Red Leaf Tea

I am finishing off the last I have of this tea – thanks again to TeaEqualsBliss for sending it out to me.

This tea has a lovely floral essence. It is beautifully delicate, it is like a light, spirited dance on the palate. The cabernet wine is prominent, and when combined with the light floral taste it is really quite delightful. Sweet – but not too sweet. Hints of currants.

As I finish the last of this – I am realizing just how much I am going to miss it. This is – quite possibly – the best “wine infused” tea I’ve tasted to date.

And because I am liking this so much tonight, I’m going to increase my numeric rating just a tad!

I am really enjoying this tea – so much more than I thought I would.

The aroma is very nice – it smells a bit of a fine wine, pleasantly fruity and crisp.

The flavor is very tender and soft, but not so delicate that I cannot taste the wine notes and the lovely taste of the white tea. It is very gentle – very nice for someone who likes the taste of wine but doesn’t drink it very often and has a hard time holding her alcohol… like me!

Very nice!

I really enjoy this tea. It has a wonderful, restorative quality to it… after a long walk around the neighborhood taking my daughter out to trick-or-treat, this tea is my TREAT!

I have reviewed this previously:

http://www.teareviewblog.com/?p=10274

My opinion hasn’t changed much since I wrote that review … I like the rose flavor of this tea with the hint of lemon. It has a very pleasant aroma that wafts from my teacup and it’s very relaxing to just sit here and inhale the fragrance.

I was looking for something fruity for a change and thought I would try this for the first time. It’s nifty! It smells like Green Tea and Juicy Sour Apple. I can taste both as well but not overly so. The sour is a good sour and just enough. It has a green tea aftertaste tho.

I’m not sure why I am drinking a white tea this early in the day but I am and I will say this is a goodie!!!

I can taste the Cabernet type taste with floral and a little bit of fruit thrown in!

Backlogging a cup before sending off the rest to a friend…not overly sweet but still a good cup!

Backlogging…

This is dark in color and smells like toasted veggies. It seems to have a tiny hint of smoke. It has a little fruity/veggie taste and leaves a semi-smoky/woodsy aftertaste.

The 2nd infusion was MUCH better…more smooth and fruitier, even.

Backlogging from yesterday morning…unfortunately I don’t have my notes with me at the moment…

Fresh Herb smell underneath a lemon scent is what this smells like right out of the package!

While it’s ‘brewing’ it smells like lemon and flowers.

Post infusion smells and tastes like flowers and lemon. As it cools the lemon comes out a little bit more to taste. This is a nice juicy type green tea. Not bad at all.

Upon opening the packet the dry blend smelled of assorted flavored fruit lifesavers! Ahhhhh!

I don’t think this needs any more than a 3 minute steep. It’s EXTREMELY Dark brown in color. The post-infused liquid smells more of tropical scents and black tea.

This is a bold black tea with various flavors coming thru. They all seem to play nicely with each other and I am picking out floral flavors in addition to fruit flavors.

This is a HAPPY cup of flavored black tea and I would certainly drink it often!

YUM! Not much else I can say since my last review of this…see previous notes…they all still apply! YAY! Ahhhhhhh!

O.M.G. This smells AWESOME!!!!!!
50 points just for that! :)
If you are a Cabernet fan I don’t think there would be any guessing that this is EXACTLY what this tea smells like prior to infusion! Grapey-Cabernet sweetness – beautiful!

The infused tea you can smell more of the black tea AND the Cabernet smell with undertones of cinnamon…but not a fireball cinnamon…more like an Indian Spice type like in a traditional Indian Dish or chai. I’m thinking the licorice tones down the fruitiness of the Cabernet a little bit…but not a lot.

This ‘brews up’ VERY dark brown.

The taste is MUCH different that I expected based on the outstanding aroma. The black tea – Assam – pulls thru and is flavorful BUT bold and the Cabernet taste seems to be just as bold.

As it cools a bit the taste is becoming more astringent but in a good way…a way like some Cabernet can be.

Ahhh…CHEERS to Friday, eh!?
AWESOME.

For some reason I thought I had tried this already…but I haven’t. I also ‘just found’ this sampler in with my stuff I haven’t tried from Doulton yet and was super excited! YAY!

So…here goes…

I just found out that I am going to have a super busy afternoon writing (but will be taking brain breaks for steepster, of course) and thought I would start my afternoon with a black tea and then move on to others.

This smells like black tea, fruit, and floral. It’s a nice Reddish-dark brown. Taste-wise it is really good. It’s a sugary-sweet tasting flavored black. It reminds me of Rose Marzipan from Teavana without the Rose…you know that candied-sugar cube in that blend…that is what the sugar-sweet taste remind me of. There is a floral back-end to it but NOT an intense rose…it’s a delicate type floral…very nice! The more I drink this the more I like it…and I mean really, really LIKE it!!!! YUM!

The most effective calm-ya-down blend I’ve tried in a long time. Longer review at http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/ (I’m a bona fide reviewer now!)

