Mountain Flower Tea

This tea is from my accidental Sips By box. The main ingredient here is sideritis/Greek mountain tea. I tried sideritis for the first time through the last traveling tea box, and I thought it was okay, but a bit too savory for me. It definitely tastes better combined with other ingredients like it is here. The main flavors are the sideritis and cardamom. I crushed a pod before putting it in my infuser to make sure I got the full flavors. I detect almost no hibiscus, but there was very little in the whole package, so I suppose that’s not surprising. I just would have expected more based on the name. Anyway, this tea tasted perfectly fine for what it is. It’s just not the sort of thing I’d personally want again. And for once Sips By provided a decently large amount, amusingly.

Ok, this is one from Sips by that I have been avoiding. I have a vague memory of trying plain mountain tea before and not liking it.

The tea itself is beautiful to look at. Fuzzy green budded stems mixed with whole yellow flowers. Petals and chamomiles stems. Lovely. Though the aroma doesn’t really appeal to me. I smell the chamomile, but it’s mostly covered by an odd minty herbal scent. And something that reminds me of apples that are starting to ferment.

I used 2 tablespoons and steeped them for 7 minutes, as the packet advised 5-10. It comes out to a medium yellowy green. There is a new sort of pungency to it that makes me a little nervous. Although, it doesn’t translate to the flavor. This mostly tastes like a disappointing chamomile. It doesn’t give me that clean, soothing feeling that pure chamomile does. There are apple notes and they’re ok, but this just isn’t what I want it to be.