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This tea wasn’t anything special hot so I gave it a shot iced. Unfortunately the same steeping time/temp was too much for it and the result was too strong and ‘green’ tasting without much mango flavour. I’ll give it a do over and dial things down to see if that improves matters.

This is an interesting take on the traditional earl grey tea. The orange and lemon flavours give the tea a tangy zip without the added pungency of bergamot. It goes surprisingly well with milk – though the result is a bit lighter than the traditional cuppa of earl grey in my opinion. It’s a nice tea to drink on a gorgeous, sunny morning like this one. _

I give this tea a ‘meh’. It’s not bad for a red rooibos-based tea but it’s not spectacularly good either. I can sorta taste the coconut and a creaminess that that might or might not the be the macadamia nut, but none of the flavours really shout out to me; they’re there but at a background level.

Okay so I steeped it a little less and this time the juniper berries came across a lot less pungently and I can taste the other spices as well this time now that they aren’t being drowned out. There are also some fruity hints – not just the citrus peel but of berries aswell.

Huh, I guess I never did rate this tea. Well this is my last cup before I send the rest off in a swap. It’s not a bad tea, but since I first tried it I’ve had the chance to sample other silver needle teas and found them to be superior to this one. Wegman’s Silver Needle in particular I found to be sweeter and less vegetale with more of a nuanced flavour than this one has.

This tea smells exactly like the Butterscotch Lifesavers I used to love to eat when I was a kid. The buttered rum flavour isn’t weak but it blends naturally with the flavour of the black tea. It’s sweet but not too sweet – though I imagine adding some honey or agave nectar would really make the flavour pop.

I was attracted to this tea by how unusual it is – saffron is an expensive substance and rarely used in teas. Regardless of how much was actually in there, I was curious enough to give this a try. It has a nice fruity smell and if the tea doesn’t taste as fruity at least it doesn’t have that generic tropical fruit flavour either. There’s a hint of sweetness from the mango and a slightly bitter herbal flavour which might or might not be the saffron mixed with the green tea. It’s a pleasent combination that manages to be something other than the usual bagged fare.

It might only be so-so as a matcha, but I’ve found that it’s actually quite nice mixed in with a fruit smoothie.

Has it really been twenty days since I last made a tasing note? 0_o The usual end of semester stuff has been causing me a lot of stress and I haven’t really been trying any new teas. This is another sample I got from Meghann I believe. I don’t get to try many Rishi teas as they charge an arm and leg for shipping to Canada so it was a nice surprise when I was rummaging around for a random tea to try and dug this out of my Cupboard.

Despite the hibiscus pauses to shudder it really isn’t all that tart – or at least not beyond what I’d expect out of a fruity-tasting tea like this. And TeaEqualsBliss is right, it does sort of taste like (warm) KoolAid although the white tea also manages to impart an interesting light, floral aftertaste. This is another tea I’d like to experiment with having iced I think.

Trying it again iced, this time with a longer initial steeping time. This round I can taste much less of the tangy hibiscus and more of the white tea and the exotic fruit flavours so I think these parameters are a good way to go for iced tea.