Naked Teas Galore

Queued post, written August 19th 2014

MissB shared this one with me, although I’m afraid it’s not going to be something for me, really. It has spearmint in it, which I tend to find rather too toothpaste-y and also jasmine which I plainly just don’t like. So… But I shall try to keep an open mind!

I have to say, I don’t find it a very nice smell. It reminds me mostly of soap, which I believe must be because of the floral element. I’m not keen on flowers on my tea, and to be honest, I’m generally not keen on flower-smells in general. Not even actual flowers. Sometimes people around me can go ‘ooooh doens’t that smell lovely?!’ and I’ll sit quietly to myself thinking it stinks to high heaven. Geraniums fall into that category for me. We have some outside and they are forbidden entry to the house on account of reeking. Blech and blech again, says I!

So flower perfume? Frequently not going to score many points with me.

After a bit the flower perfume and soapy associations go away though and it smells more minty. Primarily spearmint, unfortunately, but I can also pick up the green tea and the rooibos underneath.

To my relief, I can’t actually taste the jasmine much. There is a bit of it around the edges that I don’t much like, but it’s not bad. There is a great deal of mint, particularly spearmint, but that was to be expected with a name like that.

Apart from that I can pick up the green and rooibos again, and also a bit of cinnamon, particularly on the aftertaste. Rose and rosehip seems pretty much absent, but that doesn’t bother me.

I’m getting a slightly messy feeling from this. Mint, floral and cinnamon. Not things I would have thought to put together. The combination strikes me as a bit odd. I could have taken mint and floral on their own (logically, I probably wouldn’t have liked it) or mint and cinnamon on their own. I could even imagine floral and cinnamon on their own. But all three together? It seems a little bit of a jumble to me.

It’s far more drinkable than I had anticipated, but I won’t cry over the fact that I can’t have it again.

Whoa. The dry leaf smells just like black cherry soda! Brewed, the scent is a rich, creamy, chocolate with a sheen of Maraschino cherry. But the flavor doesn’t quite live up to the scent. There’s no chocolate! There’s dryness and a heavy mouthfeel, but no particular taste until a lingering Maraschino cherry note comes in at the end. When the tea cools, it just tastes like flat black cherry soda. I have real black cherry soda in the fridge, thank you very much (Dr. Brown’s, of course). Although… maybe this would be a good candidate for a tea soda. Not an impressive showing so far.

Thanks for this one in your sale, MissB! I’ve been trying to try more of my teas I haven’t gotten around to yet, before I delve into the teabox, to get a better handle on what to add to the teabox. I will start on those soon! I thought this would be like Joy’s Teaspoon Almond Cookie (ESP emporium also has a blend similar/same). It is slightly, but not quite and not as those blends. Almond Cookie is mostly almonds, apple, cinnamon and beet root to give it a lovely pink color. This one has some other ingredients: brazil nuts, & cocoa nibs (with the apple, chocolate sounds like a weird combo.) The color of this cup was not pink, so I don’t think there is beet root. This blend tastes more apple than cookie/nutty so I don’t think it actually is “nutty enough”. I couldn’t really taste any chocolate in the blend, even using more than two teaspoons and steeping for quite a while. It really just seems like apple. It’s an okay blend, but the Almond Cookie is pure perfection!

dexter sent this one my way…this one was a straight up miss for me. It didn’t remind me of black forest cake or taste even remotely like it. It was just sort of there…hanging out. oh well! can’t win them all and i love trying ALL THE TEAS! except for that blergamot one that james is threatening to make and send me… ick.

Thanks Scheherazade for sending me this one.

I love nutty teas, especially when it’s the only flavour and it’s not masked by other flavours. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this terribly nutty. I could detect a hint of almond now and then, but for the most part it was just a sweet black tea.

Thank you Kat_Maria for sharing this with me. Unfortunately, I am finding this one a bit bland. It is mostly black base, though a bit of the cherry flavor does come out as it cools.

This is a pretty yummy tea. The cherry is pretty strong, kind of grenadine like and at times almost syrupy. I like the dry smell and the lingering rose and cherry taste. I don’t get so much chocolate but sometimes I got it more than others.

Backlog:

I was excited to try this tea from my Amoda January box because of the name. I was thinking the chocolate and cherry cake … and then I started reading the ingredients: carob? eww. Why carob? Why not cacao nibs or cacao shells? Carob is the cheap alternative to chocolate. I don’t like carob. I like chocolate.

So, after reading that this had carob in it, I was less excited. But I still tried it.

It’s not as bad as I thought it would be given that there’s carob in it. It’s actually alright. The chocolate notes are a little weak … that’s kind of a standard complaint of mine when it comes to chocolate teas though isn’t it … and even though it is kind of a standard complaint of mine, I can’t help but think it would be better if it had cacao shells or cacao nibs. The cherry notes come through nicely.

I like the rose and the juniper in this … they added a nice dimension of flavor to the cup.

This wasn’t what I expected, but it wasn’t all that bad. It could have been better, though.

My Hubby is into fruit teas and has been looking for a good blueberry. We had one a few years ago when we bought him a bag of loose leaf on a whim, it was a blueberry rooibos blend. The company now only makes their blueberry version w/a black base.

This one smells nice as a dry leaf… sweet and fruity, not sure I can pick out blueberry.

I wasn’t with him when he steeped it, so don’t know if he followed directions well. He drank about 3/4 of the cup and even tried a bit of sugar, which isn’t his normal, and he was ready to discard the last bit.

