T2

This peppermint is unsophisticated, pure and a standard staple for any tea cabinet. It’s wonderful to aid with digestion and an excellent edition to teas that can be taken at nighttime with no caffeine. It’s a great ‘starter tea’ for someone who’s finding their favourites, and for me when it comes to herbal tea – the simpler the better.

I like to brew peppermint teas for about four minutes, some mixtures can easily steep and ‘Just Peppermint’ by T2 unfortunately might be one of those. However, when brewed it has a great colour and is distinctly fragrant.

I had this tea as a sample at one of the stores, and enjoyed it. It’s warm, tastes like caramel and has a rich, vanilla undertone. However, I felt this tea lacked a little bit more substance and structure. I wish this tea had more spice, so that it could be a little more interesting.

I liked this tea and thought that it would make a good addition to an afternoon tea or dessert collection. I think milk would dilute the body of this tea, so honey, sugar or black would be the best choice to bring out the flavours.

This is one of my favourite teas. While the black tea base gets a little lost amongst the rest of the flavours, it’s still a staple in my tea library. There are definite notes of peach, rose and hibiscus in this tea, and it has a wonderful floral aroma.

However, I can certainly say that this tea isn’t for everyone, while it’s lovely – its sweetness can be a little overpowering and can detract from the full-bodied flavour. It’s lovely black, or with honey, I find that it doesn’t suit milk very well. I adore this tea.

I adore this tea. It has a deep, bold, black tea base with a minty flick. I generally add honey, but I also fancy it black. It’s my steady, go-to tea when I can’t decide what to drink – it’s full-bodied like a winter evening, but light enough to never be bitter. It’s not particularly sweet, and that’s what I like about it, but the cornflowers make it smell wonderfully floral.

It’s very distinctive, a tea I can alway recognise, and I’ll never say no to a cup.

Supposedly this is an afternoon or dessert tea, certainly robust but I tasted this tea for the first time in the middle of the day. (I’m a tea rebel without a cause.) It was lovely, very flavourful, very sweet, a relative aroma of mango and it shouldn’t be brewed for any longer than 3 minutes.

The only criticism I can add is that there seemed to be many cast-off tiny tea leaves in the bottom of my tea. I only sipped it with a smattering of honey – it would be best not to add lashings of milk to this tea.

The sun is behind cloud and I’m snugged under a blanket sipping away at this tea and sunday afternoon is perfect. This certainly isn’t a sophisticated oolong but it is very comforting.

Another tea that I wouldn’t have bought except for the free tasting in store, they are onto me with this sales tactic!

This oolong contains sugar and honey in the nougat so is a bit sweeter than I was expecting. Sweet and oolong isn’t a combination that immediately appeals to me but this is a really lovely tea for a cool drizzly night. The flavour changes a lot with multiple brews too, even though the first brew is a little too sweet for my taste, subsequent brews have just a hint of honey and a richer, nuttier flavour.

It is a little on the expensive size at $180/kg but since I get a lot of use out of oolong leaves, a small package lasts a reasonable amount of time.

Ahh the T2 French Earl Grey… This was the tea that made me overcome my suspicion of T2’s fancy stores and packaging to actually try the tea.

The French Earl Grey is nice. It isn’t a conventional Earl Grey as the bergamot is nestled amongst the fruity floral flavours. This is another T2 tea that I’d really like to taste sans the ambiguous ‘flavour’ mentioned in the ingredients list. Sometimes I find floral flavoured teas all taste a little bit the same but this one stands out to me. It is nice.

I was completely sucked in by a store tasting and bought this with the intention only to use iced as an alternative to sugary drinks in summer. It is wonderful iced and really perfect on a hot day.

I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed it hot too. The flavourings don’t overpower the green tea flavour but compliment it instead. In the end I used most of my packet drinking it hot rather than cold. I’ll definitely repurchase it again but not until the weather down here warms up again. Even as a hot drink it is has the taste of summer.

