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I reordered this tea a while back. It didn’t taste very good at first. I’ve found that some fresh teas need time to sit and age for the flavors to develop and was hoping that would be the case for this one. It sat for several months (eight to be exact) and it’s never developed into the tea I recall loving. It’s not terrible, but the sip is tart in a very distracting way. Did they over orange it? is it a different base? Something is different. I’ll have to add cream and see if that improves the situation for the rest of the 4oz bag.

Just picked up my last tea order of 2022. Almost feels like cheating to get new tea in a new year that doesn’t go on my totals for the year!

I’m not a huge fan of oolongs, but this sounded interesting. It smells very anisey and that is the dominating flavor in this cup. The coriander comes out in the finish a little where it turns a little more savory. The oolong seems to blend well with the anise, to the point that it’s hard for me to separate the two in my mind. This is very well balanced while being complex and is interesting, but it’s not jumping out at me right now either. I’m hoping this one grows on me.

Ran across this tea shop near where I was staying in Lisbon. I was so excited to find a Portuguese tea company and rushed when I stopped by that I didn’t even look at the logo on their sign out front. When searching for a company website I found the Yelp page that pointed out how racist the sign is with old unflattering caricatures of Chinese and African men. Suddenly something that didn’t even register when I had my tea goggles on came into clear focus. I have regrets.

The tea shop it’s self was pretty inside. The woman who worked there looked like she wanted to be anywhere else. They didn’t have a large selection of tea (maybe 8 blends), but I chose one green and one black tea that sounded and smelled interesting. They were 15 euros each, which is a lot for a moderate amount of tea packaged in a plastic pouch that doens’t lock in flavor and is then stuffed into an oversized cardboard tube packaging. I had to ditch the tubes in Portugal to fit them in my luggage.

Dry, this tea has a very rich red berry scent. Very heavy, like chocolate covered berries, but without the chocolate, just the depth. Once steeped I took a few sips and was really disappointed. It seemed weakly flavored compared to the scent and had this almost tart hibby like tang at the end of the sip. I kept sipping, mostly because I’m stubborn and it paid off! The flavor starts to build the further I get into this cup. The sip is way more perfume like and there is a flash of something alkaline, but the finish is really nice. The deep berry flavor comes out again and lingers. I don’t know that I would pick this out as Port flavored (which was the description that attracted me) as Port has a much more raisiny profile IMO, but that depth of rich fruit is there.

Would I buy this again? No. Not at all. It’s weird that the company has no online presence for their only eight teas, making me think it’s a front for something else. Also… racism doesn’t taste good in tea, or anywhere else for that matter. I feel like there are way more interesting teas flavored with rich berries that taste better when sipping and are a fraction of the price. My beloved French teas aren’t usually this expensive and if they were as expensive they would taste phenomenal or have something very unique and special about them. This feels like a store trying to be really fancy with mediocre products.

Finally got around to day 24 of my advent. It’s the last one that isn’t a rooibos and I don’t have it in me to drink rooibos right now. I steeped this cup, took a few sips and dumped it. It was boring generic spice, disappointing and I needed a comforting cup to start a hard day in one of the most challenging months of my life. Advents are always a fun and good way to discover new tea brands and expand my horizons. Sometimes I find companies that I end up loving, like David’s and Theodor and sometimes I learn that I’m not that into a company like Dammann Freres or Brutaliteas. This one falls into that later category of just not my thing.

This smells deeply chocolatey and very much like a rich brownie. The flavor in the sip is a little muted and that is amplified as the cup cools, but the finish is where it is at. It tastes very heavily of chocolate and I can totally picture brownie. I’m liking this chocolate flavoring better than a lot of other tea companies attempt at chocolate. I bet this tea would taste fantastic as a latte! I might try that with my second bag.

Not into this one. There is something I don’t like about the sip. It’s a weird flatness that almost comes off as a salt free broth sensation with the dull woody flavor of rooibos. The finish leaves me with that dry rooibos mouth feeling, but I do get the apple cider flavors showing up and lingering.

