Market Spice

I really like this blend. It’s a solid black tea that’s hard to oversteep. Great to throw in a mug on a busy day without worrying too much about timing.

Really middle of the road for me. I didn’t love the flavor that much. Where the Cinnamon Orange tea is weak but compensated with the orange and cinnamon, I felt this tea was weak but not compensated enough in the other flavors.

I love this tea—though it feels more like an herbal with a bit of tea in it than a flavored tea. Once I brewed it in my office and a colleague commented on it and admitted she’d rather meet in her office than stay in my office while it smelled so strongly. So, if you like cinnamon, go for it! If you’re not as into it this one might not be for you.

I’m greatly confused by the other tasting notes here, but here goes…

For an orange creamsicle flavor, I didn’t taste any creaminess or smoothness. Maybe my tea was old? It was already kind of unappetizing covered in white powder, which I assume imparts the cream flavor. The first sip is like a punch in the face: bitter citrus, astringent, short lasting. After the funky flavor disappeared (which it quickly did), the tea just tasted flat. Not even black, not even orange, just dead. After three cups, each lightly steeped, I threw away the 1 oz bag.

A sample from Miss B! Clearly I’m in a peachy mood at the moment, because yesterday’s sample pick was Tetley’s Bellini which is also peach-flavoured. Maybe because it’s warmer outside now and I’m thinking of summer? Anyway, I used 1 tsp of leaf for my cup, and gave it 3 minutes in boiling water, no additions. This is another blend that I think would be good iced, but it’s also pretty good hot so I’ve no complaints about today’s preparation method.

Peach is the main flavour, and it’s a wonderfully sweet, fuzzy, yet natural-tasting peach. Like peach juice, really. There’s a mild undertone of ginger lurking around in the background, but it doesn’t really deliver much of a kick. If anything, it just serves to emphasise how sweet the peach is. The one thing I did notice is that this tea doesn’t have much of an aftertaste – it seems to become very flat-tasting quite suddenly at the end of the sip, which I don’t think I’ve ever really encountered before.

On the whole, though, I enjoyed this one. It’s nice to find a peach tea that isn’t hopelessly artificial, and the ginger here is a welcome addition and not at all overpowering. A great cup on a hot day!

I finally got my hands on some more. And yes, the stuff I had before was rancid. This smells of oranges and cinnamon as you would expect. In fact, the entire office now smells of cinnamon and orange.

I’m much happier with this. I can’t say for sure if this will exactly be a staple, but I can easily see me drinking this when I’m in the mood. I bet by fall I will be buying it in quantity as my mood will fit the flavor profile better.

Oh, I should note, I have no clue what the base is. In fact the flavoring totally over power whatever the base might be.

I was going to try this again today. Opened the bag and the smell was downright revolting. I couldn’t bring myself to try brewing another cup. To add insult to injury, just opening the bag got the oils on my fingers. I’ve washed my hands three times now and the smell is still overpowering. Coworkers are complaining.

This can’t be right. This does not smell like cinnamon and orange. Maybe cinnamon and orange that have gone rancid and chemically. People talk of sweetness. There is no sweetness here. I ordered from Amazon. I wonder if it were old stock. Maybe I’ll get a chance to get down to the market this summer. If so, I’ll give it another try then and see if there is a difference.

I have to admit, I am a massive junkie when it comes to the flavors of orange and cinnamon. Seriously, I love them with a passion. So, when I heard of this tea, I assumed that it would be a number one favorite.

That said, something here is not right. I could kind of smell the orange and cinnamon but they weren’t very strong. Something else was, however. Something that seemed wrong.

No difference when brewed. That something else, something wrong flavor was quite dominant. I couldn’t taste the tea at all, which is sad as it could really use a base for the flavors to stand on, not that the flavor it had was worth the effort.

I’m going to try again tomorrow. See if its just me today. I really badly want to like this. Could I have a bad batch?

This was… dry and a bit tannic, medicinal. Generally I tend to like Marketspice so I was excited to try something new from them (I almost took this one from the Holidays TTB without tasting it) but it ended up really messing with my stomach :(

It definitely tasted like berries, but an unfamiliar berry, so I’m going to guess that’s the huckleberry flavor.

A sample from Miss B! It’s pretty much properly winter now, so I’m finding that I’m drawn more and more to warming teas, and particularly chai, once I get to work on a morning. I like how they can vary so much from blend to blend – it’s like there’s always something new to discover, even though there are usually strong similarities too. I used 2 tsp of leaf for my cup, and gave it 4 minutes in boiling water. I added a splash of milk. I’d love to try this one as a latte, but it’s western style for now because it’s just not really feasible to faff about heating milk at work. Sad as that is.

Anyway, the tea. The initial flavour is very gingery, which I’m enjoying. Sometimes ginger in chai can get a little lost amongst the stronger flavours, but it’s here in all its glory. There’s also a touch of corriander, which is no surprise as there were so many corriander seeds in my scoop. If anything, I thought it might actually be stronger because of that, but it seems like a pretty mild chai as they go. That’s good in one respect, because it allows the orange and vanilla to come through pretty confidently, and they’re nice flavours to have in a chai. This makes for a smooth, creamy, sweet chai with the slight sharpness of orange zest, a good warming kick of ginger, and a swirl of more generic “spiciness” floating around in the background. I enjoyed this one.

