RiverTea

I’m craving grapefruit in a big way, so I searched out this tea. The scent of the dry leaf is pure grapefruit and it makes me think of my Dad. He and I are the only ones in the house who like grapefruit, so on the weekends, we’d split a grapefruit. During the week, he had to leave at 4 in the morning, but it always made me feel special to open the fridge and find half a grapefruit, cut and ready for me.

ANYWAY, the scent of the steeped tea brings out a bit more of the strawberry, but it’s still yummy, yummy grapefruit.

I love this blend. The strawberry brings down the bite of the grapefruit, and the honeybush rounds it all out. It is wonderful.

Grapefruit! Lovely, yummy grapefruit! And juicy strawberries…mmm. And caffeine free too, so I can sip this all the way to dreamland.

….lordy, I’m tired.

Omma nomma nomma. Tried a shorter steep time this time and it came out significantly weaker. Stick to two minutes next time.

Er. Mah. Gerd.

ERMAHGERD.

I am an Earl aficionado. I will taste any that come across my tongue. I have found many that I love and many that . . . I seriously do not love. This is, without a doubt, one of the best. There is a sweet citrus burst on top of beautifully balanced black tea. A bit of cream. It doesn’t dry my out like even the best Earls tend to.

Have you ever smelled smoke? Not bad smoke. Like campfire wood smoke, or pipe tobacco, and it sort of clings around the back of your nose, and then you move and a little puff of smoke comes out from a fold of your shirt and you smell it again and it’s just as good? That is what this tea reminds me of. It’s lingering and I love it.

Oh my…spring tea indeed.

This is raspberry oolong at its finest. There is raspberry, luscious, juicy raspberry. But there is also the oolong. Neither one overpowers the other, instead they work together to create a smooth, vaguely roasty treat. The raspberry takes me back to the angel food cake with burnt raspberry icing my grandmother used to make for my mom’s birthday in October, because she somehow always still had raspberries then.

Yummy.

This sat in the fridge, brewing, for three days while I recovered from food poisoning, and I’m happy to say it is none the worse for the abuse! It’s light and fruity and refreshing, reminding me that I greatly enjoy bamboo teas. Since our condo is a never-ending heat sink, anything that cools me off like this has is a major positive.

Welp, this is tasting note #1000 and I thought there would be no better tea to celebrate with! Ha! I’m so funny, folks.

Anyway, on to the tea. The dry leaf of this smells…interesting. Not great, but that’s the bamboo, I know it. I’ve got a few other bamboo teas with the same scent. I set it to steep and started the timer for two minutes, my normal steep time for tea. As I waited, I read the little box and it says to steep for 8-10 minutes. Whoa. So in the interest of Science! I let it steep for 8 minutes. The smell carried over to the brewed tea, but no matter.

Now, there is a very good reason I don’t let things steep for 8 or more minutes…I forget about them! Also, I put in my sugar lumps before pouring the hot water in, but by the time the timer went off, I’d forgotten that I’d already done it and did it again. Of course my 1000th tasting note includes me being a dummy XD.

This tea is lovely. It’s very fruity, but the bamboo keeps it from being overwhelmingly fruity, if that makes any sense. Strawberry and mango and other fruits, but those two really stand out to me. Hot, it’s good but not mind-blowing, but that’s okay. I bought it for cold steeping.

Sad sipdown today. Farewell, lovely raspberry tea. You will be greatly missed.

(legit almost cried when throwing away the tin. RiverTea come back!)

Ooooh, I’m almost out of this one, which is bittersweet because I love it. It tastes like raspberries and cream, sweet without being cloying. Mine doesn’t have any meringue left, I don’t know if they just melted with time or if I just had them all ages ago.

I miss RiverTea so much, with their unique blends and tasty basics. Hopefully TeaTaxi will fill that niche for me. crosses fingers Though no one can come close to the customer service at RiverTea, they were amazing.

Holy cow, a raspberry tea without hibiscus! RiverTea, you are my hero!

I burnt the leaves, foolish me, but even with that, this is a yummy, yummy tea. Sweet and creamy and raspberry-y! It smells so good and the flavor lives up to the promise of the scent. With a touch lower temperature, this tea could be spectacular. It truly is the raspberry tea I’ve been searching for, and now I’m anxious to try their other fruit blends. If this is any indication, they’ll be off the charts!