This tea is really oily. Lots of cinnamon. It has a cinnamon stick taste in the sip and a dried and powdered cinnamon taste in the finish with a light almost baking soda like sensation flashing by. The rooibos flavor isn’t bothering me here! There is a sweetness to this tea from the licorice root. There is also partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil in this, which is a first in a tea for me and also a HUGE turn off. I try to avoid all partially hydrogenated oils in my diet. Maybe that’s what is floating on the top of my tea. I feel like I can pick out the toast part if we are comparing this to the similarly named breakfast cereal. I’m getting a little bit of rooibos dry mouth in the finish, which I dislike. Flavor wise this tea is enjoyable, but the ph oil is a dead stop for me.

This is hitting a little flat for me, especially at the start of the sip. There is something extra artificial about the raspberry and it seems a little sour. It relies a little too much on being perfumey and is a really hard flavor to pull off in a tea. The fudge part is just background noise and the caramel part is really hard to pick out. Adding sugar just made the entire thing worse. Not into this one.

This is chai like for sure. I get the cinnamon cardamom flavors pretty clearly. The caramel part comes across as a richness in both scent and flavor, supporting the chai which is the main player. I drank most of this cup without sugar and liked it, but decided to add some to the last third of my cup and I don’t think it adds anything good to it. There is a sourness in the finish and something distracting in the sip with sugar. I can’t really pick out the honeybush. If the price point were lower I’d buy more of this to add another option to my limited non caffeinated options.

I gave up on my advent tea a few days back. Now I get to focus on Xmas teas! I got the small subscription to Almost. This is a branching off from the Universal Yums box from the same company that we have had a subscription to off and on for the past three years. In that box they pick a different country for each box and choose snacks and treats that are well known in that country or are unique to that country. That subscription has entertained the entire house! When they decided to do tea, I was really excited. The thing for this subscription is they pick a favorite dessert maker of theirs, have samples sent to their tea blenders and try to match the flavor of the tea to the sweet. I thought it would be six treats from different companies that the teas were blended to match per month, but it’s six sweets from one bakery. The tea is on the pricey side, but fun for a gift. The small subscription is two tea bags of each of the six tea. The bigger one is five bags of each of the six flavors. For this mix they have two blacks, two rooibos, one puerh and one honeybush. They come in pyramid bags without a string.

This smells really good dry, steeping and in the cup. The instruction said to use boiling water, I ignored it. The flavors were a little more intense when first steeped and seem to loose a little of the magic as I write about the tea and let my cup cool. The sip is very blond brownie like, but light. It’s a little buttery and a touch underwhelming. Then the finish arrives and the brown butter richness really kicks in. I’m betting this would taste amazing with a little sweetener to round out the flavors and make it super brownie like. I think I can pick up on the bourbon part, but that is one of the flavors that eludes me a little unless it’s overpowering. I’m having a hard time picking out the puerh on it’s own. I think it’s making for a nice depth to the cup without standing out with that earthy damp flavor that puerh has. Adding sugar amplifies the flavors! It’s making whole thing more rich, especially the butter part. There is something distracting at the start of each sip, but it passes so quickly that I can’t pin point it. The sugar really makes it more decadent and full.

There is a little pamphlet that comes with the tea giving info on the maker of the dessert these are based on and it’s tempting to order some of the brownies to see how well they match the tea. They have a little QR code and I wish it took you to a page with all the flavors of brownies represented in these teas in a premade sample pack. It looks like they have a lot of seasonal and rotating flavors and two of the flavors of corresponding brownies were not available. If this box picks up in popularity it would be an interesting way to cross sell desserts and teas between companies.

I’m really enjoying this cup. I’d gladly drink another cup any time, but the price point of $30 for 30 sachets if I wanted to buy more is a little on the pricey side. If I really loved one of their teas I’d be more likely to consider buying more if it was 15 for $15 or if they had a mix and match $1 per bag with a minimum of 10-20 bags. As it is, I think two servings in the subscription to try out a new tea is perfect for this tea fanatic.