Ignore my water temperature and brewing time at the bottom of this review as I make chai with milk on the stove and stop brewing according to taste.

I’m still not sure if my lowish score is because of this particular tea, or if I’m just not quite convinced by chai mixes. I always find myself adding and taking out spices from my spoon to adjust the flavour, in this case it has usually been removing cloves. I also find that for a milk brew, the tea base gets lost. I can’t help but think I’d be better served in the future by tracking down a black tea that brews well in milk and raiding the spice cupboard for the rest.

I get given T2 sample boxes regularly and this must be a best seller because it is always in them. The samples are in teabag form but the bags are the nice kind that contain decent amount of quality leaf tea (not dust) and allow water to move around a bit.

I’m not a tea purist of any kind and always try to enjoy a tea for what it is. I usually prefer my flavoured teas with a bit more tea and a little less ‘flavour’, I’m also not super keen on spotting “strawberry and cream flavour” (what does that mean?) printed in the ingredients. At the end of the day though this is lovely drink that is very easy to enjoy.

Have used this for Chai cupcakes. Yum

Love to mix this with chai and brewed with soy milk

This tea is the first – and so far, the only – Oolong tea that I have tried apart from some of the cheap and nasty brands they sell in some of the Chinese supermarkets around town. And in a few short months, this has become one of my absolute favourites although I haven’t got round to adding my tasting notes.

After rolling up my sleeves to clean and re-organise my tea cupboard thanks to an infestation of pantry moths – goodbye fruit teas! – I was looking forward to settling down with this. I strangely find this both revitalising for an afternoon pick me-up as well as soothing for a nightcap. As I only have the one teapot, I tend to have this tea once every couple of weeks, and then continually re-infuse before moving on to a different tea. So far, provided the tea is never scalded or over-infused at any point, I have managed to get up to five infusions.

The leaves are whole, medium sized (I’m guessing ‘souchong’) and rolled into fairly loose but even sized balls. I’m not sure which region the tea is from and I wouldn’t even be able to guess. After infusing, the tea can probably be descriped as olive-green with a distinct mint fragrance. There is a slight nuttiness and sweetness that contrasts nicely with the earthiness of the mint. The mint isn’t overly strong and the flavour seems to be more of the mint leaf rather than the more intense top-note menthol flavour of oil/flavouring. Even after a couple of infusions, the mint is still present but the tea does become sweeter and the nuttiness more intense.

I must remember to add notes for the various infusions.

Aw, here’s the last of this for a while… I think I’ll wait until autumn to restock a pu-erh, though I wonder if I’ll miss it! This has been so delicious right through three steeps each scoop.

And to think I was looking out the window at the sun yesterday morning and thinking about iced tea! Cold and overcast today, meaning a few cups of pu-erh ginger fit into the picture quite nicely.

Full belly from dinner. Ginger tea for sleepies.

A gutsy, earthy tea with just a touch of ginger. Perfect wintry tea.

Love this in summer!its yummy because it isn’t overly sweet.

If you’ve never tried any green tea, this should definitely be your first one to try, as it’s a good introduction into the world of tea.

Steepings: On T2’s website, it says to use 3-4 “tears” into a cup and brew for 7 minutes. Personally I’ve never tried that, if you have let me know how it tastes.

Teapot – I’d suggest use more than 3-4 “tears” depending on the size of your teapot, don’t be afraid to use a couple more than 8, especially if your planning on drinking more than 1 cup and resteeping it. Trying combining a mix of 80% boiling and 20% tap water. That’s how I like it, but of course try using all boiling water and see if you like that.

Food – You can drink this with Yum cha or any asian cuisine, if you really want to mix things up, trying it with nachos ;-). This tea is also perfect on it’s own as well.

Overall rating – 4/5

What a delicious surprise. Would never have selected liquorice, but delighted to have discovered it through friends. Enjoyed this at the very end of the evening.