Tea Forte

The single steep packet contains enough for two pots of each, and each tsp of leaf can be brewed more than once.

An excellent and simple herbal blend with the taste of spicy ginger, lemony chamomile, and lots of citrus. Luckily, it is not acidic/as tart as lemon can be. The lemon verbena + chamomile + mint + licorice is lovely.

I really appreciate the quality of the ingredients. They taste very fresh and are potent enough to be re-steeped multiple times.

Cold brew sipdown.
Tart, fruity, best served cold.

Notable flavours of cranberry, blueberry, spices, graham cracker, and hibiscus/rose hip. Very tart no matter how you brew it, just FYI. Even 1 hour coldbrewed twice, the second steep was equally flavourful and sour.

Wohoo! Amazon Prime to Canada took two days to ship a 28 type looseleaf sampler of Tea Forte teas to me. Hopefully I can get through them quickly. I’ve been admiring their teas for a very long time, but couldn’t justify their extravagant packaging/markups and shipping cost. Well, I found it on Amazon.ca and decided to order it. Now I have 28 of their blends to try. They call them “single steeps”, but I only used half the package for my pot. It is filled with little dried blueberries and smells divine. I mean straight blueberry juice. I’m quite surprised how realistic it is considering this isn’t a top of the line tea company.

Brew is light amber pink. I can taste the blueberry and sage, but somehow the sage isn’t making it savoury. Lots of hibiscus/rose hip (will try the other half of my pouch iced), flavour is mostly juicy cranberry, fruity, very realistic blueberry, sage, and both sweet and sour.

This is one of the most unique blends I have ever tried, and I’m super impressed on the intensity of the fresh blueberry flavour. Everything goes together really well, but I don’t drink tarter fruit blends very often. I’ll probably purchuse this if I ever buy from Tea Forte in the future because I am quite enjoying my pot of tea.

I got this for Christmas in Tea Forte’s Noir sampler. Now, I’m always conflicted about this company. Everything I’ve tried by them has been wonderful. However, to me, they seem really overpriced for the quantity you get. So I only buy something from them every few years. Or if I can find it on sale. It’s a special treat.

About these single-steep pouches, I’d say they’re actually two if you’re using a standard size mug. There’s a little over two teaspoons in each.

Now, this is one incredibly fragrant tea. The peach aroma is sweet, bright, and realistic. Very natural and juicy! As it steeps, calendula petals and pieces of dried fruit rise to the top. As for the flavor, I love it. The brulee aspect is milder than the peach, but still present. It adds a rich layer of creaminess. But it’s definitely subtle, as is the black tea base. It’s only a touch astringent, but it mostly fades into the background. Also, I see this contains coconut too, but I can’t really taste it. That said, this is probably the best peach tea I’ve ever had.

Gah! This one actually smelled rather nice, like almonds and cookies and fruity – sort of a fruitcake scent, now that I think about it. There was even a bit of a floral fragrance. BUT the flavor was horrid! It had the biting sting of alcohol – I’m guessing that’s the “rum” flavoring – and really not much else. I rarely find a tea I cannot drink, but this was one. (NB, I’m only noting alcohol in the scent/taste box, because that flavor was so nasty I don’t really want to give the nice fragrance any credit.)

This one is super old, but it’s finally a sipdown! I can no longer remember what it tasted like fresh, but now it tastes mostly like pear candy. The ginger is faintly perceptible, if at all. Not bad, just a little sweeter than I was hoping for at the moment.

You know your tea habit is out of control when most of the gifts you get are tea related! My partner’s parents got me a Tea Forte gift set for Hannukah, which includes two mugs and a sampler set. This blend smells so good that I felt the need to post about it immediately. It just smells beautifully of ginger and apricot. As it cools, the apricot changes to pear. The taste is sweet pear with a hint of ginger. However, this takes on a weird and off-putting stevia aftertaste when it cools. The good news with a sampler is that I only have two pyramids of each blend! I’m disappointed with this one because it starts off so good but ends on a bad note that really lingers.

If someone said roasted peach to be before, I wouldn’t know what that smelled like. Smelling this though, that’s the word that comes to mind. There is a sweet scent, but not nauseating. I’m getting my hopes up as this brews because it smells great brewing- I don’t know how to describe it other then like vacation. The initial sip is a gentle sweetness. (of note I don’t like sweet and tea but I like this). There is a definite peach element but not overbearing- gentle. In the end though, I think a bit more complexity of flavor would have been good. Personal preference though since if this had been based on my personal favorite flavor Rose instead, I would be in love.

The tea smells of chocolate and gentle rose. Nothing very strong. When brewed the scent has rose and mild chocolate, not too intense. The taste I found was a good balance of tea leaf, chocolate and rose. No one taste was stronger then others.

I wouldn’t seek this out (I generally find it just ok as jasmine teas go) but Tea Forté was the only brand available at the restaurant and I needed something to complement the amazingly rich chocolate cake I was having for dessert: https://www.instagram.com/p/BTzt7A3lU8E/ The floral jasmine flavor of the tea cut the denseness of the chocolate really well. The contrast of light/delicate/floral and rich/creamy/chocolate made for a good dessert pairing.

This is a solid mid-range jasmine green. The jasmine flavor overwhelms the base but it isn’t cloying. I had this with dinner at a fancy restaurant. It’s nice enough for that, but not so impressive as to keep stocked at home.

