Metropolitan Tea Company

Many thanks to Lady Londonderry for this, her namesake tea :)

We had a huge meal out and when I got home I was craving a light, summery, but black flavored tea that would be nice with milk and sugar. Most of my dessert teas feel wintery to me, and I was rejecting each flavor left and right before coming upon this one. Ah, lemon and strawberry — this could work!

Once brewed, I tasted a medium bodied tea with a sort of sweettart flavor. It didn’t read lemon or strawberry per se to me, but definitely fruity. Really nice, and just what I was in the mood for. Summer afternoon perfection.

I picked this one up at the Bottom of the Cup tea room in the French Quarter in New Orleans. I’m pretty sure that this is the same blend, though Metropolitan Tea Company was never mentioned, heh. The cherry flavor was a little strong when I drank this hot this morning, but the big pitcher I made of it iced this afternoon really hit the spot! I suspect the same will be true of the three flavored blends I picked up at the Spice and Tea Exchange. I will say that the packaging at the Spice and Tea exchange is a lot more attractive and professional looking. They use 1 oz ziplock bags with pretty labels. This one was in a sealed cheaper looking bag with a cheapo looking label. The teas inside are similar in quality though :)

I just remembered the girl said the store gets their stuff from Metropolitan, so the tea reveiw below actually belongs to this tea. Just fyi

Purchased this one at the tea meet in Victoria yesterday. :) Mine is loose-leaf.

It’s a nice black tea, but the maple flavour is really mild. I was hoping for a stronger maple flavour. Oh well. The tea has a good black base, takes a little milk and sugar well, and I will definitely drink it all. It’s not likely I will repurchase, though.

1 heaping tsp in 12 oz water. (I couldn’t find brewing instructions on this one. Hmm.)

of the 14 teas i tasted today, this was among the top 3. the bergamot was very subtle but the lavender was just right.

hm, i wonder how it will turn out if i mix it with some EG?

i like it but buy it? maybe. will have to try other lavender EGs :)

thanks to Azzrian for this sample!

This tea was getting old, and I drank the last of it today. It served well, through years of singing, to clear throats.

subtly nutty?
light yellow liquor

will update on resteep

MTC’s teas are very hit or miss with me. When I first got into tea, I placed a huge order with them because the prices seemed too good to be true. And, of course, I found myself a bit disappointed with a few of their teas I had ordered. But I came away from the experience with a lesson learned.

MTC black teas are super easy to oversteep. I steeped this for about 2 minutes and there was still astringency, even with brown sugar. It has an alcoholic taste to it but it must be decent enough because I found I gulped down the cup pretty quickly without even realizing it. It offers more than one resteep, but I found that I only liked it around the third steeping (more flavour, much less bitterness).

Rating: 45.

My favorite tea

Holy smokes Batman! Strong tea is strong. Now that I got that out of my system, I have to say that I did only steep this for two minutes as per short steep suggestion via Indigobloom. I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect because I never heard of Ice Wine before I got on steepster.

When it was hot, it smelled so grapey, like the big, fat red seedless grapes. It tasted really tangy and a little overpowering. So I put a big tablespoon of sugar in my mug and then dumped the rest into a glass of ice. Voila! An iced ice wine tea.

It actually tastes pretty good iced. It is still tangy, but the sugar cut out the slight bitterness I was tasting. From what I can tell the black tea base is smooth. And instead of the overwhelming concord grape jelly taste, I am getting a light fruitiness out of it.

Yep, this would probably be a tea that the wine drinkers I know would adore.

High point of the whole week: luncheon at Savannah Tea House Nashville with two of my favorite people on the planet. They private label Metropolitan Tea goodies there. This just sounded fun. Huckleberry. It’s just fun to say! Good black tea; the berry flavor was blackberry-like with a slightly sharper uptick at the end.

With butternut squash soup and a ham-apricot panini, I was able to relax a little, laugh a lot, and just bask in the blessing of getting to be with some long-lost friends.

Just finished this today. I made it a bit stronger than normal. 2.5 tsp for 16oz. It definitely was a strong tea. But, it was delicious and I’m glad to have had it.

I’m probably going to stick with my Canadian Breakfast though.

Well, this is pretty much a SIPDOWN at this point! Only a tiny bit remains of it which means it’ll be mixed with another delicious tea!