Red Leaf Tea included 4 free samples on my last order – this is the last of them. The aroma is sweet white tea with a hint of rose… as is the flavor. Huh. I was expecting this to be more overpoweringly floral and am pleasantly surprised to be wrong. Delicate white tea with a hint of rosebuds, not perfume. Nice!

Finally finishing up my sample of this – it’s surprisingly good for having spent several months in a clear plastic bag. Smooth, sweet, lightly grape-y. I can definitely taste the white tea base, which is impressive considering how little white tea I drink. I… might just have to buy more of this. Ooh, and apparently it’s on sale? $4/.8oz or $5.60/1.6oz This gets more and more tempting…

1.4g, 4oz water, 2 steeps so far

Mmm, this is delicious. On the advice of some other Steepsterites, I’ve resolved to use more leaf when steeping whites, so this was 1tsp/3.5oz. The brew is a bright almost-but-not-quite-greenish yellow; it smells fragrant and delicately fruity. I don’t know that I’d call the flavor champagne, almost like grape perfume perhaps, but it is sweet and delightful without being overpowering.

I’m a little confused as to how to rate it, though. It’s very tasty, but I really prefer strong blacks still. I wouldn’t pick this over any of my “breakfast” teas, but it’s certainly not worse than them. Ah well, maybe I’ll just consider this on a separate “whites” scale.

Another 2 steeps around 4-5 minutes each came out quite well – champagne/grape flavor still present in the 3rd steep

I’ve always thought that I could find something to like with any tea. This blend made me question that thinking. I could taste the cinnamon and the marsala along with the black tea but the musty twist doesn’t bring it together. To me, the musty ruined them all. I’m not sure I’ll even give this one a second chance.

You are not seeing this post. This post does not exist because I am totally working on writing and totally not posting on Steepster. If you can see this post, you need to get your eyes checked. Cause it ain’t here.

That said, TeaEqualsBliss sent me a sample of this when we swapped earlier and I can’t really remember why I rated it so low, but I gather that I rated it that way in comparison to the Adagio IB which I can’t currently remember what tastes like, so I’m not going to tamper with the rating.

I used 50% more leaf for this pot because I thought I could finish the sample off that way. Turns out the sample was larger than I had expected and now I’ve only got an estimated amount of leaf left for half a pot. By the time I discovered that, though, it was of course too late to do anything about it.

The tea actually carries the extra strength quite nicely. I can’t tell in the flavour that it’s stronger than usual, and reading my previous comment on it, I still completely agree with myself.

So evidently what we’ve got here is a pretty forgiving blend, which kind of surprises me a little considering that it must surely have Assam in it, and in my experience you can call the Indian blacks many things, but ‘forgiving’ generally isn’t one of them. It’s possible that the Assam aspect is a bit more astringent this way, but it’s not something that really mars the flavour on the whole.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the Irish Morning Blend from A C Perch’s hold up to this and to Adagio’s equivalent.

Back to work (HA!) for me, and remember, this post does not exist, it isn’t here and I never wrote it.

Here’s another Irish breakfast that TeaEqualsBliss sent me. It’s been a while since I had the one from Adagio and all I remember about that one at the moment is that I could pick up the cardboard-y Assam and that the Assam and Ceylon, none of which I’m completely sold on on their own (especially the Ceylon), came together to show me whole new levels. We shall see how this one fares in comparison.

The leaves are all golden and large and pretty so that’s a good start right there. After steeping it has that honey-y Assam smell and it’s pretty strong in the beginning, but once the cup has been sitting for a bit it it goes away and becomes more of a hint. Underneath that it just smells rather like a Ceylon and it’s making me hesitant to taste it because it makes me expect that wildly astringent, tannic flavour.

Oh well, here goes.

Yes. Ceylon. Definitely. Not as astringent as I had feared, but there is definitely some of it there. The Assam cardboard-y quality is there too, but it’s just sort of flat and it gives me a funny aftertaste. Normally I like it when a tea lasts, when there’s a lingering aftertaste, but this one is really kind of odd and borderline unpleasant.

I don’t have any milk around the place at the moment which I believe would improve that a whole lot, but half a teaspoon of cane sugar seems to bring out the honey note of both teas a little more and that helps.

Astringency levels are rising though, which I could definitely have lived without.

I have a smaller sample of this than I do of Adagio’s Irish Breakfast, and I’ll have to say that I really prefer Adagio’s here. I’m planning on investing in an Irish Breakfast from AC Perch’s rather than getting Adagio’s, but this is making me wonder if it might not be best to stick with Adagio and not rock the boat. I probably will still get AC Perch’s because I’ve been otherwise so pleased with their teas, which is definitely not something I can say for Adagio, but I’m feeling a bit apprehensive about it all right now. I do wish AC Perch’s would offer samples instead of that 100g minimum limit.

More tart than sweet, a dollop of honey would likely do some good. Tastes predominantly of hibiscus, but to be fair it is… softer, if not sweeter, than plain hibiscus tea. I was disappointed that the rosebuds didn’t come through more. Still, if you like the floral tartness of hibiscus and rosehips, but want something a little less sour, this may be the tea you’re looking for.