Nelson's Tea

Ha I don’t like this herbal matcha from my subscription box. The flavor is so strong and sharp and savory. I mixed it with milk and lots of sugar, but nothing could dilute it enough. The texture is super gritty, which isn’t fun to drink. It’s a little spicy and bitter. I just don’t understand the existence of this tea.

The peach is definitely a fake sort of peach, but it’s decently refreshing cold. It reminds me of the celestial seasonings peach tea I used to drink pretty often. This one is pretty straightforward. Fake peach and nothing else.

The artificial peach scent here is super strong and a little off-putting. The flavor is mostly that peach flavoring, along with fake cream flavor. It was just all too fake for me, and the tea underneath was a bit light.

The coconut tastes a little off, which is a shame since this tea is only a few months old. I mostly taste coconut plus a bit of turmeric. I can tell that there are other spices, but I couldn’t say what’s there individually. This tea is all right, but really not my sort of thing. The puerh oolong base isn’t for me.

This smells remarkably like pb&j! The flavor is quite murky, but I refrigerated it and added sugar and milk, which helped. Now it sort of does taste like pb&j, mostly just the jam. Well not jam exactly, but fake fruit. And the rooibos and milk approximate the bread. And there’s a hint of peanut. This one is fun, but not perfectly executed. The second time I had this, it just tasted like murky rooibos.

This was a bit fake, but it was okay cold. I don’t know that I got cherry or almond specifically, but I tasted an alcoholish flavoring and some fake fruit. Ha it doesn’t sound like high praise, but it was all right. The second time I had this, it was mostly just plain rooibos, but I was into it as a refreshing cold tea.

My first two cups of this were sort of murky and boring. For my third try, I underleafed and made sure to keep the steep time short. That led to a much tastier, well-balanced tea. The mint is gentle and combines pleasantly with everything else. It’s still a boring flavor profile that I wouldn’t choose if it hadn’t come in the subscription box.

For an herbal chai, this is pretty hearty. I taste some well-balanced spices. It’s all quite warming and pleasant. I think the second time I had this, I accidentally got too much allspice in the steep because it turned out a lot less balanced. I guess each cup will be a bit different with lots of whole spices in there. I’ve received this tea twice in my Nelson’s subscription, and it’s very drinkable, but not special.

This tastes mostly like artificial fruit flavoring. Combined with the rooibos, it wasn’t that pleasant. I get maybe some almond in the aftertaste. It was okay cold, I just wish it weren’t so sharply artificial!

Hot, this was too fruity. Once this cooled, it really did taste like butterscotch! It’s cloying in just the right sort of way. I kind of can’t get over how accurate this tastes. It stays a bit fruity, but with milk and sugar, it’s such a tasty butterscotchy dessert.

This smells incredibly accurate, but the first time I had it, it mostly tasted like bark? I tasted a bit of sparkly root beer flavor, but it was drowned out by the dirt, which is so frustrating. The second time I had this, I did a shorter steep and it tasted much better. I could taste the minty freshness and only a tiny bit of dirt. I wouldn’t buy this again over the many better root beer teas, but it was refreshing cold.

The mint is pretty bright and clear, and the fruitiness is light and juicy. It’s like a watermelon mint candy. It makes such a refreshing cold cup of tea, and the resteep is nice too. It’s also a light blend, so my 2 oz of this made a lot of cups of tea. Just have to be careful to keep the steep short since mint can get a bit murky, and it’s extra sad when that happens with a good blend. This is probably my favorite tea from my Nelson’s subscription so far.

I’m drinking this cold, and somehow it doesn’t really taste like much. I get a bit of a berry flavor, and I also taste some of the bland planty base. It’s all quite weak though. Nelson’s has some decent herbal teas, but none of the caffeinated ones have worked for me.

The main flavor I taste is an okay quality black tea plus some cardamom and other spices. It’s not really special or that delicious for me. It’s sadly pretty weak.

I received this in my subscription box, and the flavor is what you’d expect. I taste mostly chamomile with a hint of something extra. It’s nice cold, but forgettable. The cold resteep tasted like celery.

