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Thanks to the very generous Azzrian for this sample! I mentioned offhand that I forgot to add it to my order at ETS and she offered to send me some, and I am SO glad I got to try this. This tea is enchanting! Usually I can pick out individual flavors quite well, but here they all blend so perfectly you just get hints of them: berry, citrus, floral, even some honey notes. With no additions it’s a bit sweet, but a natural sweetness that seems to come from the berry flavor. The floral is so light, almost airy, and the citrus is nicely in the background and not overpowering at all. Everything here is in perfect harmony: I can see why it has so many great reviews!

I was digging through my home cupboard, which has only about 5% of my teas in it, when I stumbled upon a tin of Bangkok that had a bunch of tea bags in it… that weren’t Bangkok. I got several Numi teas a few years ago but at the time I wasn’t really fond of white tea so I left them alone (though I gave them a fancy new house). They’re old (probably 3 years?) so I was a bit suspect, but upon opening one I smelled clove heaven so I decided to give it a shot.

I love cloves. I mean, I really love them—whenever I bake anything with them I need to hold back because most people don’t seem to have the same fondness for them. Me? I could have a pumpkin pie spiced only with cloves and be in heaven. Clove pie, mmmmm. Since that was pretty much the only smell I could discern here I was pretty optimistic. And indeed, it tastes like cloves! There’s a bit of cinnamon and ginger and some faint citrus, not nearly as in-your-face orange-y as other reviews point out. Probably because this bag is 3 years old, and age has changed the flavors to a different profile. There’s a teeny hint of sour (from the hibiscus I presume) that balances the clove well. I actually really enjoyed this cup and will definitely be drinking the rest of it—it’s quite good for a bagged tea, though I’m not sure if a fresh batch would be at all the same.

This is not the fanciest Earl Grey, nor the best, but sometimes it’s just what I am in the mood for. It tastes like… well, home! This was always a staple in my house as a kid so I find it very comforting. And for what it is, it’s delicious! Plus you can leave the bag in for 15 minutes while you wait for your PS3 to update and it doesn’t get bitter.

I am finally getting around to my generous samples from Angel and Teavivre! I meant to try this a few days ago but I was craving flavored teas, and I didn’t want to taste this until I was in the mood for it lest it be wasted on grumpy taste-buds. I just checked and this is the highest rated tea on Steepster, so I was definitely anticipating big flavors!

Right out of the sample bag it smells fantastic, very chocolatey and rich. I’m not that familiar with Chinese blacks, but it was definitely a good first impression! I used water that was a bit hotter than recommended because I’m a spaz, but I don’t think it adversely affected the flavor—there’s zero bitterness or astringency. I do like astringent teas but this seems like a more mellow black and it definitely wouldn’t be fitting with the flavor profile. This is suck a complex cup with notes of chocolate, malt, raisin, caramel/honey, and yeast. My dad tried some and picked up some hay notes, which I always enjoy in tea. It’s so smooth and rich without being heavy. I will most definitely be ordering more of this!

I had pretty high hopes for this tea. I love coconut, and I’ve heard great things about The Persimmon Tree. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a decent tea, but I wasn’t blown away. The coconut flavor was spot-on, nice and tropical and sweet, the white base was nice and light with a touch of floral notes, and the cream was… well, creamy. They didn’t work entirely cohesively for me though. Coconut + white tea = good. Coconut + cream = soft & delicious. But the cream with the white base was too heavy for me, and seemed to overpower the tea a bit. It was really a nice cup, but not as fantastic as I’d hoped. I think my expectations were pretty high, because this is tasty, especially as it cools. I kind of want to buy some for ice cream making… I could see this being so good when steeped in a custard base!

I love lavender. Half of the houses on my block have a big bush growing in the front yard, so everything smells of it in summer. It’s a smell I associate both with childhood and with sophistication, since it’s French and thus fancy (or at least my kid brain thought so!). Of course I love lavender tea, especially when combined with earl grey whose citrusty notes seem to balance out lavender’s floral nature well.

This blend is pretty heavy on the lavender, which personally I love. It’s very floral and rich, but you can still taste the bergamot and tea base. My favorite of the lavender greys I have tried by far!

Sometimes you just need cake. And when you don’t have cake, the next best thing is cake-flavored tea. Tonight, I really really needed a slice of moist, tasty cake smothered in cream cheese frosting… and this was pretty much the next best thing. I used up my whole sample from Krystaleyn on one gigantic steep of carrot-cakey goodness. I even broke out the big Starbucks mug!

