The Honest Leaf

Very citronella. I can’t seem to get past the cleaning product aspect of it, especially when it is just freshly steeped.

Then, it begins to smell great. But lemony of the lemongrass variety.

The rooibos calms down the citronella scent and taste as it cools a bit. Cooling a few minutes allows the flavours to mesh. The citronella mellows into lemon. The rooibos provides a bit of substance. The ginger begins to pop.

A pleasant evening tea. Next time I steep it, I’ll pour in the water, steep, and walk away until the lemony beauty begins. This is a tea that does far better after a bit of sitting.

The second steeping is quite good. Still lemony, but it is still the lemongrass lemony, not real lemon lemony.

Ugh. I’m sorry Amoda this was not a tea for me. I have had more enjoyable blends with almost identical ingredient lists and with better names. I am so worn out with the chamomile-mint-lemon-lavender combo. Nothing great, nothing horrible. Just eh. Apple dust from the chamomile, floral soapiness from the lavender, slight minty aftertaste. I drank a cup of this to help me fall asleep. It worked, and now I think I will put this blend to bed from my cupboard.

So a few days before getting the Amoda box, my brother asked me if I had heard of The Honest Leaf. Apparently someone he works with owns the company and was talking to him about it. I suggested that if I had a sample I would review it and I would be happy to share samples to help spread the word. As a result, my brother brought home two bags, this tea and their “Slim” tea only for the Amoda box to show up with a sample of this.

Let me just start off by saying that I am not someone who is into the health benefits of tea. I drink tea because I like it, not because it magically cures cancer or can cause you to lose 50 pounds in two days. However, I figured I would try this out seeing as I have quite a bit of it lying around.

As I sip on the tea, I am getting a sweetness and a heavy dose of lavender. Luckily the floral isn’t too perfumey/drying but it is still floral and at the end of the day that’s just not a flavor I enjoy. However, I am happy to share with others who might find this more to their tastes.

Sipdown (120)!

Queued Tasting Note.

Finished this one off as a cold brew, just ‘cause I knew it’d use up all the remaining leaf really quickly. Like relatively anticipated, it was just like drinking concentrated chamomile and peppermint. Not bad, but not particularly interesting or exciting. Refreshing, at least.

I kind of sorta caved this morning? I said last night in a tasting note that I was feeling guilty for not doing the dishes while Tre was out of town – and I woke up early today so I used the extra time to not only do the dishes, but sweep and take out the garbage and recycling.

Also I feel like I need to defend myself just a little bit; the sole reason I haven’t done the dishes is ‘cause our dish washer is REALLY loud and the kitchen is connected to our living room, which happens to be my bedroom/where I sleep. So what normally happens is Tre runs the dish washer when I’m not home, and then I unload and reload it.

Anyway…

This tea is from Amoda’s February box – but it’s surprisingly not a totally new company, or even tea, to me. About four days before receiving this month’s box VariaTEA pointed out the company to me. I guess a family member knows the owner of the company and so, to get a little more exposure, they gave her a couple bags of the tea. ‘Cause when you know someone who’s tea obsessed that’s what you do – right? This is actually one of the ones she received, too.

And so, it’s cool hearing about a new company opening up shop (even if I don’t agree with their “health benefits of tea” approach and think that they should be offering both smaller sizes and more information on the blends – on their website it’s a little unclear what’s in which blend and the tea types and stuff like that) and then not a week later seeing them featured in Amoda’s monthly subscription box.

I made this tea in a timolino – a freshly denture tablet purged one though! I figured the flavour would be a little lighter and possibly more delicate given the ingredients so I didn’t want any sort of flavour contamination. And I don’t think I was wrong to assume so.

To me, this tasted fairly similar to DAVIDsTEA’s Bravissimo blend. So much so that I actually had to go back and double check the ingredients just to be sure that there wasn’t any licorice root in the blend because the flavour here flirted with that kind of distinct sweetness. I didn’t really taste the lemon in the blend – but the chamomile was quite strong and there were a lot of floral notes as well; most notably the lavender which somewhat impressively read as sweet instead of soapy or perfumey. I’m not big on lavender or chamomile but neither were offensive in this combination and ratio. LIke in Bravissimo, the peppermint wasn’t really the focus for me but just a nice, cooling and refreshing flavour in the background.

Overall, it was a little better than anticipated but still relatively average for me. I’ll enjoy finishing it off though; night time herbals are practically always welcome in my house!