Rishi Tea

My taste for citrus seems different than most people here. I adore grapefruit, either a straight pink or a yellow, no sugar please. Ruby reds are too sweet for me. Following grapefruit, I have a deep love for yuzu and its incredible taste and fragrance. Any Japanese dish with a yuzu sauce is an automatic selection. Yuzu hot sauce from Trader Joe’s is all I need to top some steamed dumplings. Meyer lemons, highly floral sweet limes and sumo tangerines round out the top five of my citrus love-list.

This sachet tea from Rishi has all kinds of ingredients I enjoy, like well, grapefruit, yuzu, lime, green tea and matcha, ginger, quince, rosemary, black pepper and coriander. Literally every ingredient in this blend I adore the taste of on its own. And I get the feeling that if the damn ginger didn’t overpower everything, it would be sublime.

I tried brewing these sachets with varying steep times and could never get past the earthy, spicy! ginger. The tastes underneath would change, yes, sometimes one of the citrus fruits would be highlighted, or the black pepper, but I could never get this tea to perform reliably. The ginger spice actually upset my stomach in the morning. It did work okay as an after lunch brew. Overall — kind of a let down.

One of the few tropical teas that is actually palatable to me. It is flavorful without hitting you in the face. It smells wonderful and the smell fills the room that you brew it in. There is a sweet undertone to this that I enjoy.

Geek Steep S2E3 – Steven Universe

So this is the tea that I drank during recording for this week’s episode! I’ll be honest, if you’re familiar with the show at all and also familiar with Ruby Oolong than this probably feels like a very weird pairing…

But at the end of the day I just wanted to drink some delicious oolong so I leaned into the gemstone pun with the name. I had it cold brewed because it’s kind of like drinking a perfectly golden and slightly caramelized baked apple or quince which is so smooth and pleasant – but also because we’re officially back to recording in person again as of this episode, and when we record in person I turn the AC in my apartment off for noise control and… well… it gets HOT!! So cold brews while recording are a life saver.

Gongfu!

Paired w/ some Oka cheese for a post work session that was delicious, divine, and decadent!! I combined these two because I find this cheese very buttery and creamy, as well as very woody/nutty. The oolong tea has some similar woody notes that mirror the cheese, & caramelized nut and baked fruit (black cherry/pear/quince) and prune notes all compliment very well!! Seems to make the sweetness more “punchy” and syrupy…

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/B_f_cVggpj6/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4UY-JUxmto

This tea is my very very favorite!! I drink at least one large pot every morning and sometimes have another because I love it so much. It is like happiness and sunshine in my mug! I love it so much that I recently purchased ten pounds of it! Now I will be set and all prepared for the Covid virus threat. I believe that drinking this every day is keeping me healthy and it also is good for my chronic pain and arthritis. Thank you Rishi for an incredible tea!! I adore this so much!!

Like many other people I’ve been working from home for the past week because of the Coronavirus crisis. Although I hate being confined indoors, it has given me plenty of tea drinking opportunities. This was a sample I received with my Rishi order a while back. I love peach flavored anything and this tea was no exception.

The smell of the tea is incredibly sweet with juicy bursts of tangerine, pineapple, and peach. Brings back fond memories of Teavana’s Fruta Bomba. The taste is less intense than the aroma though. It has a gentle peach-pear flavor that’s light and refreshing. The peach flavoring tastes natural and complements the white tea base nicely. There’s quince in the blend but I couldn’t pick it out in the tea. As someone who finds most flavored teas overpowering, I can appreciate how well-balanced this one is.

This is by far the best Earl Grey I’ve found yet. Good lawd have mercy. It’s highly caffeinated as well…

I’m on my last cup of this after working on sipping down my package (called "Vanilla Mint Pu-erh from California Tea & Herbal) for the last few weeks, and I was totally convinced I’d already written a tasting note on it (I thought I had in my early days, because I thought this was one of my first teas I had bought from Spice & Tea Exchange, called “Mint-Chilla Chai-Nilla”… yes, this Rishi Tea is well wholesaled around by other companies!) But I did a Ctrl+F on my Steepster Reviews text file and… nope! Oops. That makes me wonder how many things I sipped down last year and was sure I’d reviewed but actually hadn’t… meep!