Standard green tea. Pretty good, but nothing exceptional.

This tea was given to me as part of a set some time ago. I mostly have been leaving these flavored teas for company who like flavored tea, but I really wanted something different today and I thought I’d try it. First thought…meh. It’s ok, but I’m not really tasting the caramel. I taste mostly hazelnut and orange. So I added some milk and sugar. Bam! There it is! The caramel still isn’t super strong, but I can actually taste it now. A dessert tea for sure!

Sipdown.

I think this one saw some cross-contamination because the first cup tasted strongly of cinnamon. Subsequent cups were a bit bitter, with no cinnamon notes.

Staying at a hotel for a few days and they have these cool looking Tea Forte tea bags in the club room. This is a strong and malty black with a pretty generic Assam taste, maybe a little bit of Yunnan in it. It’s not bad, one of the better English Breakfast teabags that I’ve had. That said it seems that packaging is their “forte,” not the tea.

Additional notes: Sipdown of this one. Probably my favorite from the mediocre Tea Forte teas I’ve tried. I guess I like the citrus and mint combos!

Equal parts spearmint and some sort of citrus. I wish it was more lime and the orange pieces in this looked a little gross. Orange petals instead of orange peel pieces, tea companies!! But the flavor overall is great. Nice summertime cup late at night. Basically, this is just a note to say I tried this. :D

Cold Brew Sipdown (129)!

Well, finally finishing off the Herbal Retreat sampler I bought. I have to say that now that it’s done I didn’t really hate any of the teas but I didn’t find any of them exceptionally mind blowing either. The only ones I’d probably entertain the thought of buying again would be Mojito Marmalade or Cherry Cosmo. However, Mojito Marmalade is much like DAVIDsTEA’s Midsummer Night’s Dream blend so even then I think I would likely lean more towards that one.

I did enjoy this blend a lot better cold brewed. The ginger was still very strong and that’s a negative for me – but as a cold brew both fruit notes were brighter, more intense than the ginger, and more long lasting, flavour wise. In particular the lime really came through in a spectacular and commanding way. Sweet lime, not tart/acidic/sour. In a way, it almost tasted creamy too? Even though there’s nothing in the blend that SHOULD create a creamy flavour. In hind sight, I’m actually VERY curious what would have happened if I’d tried this one out with milk or cream. These aren’t really flavours that you’d anticipate working with milk. But it’s such a strange/out there flavour combination anyway that your guess is as good as mine whether or not it would have worked.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jp_KELHLw4

Don’t ask me why – but the aesthetic I imagine when I’m drinking this matches up so perfectly with this song. Even though there’s literally no logical reason for me to come to that conclusion.

Finally tried the final tea from the Herbal Retreat sampler…

I saved the one I was least looking forward to for last; oops. It’s wasn’t actually bad, although like my intuition told me it would be it probably is my least favourite though. Or, at the very least, tied for my least favourite with Blueberry Merlot.

It’s actually of no fault of the tea itself though; it’s pretty well genuinely everything as advertised. All three titular flavours are featured in the sip, and actually in pretty even amounts. I’d say that the kiwi is definitely more of a natural flavour than the lime, which is more candy like, but both are clearly present. As far as fruit flavour goes, I also got a sort of apple like note. Not actually green apples like one would probably assume though. Despite the sweetness of the apple, the cup had a tartness to it that comes from both kiwi and lime definitely being more acidic fruits. The ginger wasn’t all that present until the finish, where it was definitely a more in your face flavour with a spicy kick/tickle.

Honestly, not a BAD cup. It’s just that I’m REALLY not a ginger fan, and then I kind of am of mixed thought when it comes to the fruit; don’t love ‘em and don’t hate ‘em. So, that’s not a lot for the tea to really build upon.

Cold Brew Sipdown (135)!

Really, really lovely cold brew! The apricot was the prominent flavour and it presented as a very vibrant, rich and juicy pop of fruit flavour with undertones of other stonefruits like nectarine. In the background, the sweet almond notes gave off that kind of marzipan/cherry flavour in addition to the perfect amount of nuttyness. It made for a very interesting and robust drinking experience that kept you captivated and enchanted with the flavour profile from first sip to last.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9blSYZrT8lo&index=313&list=LL1M1wDjmJD4SJr_CwzXAGuQ

Made a pot of this one while just lying back and watching Pride and Prejudice. I sure do love me some Mr. Darcy…

This was pretty good; I think that both the apricot and the amaretto are very clearly present in the cup and the two are a pretty solid pairing as well. The apricot presents at the top of the sip and is sweet, lively and juicy as well as just a little bit peachy. While it tastes somewhat natural, there is a bit of candy like sweetness to it as well. The amaretto isn’t nearly as strong as the apricot but that sweet, marzipan/almond like sweetness makes for a great nutty undertone and refreshing, sweet finish. This does use rooibos, and I did find I could taste it a little in the finish but I didn’t mind it that much either.

Two of my favourite drinks at the moment are Amaretto Sours and Apricot Sours so I bet that you could probably make a pretty good “mocktail” version of the two of those if you just brewed up and then chilled a concentrate of this and just mixed it with a little sweet and sour mix. It’d probably be really lovely.

Anywho, I’d say this is probably my favourite from the herbal sampler thus far!