I made a pot of this because I’ve been drinking so much tea today but I really need to sit in one place and get stuff done. It’s not nearly as good as I remembered which is a total let down.

The first cup I had after around 4 minutes of steeping and the flavor of the spices was very weak and definitely overpowered by the tea. The second cup was closer to 6 minutes and the flavor of cloves is very strong and overall the “eggnog” flavor is much more robust and the tea is more of an aftertaste.

Generally it’s good, it could use some cream, but it’s not my favorite Eggnog tea.

Not that I really know what to do with it, but because it just looked like fun, we bought a couple ounces of maple syrup powder at the health food grocery. Not knowing what to expect strength-wise, I only used a little bit in the Rum Butter I bought yesterday; maybe a quarter-teaspoon.

At any rate, that was IT—-the “it,” the depth that the tea was missing on its own. Yum. Sweetened me up considerably for an afternoon of dealing with octogenarian bookkeeping and crop insurance issues. (Great googly moogly, agricultural paperwork is complicated. Salute the next farmer you see.)

K S, you can have the last laugh. I set my neck on fire while using an ear candle. Little scorched hair and a sore patch under my ear. (Chuckle not, lest ye be chuckled at.)

While I am swallowing my pride and dignity, I’m also swallowing a small cup of a new discovery at my current favorite local by-the-ounce place. $1.39. Who could resist?

The last time I had a butter rum tea (Stash, maybe?) the rummy part was too strong for me to enjoy it much. This is much, much milder; getting plenty of butterscotch-iness and not much rum. With that said, though, I’m thinking this will be a good base for milk and sugar or maybe some maple syrup. At this price, I can afford to experiment a little.

P.S. Our smoke detector works just fine.

Better than I remember it, but the creaminess overpowers the cranberry for me.

This tea has a robust, yet not overpowering flavor. I enjoy this blend best with one or two lumps of sugar and a bit of milk. It is best brewed loose, slightly under or at boiling (as are most black teas).

After all this time, I’m finally back home where I left practically all my teas behind. This means I get to continue exploring many new ones, including the grab bag (if you can call it that) I received from MissB a few months back.

This smells like sweet berries ‘n’ cream. Not an obvious cranberry, but more like a mixed berry, and combined with the creaminess, the scent evokes images of berry-flavoured frozen yogurt.

The base is a little strong, and the flavours are muted. It’s a vague sweetened cream.

Thanks for including this one, MissB! I regretted not taking the time to take a trip to Seattle and explore their tea companies while I was living on the west coast, so it’s nice to get a taste of something from there.

Our new little gourmet store (imaginatively called Gourmet’s ;) is an allowance trap baited with gadgets and gimcracks and candles and spice mixes and—-what I can’t pass by without stopping—a small but intriguing selection of bulk teas. At $1.39 to, oh, around $2.99 an ounce…one little bag can’t hurt!

This smelled yummy in the jar and came home with me. The dominating flavors are chamomile and vanilla, very sweet without that coating your tongue. (Didn’t pay very close attention to the ingredient list, but I think it is sans licorice, which is all right by me.)

It’s very similar to the Sleepytime Vanilla I brought home recently and enjoyed immensely, just lighter on the mint.

Here’s Hoping TTB (round 5)

Maybe I shouldn’t say this… but, I am quite confident I know how to recreate this with 99% accuracy because this seems to be the same lychee black tea that comes in bulk… let’s just pretend I didn’t say that.

I found it odd to pair rose with lychee, but this was pleasant. Not amazing and not bad, ideally I would drink this while I had some sort of bread item.

Out of all the teas I’ve never drank, this is the second to make my stomach hurt. Not sure why since it is just some black tea… but, it was no fun.

Thanks to GMathis, my best friend and I got to try this and compare it to Chery Almond from Stash Tea. We had it this morning for breakfast with a strawberry cloud pastry from The Fresh Market. What a breakfast, right?

These two teas are completely dissimilar. Stash is more highly flavored with predominantly almond, then cherry, then the smooth base tea, while this one is smooth black tea with cherry, then almond flavor. Both very nice, both very different. If you are a purist, the Stash would be too much for you, and if you love flavored tea this might be a little on the light side for you. I think this one may be more economical than the Stash.

Thank you, GMathis! It was a fun comparison!

Have been craving fruit teas this week. My body is craving spring sunshine in some manner, because the weather sure isn’t providing it!

This is nice. More black tea than berry: more berry-sweet than berry-tart and hibiscus heavy.

Correct or incorrect, my official pronouncement on what puts the “huckle” in a huckleberry is a cross between a blueberry and a blackberry. Market Spice Huckleberry was tasty this summer iced; had a little sharpish sourness at the end. It’s also quite tasty on an almost raw, cloudy October morning in a pottery mug. I put a spoonful of dried elderberries in the steep as well (immunity kick continues). Those remind me of raisins and shaved off the sharpness nicely. (P.S. Tazo, purring in a loaf on my lap, roused long enough to monitor this note for accuracy. He approves.)