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Increasing the steeping time and temperature helped to improve the flavour somewhat, but I’m still left feeling like the green tea base is rather on the bland, flavourless side. It’s not bitter like some low-quality green teas can be, it’s just not really there at all, I guess. The berry flavours mixed with a faint touch of rose are nice and pleasent, and I think they could be even better with a bolder tea base. It’s almost a shame really.

I made this up with half hot water, half milk to make it a bit thicker since the last David Rio chai I had (made with just water) I found to be too watery. The end result is surprisingly fruity-tasting – mango isn’t normally something I’d associate with chai, but in this case they go quite well together. The spices in the chai are rather tame, partly so they don’t drown out the fruit I guess, but I can still tell that this is tea is a chai. It’s not too sweet and I think adding the milk was a good move because it made the mix rich and creamy without adding too many extra calories. Yummy!

This tea is absolutely loaded with strawberry bits, which made me a happy tea-drinker. I’ve never eaten strawberry zabaglione before (it’s an Italian thing, right?) so I can’t really say how accurate it is in that regard, but I can say that it is one delicious cuppa.

The strawberry shines through the flavour of the black tea – it’s deliciously fruity and lightly sweet with hints of creamy vanilla. I brewed this cup up fairly light because I was drinking it plain so the whole thing is a little on the mild side, but I bet it would be awesome stronger with some milk.

The resteep at 5 minutes is lighter but I can still distinctly taste the strawberries in there.

This is another tea I picked up courtesy of the Travelling Teabox – I like the idea of flavoured oolongs and I’d had my eye on this particular one for awhile.

I love almond-flavoured foods and drinks and this tea doesn’t disappoint. The scent is reasonably subtle but the tea itself is quite flavourful. I’d liken the almond taste more to almond extract rather than just the plain nuts, and I think it mixed well with the roasted, slightly earthy flavours of the dark oolong base.

This is a really interesting-looking tea with the leaves tightly rolled into thin, little sticks an inch or two long. I couldn’t exactly measure out a teaspoon with my little scoop so instead I just used six of the ‘sticks’ assuming that would be enough.

The description was right when it described this tea as bitter – wow is it ever! I was surprised that something brewed up so clear (only a few shades darker than water) could be so pungent. Maybe I just used too much tea from the start. The bitterness isn’t as bad after the first couple of sips and I can taste a bit of a cool, mint-like quality to it – it gives the tea very clean flavour, too bad it’s almost on par with industrial-strength cleaners.

Normally I’d resteep the leaves, but I don’t think I could stomach another cup. I’ll try using less of the tea next time and see if that help. But for now – bleh!

Meh, it tastes like black tea with very little strawberry or currant flavouring. I love the smell of this tea, it’s deliciously sweet and fruity, but it doesn’t seem to transfere over to its taste.

So my first impressions aren’t all that good, but I’ll meddle around with the steeping a bit before I actually rate this tea.

De-cupboarding this tea aswell. I’m making an effort to drink up all the little samples and almost-finished packages of tea.

This was a really nice Japanese green – I’ll have to check out Mellow Monk in the future.

You know, the name of this tea was a big part of the reason why I got it. I mean, grasshopper tea? With white chocolate? Come on, how can that not be awesome?

It smells like creme de menthe liqueur mixed with white chocolate – very mouth-watering (I love white chocolate). At first the tea mostly tasted like mint and honeybush but when it cooled a bit the sweet choclolate and the vanilla were more easily apparent. The result is a lightly sweet, creamy tea with just the right amount of cool, refreshing mint. It’s a unique and delicious blend that’s another winner from 52Teas.

This is a really interesting mixed-bag of ingredients, most of which I wouldn’t think of blending together in a tea. Looking at my little sample package I can’t really see much actual yerba mate so I’m not sure why it’s mentioned in the title like its the star of the show or something. The long peppers weirded me out at first until I looked up what they were – they look really similar to birch or alder catkins to me.

The directions suggest boiling up the tea with milk like a traditional-style chai, but I don’t think there’s enough tea in the package to make up the ‘2 tbsp’ mentioned in the recipe. So I’m having it plain and I’m enjoying it just fine this way. There’s no black tea in this mix to give the tea a bitter or tannic flavour, so it doesn’t particularly need milk to cut it.

There isn’t much yerba mate to be tasted either – I think the pu-ehr and the chai spices end up making up the bulk of this tea’s flavour. The pu-ehr itself is quite mild (when you consider how earthy they can get) but it’s distinct and it mixes well with the bitter-chocolate flavour of the raw cocoa nibs. The chai part is there too – I can taste the cinnamon most clearly, but cardamom and cloves are hanging around too and the long pepper gives the tea a subtle bite. And the coconut gives it all a nutty finish that manages to work for me despite the mish-mash of components this tea is made up of.

The dry tea smells green and spinach-y with hints of something sweet and flowery. The taste – oh the flavour! This is what a milk oolong is supposed to taste like! It’s almost like drinking smooth, sweet cream rather than tea. I can also taste some very faint floral notes – the tea description says orchid, but the flavour suggests something more like honeysuckle to me.

This tea comes dangerously close to being as good as the milk oolong I had from The O Dor – which officially ranks as The Best Tea Ever in my books. That tea had a thickness and butteriness that this tea doesn’t seem to have, but other than that I think this one matches up.