The scent of this one is totally juicy mango. The flavor is more of a green mango, and I don’t really taste any passionfruit. The flavor here is really fruity and nice cold – it just requires overleafing to taste it enough. As it sits, some bitter black tea shows up more than I’d prefer. So the lesson is to drink this cold, but quickly.

Sipdown! (12 | 92)

Last one from Nelson’s, huzzah!

I was surprised to see that the oolong in this one is an oxidized rolled variety, which I find very uncommon in flavored blends.

This is okay but since I’m not big on coconut in teas, it’s not my favorite. I think the coconut tastes a touch soapy, but it’s difficult to tell with the ginger in there. Overall, it has a Thai vibe to it with the coconut + ginger combination. All that’s missing is lemongrass! As for the vanilla, I’m not sure I get that specifically, but this does have a creamy-custardy flavor to it.

As for Nelson’s in general, I didn’t really like any of the seven teas I tried, so I probably won’t get any more teas from them. Just based on the flavoring style of these blends, I don’t think they’re a good fit for me.

Sipdown! (11 | 91)

This does sort of taste like banana bread. It has a sweet cooked banana sort of flavor and I enjoy the blend of bases. However, the cardamom really stands out, and I love cardamom but I don’t think it makes a lot of sense for a banana bread tea. I don’t think of banana bread as being spiced, sometimes it has a bit of cinnamon in it, but usually not in my experience. It also sort of brings out the peppery notes from the honeybush, which makes it taste even less like banana bread, especially toward the end of the sip.

Still an enjoyable tea, but I prefer the version from Adagio.

Sipdown! (10 | 90)

So this one doesn’t really taste like the name to me. It’s definitely an Earl Grey, but I’m getting a very sweet sort of fruity note rather than caramel or vanilla. It reminds me of maraschino cherries, or maybe even almond extract. And I’m not a fan of that sort of flavor in tea generally, so this isn’t my favorite. It also has bergamot flavoring instead of oil, and that’s definitely noticeable.

Overall, just too sweet and cloying for me. I tried it as a latte first and regretted adding sweetener (which I usually do with lattes) because then it was way too sweet ha ha.

Sipdown! (9 | 89)

This is a nice enough tisane, very similar to other cranberry-orange rooibos blends I’ve tried. The amount of hibiscus is just right to give a touch of tartness that helps the cranberry come to life. It’s more or less equal parts cranberry and orange to my palate, with the woody rooibos as a backdrop. I don’t taste any vanilla, sadly.

Sipdown! (8 | 88)

Meh.

This just tastes like a generic candy berry flavoring on a musty, also generic broken white base. I don’t really get champagne, or even specifically raspberries. Seems very much like a wholesale blend I’ve had before.

Sipdown! (6 | 86)

This is fine, it’s a somewhat generic piña colada green tea. It tastes sweet and a bit creamy, like canned pineapple and coconut milk. The green base is mellow without a whole lot of flavor to it, but it does make a nice, slightly grassy base for flavoring.

I’m not a piña colada fan (I always want more pineapple!) so it’s not a favorite for me.

Sipdown! (5 | 85)

So I signed up for the Nelson’s Tea subscription (don’t ask why I was even on their website, I have no idea…) because it’s only $10 and you get 3 samples with free shipping. And some of their teas sounded interesting. They have a promotion where you get a free gravity steeper with your first box, and I wrote a note requesting for them to leave that out (because I have 10 million infusers that I never use). And they did leave it out, but they included extra free samples because of it! How nice is that? :3

Anyway, I figured I would start with this tea because I was almost certain not to like it. I don’t usually like chocolate teas and cherry is very hit-or-miss for me. Turns out, I don’t like it ha ha. The chocolate is fine, but the cherry tastes like a generic cherry lollipop to me. Which makes sense, given chocolate-covered cherries are more of the maraschino type and have that amaretto-ish note to them. On top of that, the base is puerh, and I can really taste the earthiness. That earthy note combined with the cloying candy cherry is really not a good combination IMO.

Anyway, happy to have it out of the way. :P

This is pretty refreshing! I taste the light fruity flavors on top of a decent rooibos. It’s enjoyable cold and not too tart at all. It’s a pretty straightforward blend, but one that I would drink again if offered.