Managed to get half a cup of this before demon child, aka JiJi, knocked it over XD. Ah well, that’s what the second steep is for, right?

Love this tea. I don’t know what I did to it this morning, but I made a pot and the first cup is very weak. Maybe I underleafed, understeeped, or underheated the water, but I know this is a user error because I have seen how beautiful this tea can be. For the next pot, I’ll definitely let it steep longer.

This is still one of my favorite teas, I just keep forgetting we have it because it’s in a different place than all the other teas. The spearmint is still strong enough to smell outside the box and it is lovely. I’m treating this like the Teavivre oolongs, two steeps in a bubble teapot and then overnight coldbrew. My first steep is a little weak, so I’ll likely let my next pot steep for a good long time.

As per usual, the scent of this tea has turned our orange cat, Pekoe, into a purring snuggle machine. She loves it and loves the hell out of me when I’m drinking it! It’s adorable.

I am Not Feeling Well (honestly, I’ve felt sick ever since I finished the Sheriff’s Secret Police), so I’m wrapping around a big cup of this beauty. It’s soothing my stomach and helping my headache fade. Very, very nice.

It came! Our RiverTea order came! I squeaked at the poor postman, I was so excited. The packaging is so adorable, I immediately fell in love. They also put these little stickers on top of the wrapping for each box of teas, and since we ordered enough to get two boxes, one sticker read “For Rita” and the other “For Rita’s wife”. So cute! But the packaging is so beautiful and the stickers so sweet that I actually cried when I opened the box. And then when I found the little gift in each box…so sweet. I immediately started smelling the teas and a few of them smelled so good that I actually moaned out loud. (Dolce Vita, I’m looking at you)

ANYWAY, onto the tea. I could smell this tea from outside the box, so of course I had to try it first! I am a huge fan of everything spearmint, but most blends use peppermint, which I really don’t like. I know, I’m weird. But this smelled like the spearmint that used to grow in my mom’s backyard that she would use in sun tea every summer. It also smells like DoubleMint gum, to the point that my mouth began watering.

I brewed it carefully using medium heat and my standard steep time of two minutes (And two lumps of sugar, also my standard). It tastes…well, it tastes like a spearmint oolong! I love the fullness of the oolong with the smooth spearmint wrapping around it. Mmmmm. It is so, so good and I can see this becoming my go-to when it comes to a post-big-meal tummy soother. Or, you know, any time I want to feel happy :D.

Now the real question: Do I resteep the leaves to see how they hold up, or do I try something new?

Both. Definitely both.

Edit:
The resteep (steeped for 4 minutes) was weak and not nearly as good, but that’s fine for me. I’m not a resteeper anyway.

Sipdown of sorts (202/205)!

The ‘of sorts’ is because the remaining cup or two is going to go to VariaTEA so she can get a taste of this one. Gotta spread the RiverTea love, right?

This cup was just delicious, sweet nougat/marzipan yum. I’m a little sad to be parting ways, and will definitely consider reacquainting myself with this one at a later time. I don’t need it in my cupboard to be happy though, so I’m embracing this sipdown.

This was kind of my attempt at picking a “Valentine’s Day” themed tea to drink, and it was pretty good. Definitely sweet with a clear nougat taste, though this cup was less nutty than I recall the first one tasting.

I still have a few cups worth left from my sample, but I could see this maybe being something to restock.

And I’m the first to record a note for this one as well…

All three of my RiverTea samples were green blends, mostly because I couldn’t justify getting 50g of a green blend prior to trying it since I’m so fickle about them in the first place. One was Genmaicha, because I had to try it, and the other was Sky Dive because I wanted to compare it with the Tea Desire version which is nearly identical. This one I chose because it actually seemed really potentially delicious.

Dry, it certainly smells wonderful; sweet with a strong nougat smell and some nuttiness from the almond. A touch of nice marzipan smell too, and hardly any green tea base. Sounds good to me!

Steeped up, the taste is a little vegetal – but in the nice kind of buttery way and not in a seaweed or lawn trimmings way that totally puts me off. Mostly, this is very sweet and nougatty with just a little bit of marzipan almondy cookie/cakeness in it. I don’t really have any green dessert teas (just green chai or fruit tea, primarily) so maybe this could be an option. I’m actually really quite liking it.