This is probably one of my favorite flavored pu’erhs… the base does have that warm, earthy note, but the peppermint and licorice root smooths it out really nicely and I find it very settling on my throat and stomach. The mint is brisk and refreshing but not biting, and the licorice root is sweet but not sticky and lingering. There is just a hint of cinnamon that comes out near the finish. I don’t really taste any vanilla, but there is a smooth sweetness to the blend. It’s a nice blend of flavors that I really enjoy. I admittedly am not a huge pu’erh fan but I like the combination here, and will probably restock this one at some point.

This tea has been tremendously more enjoyable these past few days I’ve been under the weather. The slightly pungent turmeric, warming ginger, and mild spices really help soothe my flu symptoms.

Instagram shot: https://www.instagram.com/p/B7B0cQ0AFfs/

This is a pretty good herbal tea if you’re looking for something spiced or to soothe a cold. Reminds me a bit of the old Verdant Tea Ginger Winter Rescue blend. Smells like garam masala, cinnamon, clove, and ayurvedic medicinal herbs. The brewed tea is tasty with a mellow turmeric flavor. Not chalky or bitter as turmeric can sometimes be. It’s nicely balanced with the other flavorings, although some like rose and lychee aren’t really discernible.

I think this would be a good base for a golden milk latte but will have to experiment and see. It’s a nice tea to have on hand for those times when you’re sick. Masala chai fans would probably dig this tisane too.

Not much else to say about this one other than it’s about as perfect as chamomile tea gets. Taste is nearly identical to the chamomile I bought from The Spice and Tea Exchange recently but at a much more economical price. Both are organic chamomile flowers sourced from the mountainous regions of Croatia. It has a cleaner, brighter flavor compared to the common Egyptian variety. Excellent quality all around and miles above your standard bagged chamomile.

I was given a sampler box of bagged teas by Rishi but branded for La Colombe, a coffee roaster. This was one of the teas. I followed the steeping guide on the bag packaging, though the temperature was approximate because my kettle isn’t that fancy.

I could smell the sweet jasmine as soon as I opened the sachet package, and it continued to be as aromatic through the brewing process. The flavor is strong, but not overpowering, with the jasmine balancing the slight bitterness of the tea.

This tea doesn’t quite live up to its exotic name. I was expecting something fruity and tropical but the end result tasted like apple cider vinegar. The tea brews up a copper color with citrusy notes of lemon and orange peels but tastes very puckery. It’s like drinking a tart fruit juice minus the sweetness. Don’t really taste the guava, quince, strawberries, or any of the other ingredients in the blend. It’s just sour all around. Tried it as a cold brew and the results were more or less the same. The idea of this tea is nice but execution is sadly a fail.

Man I was ready to write off this tea because it had been so dismal but today I casually steeped the last few grams at work and it was unexpectedly good. It’s amusing – and a little perplexing – how the most meticulous gongfu setup at home, right down to precise weight and water temperature, sometimes gives inferior results compared to just winging it at the office. On a side note, please ignore the brewing directions on the package. Any sencha steeped for 3 minutes will be terribly bitter.

Anyway, the first steep was lip smacking good. Wonderfully sweet throughout and balanced umami. Notes of spinach and fresh grass transitioning to a crisp lingering grape-like sweetness. Easily better than the pricier shinchas I’ve had this year. But subsequent steeps are a reminder of why this is a budget tea. The second steep had a generic sencha flavor and almost all of the flavor was washed out in the third infusion leaving behind a sulfur like taste.

So yeah, pretty good for a one and done kind of tea.

This is a somewhat tricky tea to rate. Going on the taste alone, it’s not one that I would willingly seek out. It’s very medicinal, both in taste and smell. The smell of the tea, which sorta reminds me of bug spray, quickly takes over the entire room. Strong fennel taste with a musky sort of sweetness, hints of nutmeg, citrus, and mint. Similar flavor profile to Yogi bedtime tea but thankfully no stevia in it to amplify the funky stuff.

Now as a sleep aid, I would say it works almost too well. I used less than half the quantity of tea the instructions called for and fell into a deep slumber less than an hour later. Didn’t feel like waking up the next morning and felt groggy most of the day.

So yeah, not exactly a pleasant tea but it did help me sleep. I’ll still reach for chamomile to help me wind down in the evening and reserve this for those occasions when I’m having trouble with insomnia.