The reason I needed cake is that I made the incredibly stupid mistake of watching The Body tonight. I’m re-watching Buffy in order and of course the day my kitty dies I happen to be smack-dab in the middle of season 5. Mourning often requires marathoning some of my favorite shows (it’s therapeutic!), and for some reason I decided not to skip the biggest tear-jerker of the show. My reasoning was “I can’t skip any episodes! It won’t be that bad!” Oh, how stupid I was. Much bawling happened, leading to a desire for cake, which I have to say this tea perfectly filled. It’s got the spiced taste you want, and I can actually taste the carrot—plus it’s an oolong base instead of a rooibos, which most carrot cake teas seem to be (and I hate rooibos). I’m not going to give this an actual rating as right now I think it’s the greatest thing on earth, but I’m not entirely objective at the moment. I think I might pick some up when I visit their store as this is definite “comfort tea.”

When I have a bad day, I reach for something herbal usually. Not really sure why, since perhaps a cup of rich dessert tea might be classified as more comforting, or even a really nice oolong. However, herbal is what I want when I’m not feeling my best, and I just happened to have one in my samples from LiberTEAS.

I was a bit worried about the hibiscus: I can handle some tart but it’s easy to overwhelm a blend. This is nicely balanced though, tart and a bit sour at the beginning of the sip from the hibiscus & rosehip, then minty and citrusy at the end. I’ve been pleased with the herbal blends I’ve tried from Marketspice so far and this one is no exception, though I think I’d like it a bit heavier on the mint and a tad less hibiscus—but that’s probably because I just really like peppermint.

This tea is the reason I ended up placing an order at English Tea Store, since I seem unable to resist teas with clever literature references in the name. Not that there’s a big market for that, but come on… Dorian Grey! A tea of fleeing beauty! Their “samples” are a full ounce so I ended up with quite a bit of a ton of different teas (I got 3 “sample packs”), but this is the one I’ve been wanting to try the most. It’s too hot for tea, really, but today that isn’t going to stop me!

I love earl grey and pretty much any variation of it (as long as it’s not, like, rooibos banana earl grey) but I have yet to have one with caramel. I was worried this would be a bit dessert-y instead of a nice afternoon tea, but the caramel is pretty light here. Sometimes caramel teas can get a little heavy, but the taste is quite soft and almost airy here. I found the same thing true of their chocolate mint—sweet teas, but not enough to push them into dessert territory. This looks like a very floral blend with tons of whole dried flowers (it’s so pretty!) but the floral tones are also quite soft and subtle. The bergamot is also there of course, since it is an earl grey after all! And the base is nice and malty, but not too overpowering and with no bitterness or astringency.

This strikes me as a very romantic cup, both because of the name and the wonderful melding of flavors. Soft, subtle, gentle, and warming. Definitely one of the best earl greys I’ve tried!

I drink a lot of iced tea every day even in colder months, and my consumption pretty much doubles in the summer. I really can’t afford to ice all the teas I’d like to since the bf and I go through about half of a very large pitcher a day—even some of the cheaper blends I like cold like Bangkok would cost an arm and a leg over the course of a hot NYC summer. So, I need a cost-effective tea to make, preferably one that I take no sugar in so I’m not ingesting a truckload of extra calories. I’ll be honest, I like most of my iced tea sweet, even blends that I wouldn’t sugar hot. To me, nothing screams refreshing like genmaicha, so when I saw a 400g packet of this in one of the asian groceries for $4 I absolutely had to get it. Ends up costing about 7 cents a day (15g per a pitcher cold-brewed), not bad at all! Plus no sugar… I can’t even imagine sugar in a straight genmaicha (though I did put it in the strawberry cheesecake one).

This is SO GOOD. Cool, refreshing, crisp and light from the green tea, earthy and nutty from the rice. I think cold brewing it brings out the green base a lot more, as hot this particular blend ends up being all nutty toastiness (which is nice and all, but I like it better with a bit more balance). Yup, definitely going to be drinking this alllll summer. It’s already 95, not really a great sign of things to come, but with the AC blasting and a glass of this in hand I just might survive.

EDIT: Seems like we actually went through an entire pitcher in a day since I just drank the last glass… seems like our cost will be raised to a whopping 15 cents a day!