Because it’s a green, I want to finish my sample and maybe play around a little before making my mind up, but I think this is something I might want again in a 50g quantity (certainly not 100g) if I had someone I knew I could share with if it felt like maybe too much. I could definitely see myself requesting it as a sample though.

Definitely not an awful experience though – and it makes me excited to try my other green based RiverTea samples.

This was my morning tea choice, and it is delightful. Delightfully malty.

Thanks for sharing MirandaGou!

Sipdown (204/207)!

Not much left to say on this one that I haven’t already covered. I finished it quite quickly, which I didn’t expect to – but I do love my pear teas.

There’s a little bit going to VariaTEA, so I’m hoping she enjoys it.

It seems like the backlog never ends. At least I’ll hopefully have my laptop back soon, so if nothing else I’ll be able to log things efficiently. Only like a week and a half left before that happens…

Also, I have an interview tomorrow so cross your fingers for me! In addition, a friend passed along my resume to her ex (he’s in charge of hiring) and put in a really good word for me. That job would be an inventory job that’d take me out of the city to do overnight inventory for various companies in various provinces 5/7 days a week. I think that’d be really cool, but I’m not going to get my hopes up too high.

I tried to go through all the tasting notes from when I was last online (two days ago) like I usually do, and I made it through a little over a days worth of tasting notes before the screen refreshed and brought me back to the most recent tasting notes. I don’t feel like continuously scrolling for another 20 minutes, so I think I’ll just leave it as is.

I’ve finally made my mind up about this one that I do like and it is a nice and highly flavourful pear tea, just without much (any?) chocolate to it. This cup in particular I let steep while I took a shower, so in total it was a 20 minute steep. Damn it was powerful and strong. Next cup of it will be/was a sipdown, so this one disappeared fast.

I’d get it again in swaps or as one of the three samples in an order because it was good, but I doubt I’d buy it again because it wasn’t that good.

I cold brewed this for a total of 12 hours. Something told me it’d be an interesting cold brew. Sadly, it used up a good portion of the leaf. This is disappearing quickly, and I’m not sure yet whether I’ve really wrapped my head around it.

But anyway, it is yummy as a cold brew even if there’s no presence of chocolate at all whatsoever (that disappoints me). It’s hard to describe though – because it’s pear – completely, and totally pear – but not really creamy pear, not chemical or artificial pear, not exactly candy pear, or soft gentle floral pear…

It’s like that grainy, I want to say ‘stony’ pear texture from when you eat the actual fruit. That texture comes across magnificently in the taste. Except I don’t understand why or how. I guess I just need more time to wrap my head around this one.

I think I’m the first tasting note on this one too. I’ll try to do it proud.

Out of the fruit teas I purchased, this is the one that I was the most excited for. I love pears and pear tea – and I just could not pass up the opportunity to try out yet another pear blend, especially since this is chocolate pear which is a flavour combo I don’t have in my cupboard right now.

Dry, this smell strongly of fresh, maybe even a little overripe, pears with just a hint of chocolate. It’s a very, very powerful and flavourful smelling blend.

Like the other RiverTea fruit blend I tried, this too has a long steep time – though not nearly as long as Chocolate Kisses Chili. I ended up doing a 6 minute steep for this cup, which was the lowest end of the suggested spectrum. The smell is just a little bit perfume, and still pretty much like an overripe “bruise it by holding it” pear.

Taste wise, it’s pretty good. The pear flavour is pretty strong, and maybe even a touch sour. Again, what comes to mind is an overripe pear. The chocolate here is surprisingly light/mild – but then again I’m not sure if I recall actually seeing any pieces of chocolate in the leaf I used. I thought it’d be more like a chocolate dipped pear, but that’s not the feeling I get.

So ultimately, I’m a little conflicted/on the fence about this one because I did enjoy it but it wasn’t anything like I was expecting or anticipating it to be. I’ll need to try a few more cups/methods before I make up my mind.

Sipdown (201/203)!

I kept the steep time for this SUPER short in an effort to have a more pleasant last cup; a three minute steep time instead of the recommended 15. It worked; this was fruity chocolate with only a little burning spice at the back of your throat.

Good riddance, though! This wont be missed.