I offered to try it and see what he was tasting. To me, there was a berry flavor, but mostly hidden beneath the green tea flavor, and it seemed to have a thick mouth feel. I think this may be one of the first fruit flavored green teas that he has had. He has had plain greens at restaurants before, so he’s familiar with the flavor.

I’m going to hold off on rating this one until I have a chance to try it & be sure it is steeped correctly and see where we are after that.

He did try a blueberry blend from American Tea Room after trying this one and it was received much better (can’t get Steepster to let me review it, so I’ll try it later). Still not quite what he had before.. but closer.

Thanks MissB for sending these one our way for him to try!

Backlog (from this past week). Apparently I took poor notes the last time I drank this, and wasn’t much better this time, although I did write down that I was picking up a bit of an artificial cherry note that I found to be unpleasant. It looks like I previously thought this was ok, but I wasn’t overly fond this time. Oh well!

Second tea from Amoda’s January 2014 box. I didn’t take great notes on it, but what I do remember is a definite cherry flavour, different from cherry blacks I’ve had previously. I’m not a big fan of maraschino/candied cherries (which are the types of cherries I associate with black forest cake), but I’m not quite sure it tasted like that… anyhow, I’ll have to give it another shot and pay a bit more attention! At the very least, I remember it being ok? Haha.

Backlog:

I’m typically not all that excited to try “detox” teas or other functional type teas because, well, their functional. Functional usually = not tasty. But as far as functional teas go, this one wasn’t too bad. It actually turned out to be tastier than I expected it to be.

It didn’t really taste medicinal or overly herbaceous to me (which is usually what I expect from a functional tea like this.) The spices gave it more of an appealing spicy taste rather than a medicinal one.

A warm, zesty tisane with notes of herb. Not bad.

This was good, a little subtle in terms of not being overly sweet, and I loved the true flavor of the cherry, how it really was the specific cherry in a black forest cake smell. That said, something felt missing. I don’t know what though. I had it last night (I’ve developed a habit of trying new teas at night but not reviewing them until the next day which makes for shoddier notes I reckon but is worth it to be able to focus on reading and Buffy) and I can’t remember if I had any guesses then…perhaps body? Not quite thick or silky enough? Hm. Not sure.

100th Tasting Note!
I had a cup of this yesterday and was a little disappointed. I know I underleafed because I wanted to make sure I got a few cups out of the sample, but the flavour was very weak. I tried it again today and made sure I put in the correct amount of tea, and what a difference! I really enjoyed this. The cherry flavour is stronger than the chocolate but I think that is a good thing. I find cherry teas are fairly uncommon and it was nice to have a cherry black as opposed to a green. I don’t know if I would buy this again, but I might down the road if I’m craving a cherry black.

Backlog-this one was strange. And I think a bit too floral. I’ll have to do a more through review when I try this again, which may not be right away.

So this was in my Amoda box last month and I’ just finishing it up now. It’s sweet, has cherry flavouring and some other things, but I’m not enthused about this one guys.

Not really. It’s ok. It’s a happy face, but not a really happy face. There’s no tongue sticking out begging for another drop face here.

So there’s something in this that I just don’t care for. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s also the same flavour I noticed in Butiki’s Raspberry Truffle, and that I think was also in her Rhubarb Vanilla Ale or Ruby Pie. (one of them). It’s dark, a little bitter and … salty, for lack of a better word.

If I can ignore it, this tea is fine. If I can’t, it’s not so great. I’ll resort to a dash of milk then.

Still. I wish I could figure out what it is. Am I just sensitive to some random flavour? :P

I added some honey and drank it. It’s tea. Not particularly enamoured of the flavour, I really tasted the juniper berries. Hmm.

I steeped too long (how long? IDK. I was chopping onions). It’s a little sour.

Otherwise, not too shabby. It’s waking me up, at least.

Not sure I’d get more, but I’m glad I got to try it.

I haven’t been very much into green teas recently. Partially because, as I recently discovered, I had been steeping them at too high temperatures. I have recently corrected that and I am ready to go on a green tea adventure again.

This one has exceeded my expectations. It is so extremely blueberry-ish that I am not sure how they achieved that without artificial flavoring. This very strong blueberry flavor composes wonderfully with the green tea base and doesn’t seem to overpower it (somehow!). I love it!

So this was in Amoda’s box for January 2013, and I already have a huge bag of it, unopened. Why? Because few of Naked Teas Galore’s offerings have wowed me, and so I had actually planned to sell the bag before cracking it open. This sample was an excellent opportunity to try it out… even though really, I should try everything I’ve purchased! :$

There are a lot of rose petals in this tea, which is what initially turned me off. Having said that, the ingredient listing is fantastic, so I thought I’d try it just to see. Out of the bag it smells strongly of cherry, and a chemical one at that. Aie…

It smells more like black forest cake brewed however, and I’m VERY pleasantly surprised with the taste. Hot, there’s a stronger floral quality to it, and cold it’s more of a cherry cake. With a tiny bit of pure Stevia, this is really quite delicious!

Another MissB tea sample. This was was definitely as others described, just flavored water. No real taste of anything. Not gross, but not good either. The good news is my tongue didn’t do anything weird like it did with Birthday Cake last night, so it looks like red rooibos is fine for me.

Did I review this one already? I know I shared quite a bit with others, because this is a sipdown already. Ah well, it wasn’t that memorable.

I get zero red cake, zero cake, zero anything really. Oversteeped, overleafed, both in an attempt to really get the yum out of this – and actually saw a few chocolate bits in there. Yay? Well, I guess yay if I could taste them. This just tastes like flavored water.