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It’s my birthday so I figured that called for a special tea, so I brewed up the last of my Lavender Basics oolong. Parting is such sweet sorrow and all that. I’m still on a quest to find a suitable replacement for this one, since the company is out of business.

I didn’t think I’d be able to, but I can actually taste the differences in this brew from a standard mint tea. The tisane doesn’t have nearly as much of the tongue-numbing menthol taste as peppermint tea has for instance. It has a fuller, sweeter flavour with a bit of a green taste.

I suppose not all mint teas are created equal after all. ;)

I’m reviewing this tea for Mike at It’s All About the Leaf (http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/). It’s a great website with some truly excellent reviews of teas and tea-related products, so you guys should go check it out if you get the chance. :)

The tea is fairly unremarkable in terms of appearance and scent – it doesn’t smell stale and the leaves are fairly whole so it seemed to have been handled well from that standpoint.

The flavour is fairly standard for a green tea. It’s on the lighter side of the spectrum and it has some vegetal hints, but I think I can also pick out the traditional Darjeeling muscatel flavours, these are much more muted from what they’d be in their black tea form. It also lacks a Darjeeling black tea’s astringency and I noticed a sweetness creep into the tea as it cooled.

The resteep is lighter and greener-tasting, without the faint muscatel notes. So nothing fantastic or special.

India has historically been known only for its black teas and it’s only relatively recently that they’ve diversified. The accumulated centuries of knowledge about growing green teas in China and Japan can’t be learned in a night but these guys have given it a good effort.

This was included as part of a mixed box so thankfully I don’t have any more – otherwise I’d be pretty pissed if I just spent money on a whole box of this tea.

The tea has a faintly sweet vanilla smell, but I noticed that it also has this weird chemical odor to it. I wonder if that was left behind by the decaffeination process? The taste isn’t much an improvement. It’s a thin, weak brew (though admittedly I didn’t steep it as along as I could have) and what little flavour that is there is artificial and harsh-tasting. Next time I’ll pass on this one.

Holy giant rose-buds Batman!

That’s the first thing I see when I opened the tin – these large, well-formed rose buds that haven’t lost their colour or their scent – proving that they’re relatively fresh. They’re so big that at first the tea seems to be all roses – but that’s mostly because the other components are so much finer – green rooibos, curled little tea leaves, and small fruit bits. The tea does smell like roses, but it’s roses with something rich, fruity, and tropical-ish mixed in with it – a very appealing scent in my opinion, I could just sit here sniffing the tin. :D

The rose isn’t over-powering in the tea, though I think it’s very much the star of the show. I’ve never had plain green rooibos, so I’m not quite sure what it’s supposed to taste like as opposed to red rooibos, but I can tell you that I’m not getting any of the woody-earthy flavour that I usually associate with rooibos teas. What I can taste is that exotic, sweet flavour from the mango pieces and a tiny bit of a citrus zing. Despite the white silver needles and the jasmine pearl this tea is supposedly decaffeinated, though it doesn’t have that thin, watery taste characteristic of many decaf blends. Of course, apart from a few hints here and there of jasmine (mostly hidden by the rose) I’m not really tasting much actual tea at all! So it’s more like a herbal infusion, which is fine by me, I need a better selection of ‘nighttime’ teas in my cupboard.

It’s an interesting mix and maybe it’s the rose, but drinking it makes me a feel a bit girly – in a good way. ;) I don’t think I’ve ever some across a blend with a flavour combination like this, and it’s perhaps a little ‘busy’ but it’s great for someone like me who enjoys a bit of variety now and then.

A lowered steeping time and a bit of milk to smooth out the taste of the Ceylon base still don’t really help develop the strawberry flavour all that much. This still mostly tastes like a typical Ceylon black tea with a bit strawberry at the end of each sip.

The tea is more chocolately-tasting after a longer steep – or rather, caroby-tasting as I can usually pick up a slight difference in the taste of the two – though I’m a big fan of both.

I added milk, which I’m not usually wont to do with herbal-based teas, but this one is definitely complimented by it; I think it’s the carob and the malt in the blend.

I added a bit of dried mint from my garden to this cup as it was steeping. It makes an already refreshing tea a bit more refreshing – which is muchly appreciated in this hot, dry weather. It would probably make a good iced concoction as well.

First of all, a huge thank you to LiberTeas for giving me some of her stash of this currently-unavailable tea.

The tea is fascinating to look at – dark green, shiny, needle-like leaves of sencha and tiny little dried sakura blossoms still bright pink in colour. The tea has that fresh, grassy sencha smell, but I can also smell a delicate floral, slightly cherry-ish, scent.

The cherry blossom flavour could stand to be a bit more prominent, although I like that the tea isn’t tasting like fake cherry cough-syrup. It’s just a very natural, delicate, floral/fruity hint at the start of each sip. It’s actually easier to taste it in the second steep when it isn’t competing with the slightly unami flavour of the sencha.

I was worried that adding milk would destroy this tea, but it actually seems to hold up to it fairly well. It takes off the bitter edge that the plain tea has, which I really appreciate, and it gives the tea flavour reminiscent of an earl grey with some jasmine added to it.