Again, really love this one. I overdid it with the steeping today so it was a bit more bitter and stronger than I normally would have gone for… And part of me was wishing I had had my Sugar and Spice tea from Davidstea instead. I think I’m enjoying the flavoured teas just a bit more right now. Must just be a phase. hahah

Anyways, probably would purchase again,… maybe… I think I like my Canadian Breakfast and the Irish Breakfast better though.

I forgot how nice this one is. 3min steep, 1.5tsp for 12oz cup. Way too much milk added, but I don’t care. It’s the perfect tea for this morning. It’s sweet and comforting for me this morning and a great way to relax and almost celebrate our roommate moving out after a year of living with us. Him being here was far too long of an amount of time for my husband and I to handle, and I am overjoyed that he’s moved on. Now I feel like my life can start again.

And, the nice thing is too, I’ve got tea that I thought was suppose to be delivered Thursday being delivered today!! The mailman can’t get here fast enough! lol
A VERY Good way to start the week.

This is my first ever English Breakfast tea! For shame!

As I mentioned in one of my last postings, I’ve been struggling with sinus headaches. They have been brutal. I’m not too sure what’s going on. I’m wondering if I need to vaccum my house. Maybe the cat fur is getting out of hand? Haha and maybe it’s the strong smells that seem to be everywhere around me right now.

Anyway, I went to get an Orange Pekoe and I couldn’t find one that I was looking for, so I decided to give this one a try.
Smell is very similar to an OP. It was little to no smell or ‘perfume.’ I actually really enjoy the smell of this one dry. It is so deep and almost dark smelling (if that makes sense). I thought I might as well give it a try.
Taste… well, I should have steeped it for 3mins not the 4:30 that I did. I’m finding it to be quite strong even after a little milk and sugar was added. It’s got a very strong black tea taste to it.
It is a nice option though to have. I love my OP and this is very very similar to it. Next time, I’ll just go a bit ‘lighter’ on the steeping time, and I think that’d make it perfect.

But I do like that for taste-wise, it’s an almost neutral flavour

Once again I was lured into the hibiscus teas. I didn’t realize when I bought this one that it had that in it. (I was too excited about the smell).
This one isn’t even as close to as bad as the last one for hibiscus though. I am finding that the balance of mango to hibiscus is definitely manageable. I’m happy to report, I’m actually noticing the mango flavour!
I have a different mango tea that I do enjoy more, so realistically I probably wouldn’t buy this one again, but it is a nice tea to try.

I hate hibiscus. I’m ready to fully admit that the stuff needs to go.
I bought this yesterday when I was out with my mom. There’s an amazing little shop only about 20mins from place that has a TON of teas. I had never heard of this one before, so I thought, hey, why not give it a try?
I love the smell of it. COCONUT!!! LOVED the smell. That’s what hooked me!
Taste… :( The poor coconut, apple, pineapple goodness was lost behind the hibiscus. I don’t know if I made it too strong or if I let it steep too long, but the hibiscus was too much. I know this is going to sound weird, but I’m wondering if it’s hard or easy to take all the hibiscus out of it? I’m going to try it again… :(

Thank you TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this tea. I chose it because when I opened the box she sent, this was the tea I could smell. Mostly I grabbed it because I didn’t want to take the chance that keeping it around would influence the flavors of any of my other teas. I don’t generally keep a lot of Lapsang Souchong Teas here… with the exception now of my unsmoked Lapsang Souchong which doesn’t pose the same smokiness issue.

This is SMOKY. A few years ago, something this smoky in my cup would have elicited moans of displeasure as well as me dumping the cup out before really taking a sip… I might take a teeny sip and then out with the rest of it. But, I somehow have learned to like Lapsang. I do wish though, that I had rinsed this before the infusion. I think it would have given it a not-so-smoky and almost musty kind of flavor.

Under the strong smoky flavor, the sweet caramel notes are tasted. It is a pleasant enough tea, I think it would have been better if I was not quite so sleepy when it came to infusing it this morning so that I could have thought to do a quick rinse. As it is, it is just a wee bit too much.

I like my iced wines to be a bit sweeter and stronger. However if you don’t then you may like this one. No astringency, no bitterness, there is that sparky feeling in the mouth like other ice wines I have had. Just not quite enough of a punch for me :)
Thank you Indigobloom for ANOTHER sample! :)