My Rishi tea order arrived yesterday. Lots of herbals and caffeine free blends, but I did pick up a couple of regular loose leaf teas one of which was this bergamot scented green oolong. The leaves are beautifully fragrant and brew to an intense but smooth bergamot flavor. Notes of tangerine, cardamom, and eucalyptus. Compared to Earl Grey black tea, I feel like the neutral green tea base really allows the bergamot to shine through. Reminds me of Verdant’s now retired Earl of Anxi blend which used TGY as the base.

That said, I prefer a subtle bergamot flavor and on its own, this is way too potent for me. But that’s not a problem, I will just blend it with a straight tea the way I do all my flavored teas.

sweet peachy smell, mild, a bit sour.

I was actually really excited to open this tea and smell the cardamom! I feel like most chai blends are heavy on the clove so this was a nice surprise. It’s too bad that the steeped tea didn’t retain any of the cardamom flavor. It’s still a good chai in the sense that it’s a nice spiced tea, but the cardamom tease left me expecting more than I received. Overall, a suitable bagged tea for on the go.

Very flavorful….just not my favorite flavor.

Well, I had always been under the impression that Tea Chai Te made it’s own blends, when I opened up this sampler of Rishi’s “Tangerine Ginger” that I got for free from an order with them ages ago, it looks just like Tea Chai Te’s “Tangerine Dream” (formerly known as “Orange Zephyr”) which is one of my favorite teas (I even restocked it when I visited their shop in Portland on vacation last summer). This leads me to think they are actually wholesaling this blend from Rishi — the leaf certainly looks identical to me — but there are some minor differences listed in the ingredients between the two (Tea Chai Te says their blend includes ginseng and doesn’t list schizandra berries, though it certainly looks like I can see schizandra berries in Tea Chai Te’s leaf from a visual inspection; Rishi doesn’t list ginseng in their ingredients). Hmm… I’m still bordering more on the “this is wholesaled from Rishi” fence than not, since they are a large tea wholesaler to smaller tea shops (I am still pretty convinced Tea Chai Te makes their own chais, though…)

In any event, at least that means I already know I’m going to like this tea. It’s a hibi-hip with ginger and has a nice orange flavor, as well. This is one of my go-to “sick teas” and may seem an odd choice, but all that hibiscus/rose hip packs a whollop of Vitamin C which is perfect once my nose starts going runny or my throat starts feeling froggy, and the ginger is calming on the throat or tummy/GI tract. I like hibiscus teas, so I like the warm tangy fruity base which I’ve always felt accompanies an orange flavor well (like in Christmas spice blends), and the ginger is warming and gives a bit of heat against the throat but isn’t overbearing to my spice-wuss self, and I think it’s the touch of licorice root in the blend which helps temper it. I don’t really taste the licorice root as a distinct flavor, but there is an overall balance of the tangy hibiscus/spicy ginger with a sweetness that works. And that is another ingredient that works nicely with the ginger to calm a sore throat.

Along with TeaSource’s “Margaret’s Soother,” this is one of my favorite “what ails ya” teas.

Cold Brew Sipdown (721)!

From last weekend – finished this off, but it was much worse as a cold brew than my initial tasting. Just intense and heavy handed bergamot and very floral oolong, and combined and with a cold temperature it just really felt like drinking perfume.

Earl Green is such a confusing name for this tea, given that it’s actually an Earl Grey on an oolong base – not green tea. I understand the logic is that it’s a greener oolong but even still I feel like it creates unnecessary confusion…

Taste wise it’s very nice though; pretty strong on the bergamot but I find I don’t mind it because it compliments the fresh green and floral notes of the chosen base oolong really well. It’s intense while still managing to be fresh and fragrant rather than perfumey and overpowering. You can tell that both of the used ingredients have a lot of integrity.

I’d happily drink this one again!

Sipdown (687)!

Finished this off with breakfast during one of the mornings at the hotel; starting your day off with Genmaicha is pretty lovely – it’s just this warm, toasty and comforting kind of tea. I really, really enjoy Rishi’s matcha genmaicha too because the balance of the greener elements and rice is so well done. Most Matcha Genmaicha I find I lose the toasted rice note almost entirely, and that’s the whole reason I want to drink Genmaicha. So, I’m very glad it’s not gone in this blend!