I cold-brewed this one for the bf, since strawberry and chocolate are some of his favorite flavors, though I am not a huge fan. I was worried that this would be weird cold, since, well… I’ve never had chocolate iced tea. Thankfully, it works pretty well! The strawberry isn’t that prominent (next time I’ll chop up some actual berries and add them), but the chocolate surprisingly is. At first it just tastes like a nice black iced tea with a hint of berry, and then at the end of the sip it’s quite chocolatey. Not heavy mouthfeel decadent chocolate, more light and airy. It’s pretty nice, but I’m not going to rate this one as it’s not my thing. Thankfully there’s someone in my house who loves it—and he’s a bit pickier about teas than I am sometimes, so it’s always nice when I find something that he loves!

I got this in my fire sale box from Rachel (iHeartTeas). I realized yesterday that there are two Rachels, so perhaps I should specify which one from now on. I’ve never tried and Zoomdweebies teas, and to the best of my knowledge they’re what turned into 52teas (correct me if I’m wrong!)! This smelled soooooo good in the bag. I love lemon, I love spice, what could go wrong? Well apparently nothing, because this is a great tea. It’s not heavily lemony, but it’s still nice and bright. The spices (cinnamon only according to the packaging, but I am definitely getting some clove, maybe even orange peel) are wonderfully warming, not overpowering the lemon but accenting it. If you could make mulled lemonade, I think it would taste a lot like this. It’s also great hot and cold (tea cools down pretty fast with the AC blasting), which is always a big bonus. This is a more wintery tea I think, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to save it until then!

I love the flavor of wine, but generally not the alcohol part. Not that I have anything against alcohol, from my tasting notes it’s clear that I am not above throwing a few splashes in my tea if the flavors match. XD But for me it just makes wine a… less pleasant experience. So I like cooking with it, I like making desserts with it, but I don’t generally drink a whole lot of it. Thus, I was pretty excited to see a wine-flavored tea, since I’d never heard of such a wondrous thing. I snatched this up in Element Tea’s closing sale (possibly the last one, as it vanished a few minutes after I ordered it).

The dry leaves are beautiful downy white peony, and all of them in my bag are intact. A good sign, since they’re quite easy to crush in transit (and tea comes a pretty long way!). There are whole jasmine flowers and rose petals too, but the smell was… weird. Very fake grape-y. It was a little beast to brew too: first I had way too much water, then I dumped some and ended up brewing it for twice the recommended time. I felt bad possibly screwing up a tea that might be the last of its kind, but oh well.

It still smells kind of artificial in the cup, and the taste hot was… not exactly my stripe. So I let it sit for a few hours, tossed some ice in, and magic happened. Lightly floral, sweet and almost fruity from the white peony, and BAM wine! It’s pretty assertive (possibly because I brewed it for so long?) but it really works iced. And I know it’s very wine-y tastes, because the bf tried it and made a “blech” face—he hates wine XD. And now I’m depressed that I can never buy this again.