The Tea Girl

I’ve been wanting to try The Tea Girl for a while, but she doesn’t ship outside of Canada. Miss Courtney was so sweet to send me a tea care package with a dozen Tea Girl samples, plus a few samples from her own stash and some fun candies. Tea friends are the best friends! :3

This one is a tasty maple tea. I wouldn’t call it specifically French toast, more of a slightly buttery maple black tea with a teeny hint of cinnamon. The base is an Indonesian black tea, and to me it tastes similar to Ceylon – fairly acidic with a metallic edge and a brisk finish. Not normally my favorite kind of black tea, but I actually kind of like it here, as I feel like the sharpness of it tones down the decadent maple and keeps it from being too cloying. Not one I would order for myself, as I just don’t reach for desserty teas, but I enjoyed the sample!

2025 sipdown no. 1

A lovely vanilla tea, and great to have a decaf option that tastes nice. The pink cornflowers are also pretty in the dry blend. I do think I prefer this to the Vanilla Bean.

2024 sipdown no. 96

The walnut flavour here is spot on (considering this tea has no nuts). The walnut is at the forefront with the caramel much more subtle. The oolong is a lovely base. The resteep still had a decent amount of walnut flavour and was enjoyable.

1st steep: 4 minutes
2nd steep: 6 minutes

2024 sipdown no. 86

This one was tasty, but some of these dessert-type teas just taste the same to me. I don’t know that I could really tell this apart from Canadian Butter Tart. A good tea, but not specifically French Toast Crunch.

2024 sipdown no. 85

I’m too lazy to write a full note, but just for me this was bleh and dumped.

2024 sipdown no. 84

Naturally this is a lavender explosion (which I don’t mind). The vanilla is also very apparent, but amongst those two strong flavours, somehow the bergamot gets lost. A good tea overall, but I’m not a vanilla fan, so I’m looking forward to Tea Girl’s regular lavender EG.

2024 sipdown no. 82

This is very much strawberry rhubarb, but I don’t get any pie. The strawberry and rhubarb are juicy and realistic, so I’m quite enjoying the tea regardless of the missing pie. I suspect this would be lovely chilled — If I were to order this, I would definitely try it that way.

Happy Christmas Eve to those celebrating! ❤

Wow, this is all blueberry! I am really impressed with the true blueberry, non-cloying or candy-like flavour. I will happily stock my cupboard with this one. :)

2024 sipdown no. 81

This is would be good if you’re into vanilla. The base is smooth and the vanilla is well balanced and at the forefront.

2024 sipdown no. 80

This has that waffle sweetness typical of a Taiwanese black, that really comes out as the tea has cooled. The body is light-light/medium and the tea is fairly smooth overall. The real shock of this tea was with my second cup where I oversteeped by 4 minutes (face palm) and it was still perfect! I wasn’t expecting a lot since TG seems to specialise in flavoured teas, but I would happily order this one.

Sipdown (2652)!

I was really craving chocolate yesterday and I didn’t have any in the house so I ended up looking for a super rich chocolate tea instead. I landed on this one because it let me sneak in that extra sipdown. It was very, very good. Super dense and fudgey with the right balance of sweetness and slight bitterness. Reminded me of very good slice of moist chocolate cake with perfect icing slathered on it. I’m not usually a pure chocolate kind of person, but dang this hit the spot!

I’m still trying to decide on one last advent for this year, and The Tea Girl is one of the ones in consideration for me so I decided to make a cup of one of the teas I have from there to see if it helped me decide. I think I originally got this one from Sil via VariaTEA, so thank you both! It was a perfectly fine tea. Rich chocolate in a pure play/straight forward kind of way. I appreciated that it wasn’t so much chocolate that I couldn’t taste the tea base, but at the same time the pu’erh had a touch of that “fishy” wet pile funk that didn’t feel fully aired out.

Didn’t really help me decide though.

I’m conflicted about this tea! I enjoyed it so much at first. It is warm and has a nice coconut flavour. The coconut oil that happens when the little flakes are steeped means that the tea becomes sort of buttery and creamy in a very palatable way. But then, as it cools, the coconut oil becomes…very oily, and then it sucks. So I would love this tea and then be totally sick of it for a long time, there was no in between, really.

Sipdown (1710)!

I believe this was gifted from either Sil or VariaTEA so thank you to whoever passed it along! I’m sorry that I don’t remember who…

I feel like I should have probably tried it back when I got it because as soon as I opened the sealed packet the tea immediately smelled like soured/off coconut. I was hopeful that it wouldn’t be as funky when steeped but sadly this was just unpleasant with that rancid sort of coconut note that comes off as unpleasant sunscreen lotion. The add salt to the wound, it had the sort of fatty gross liquor that I really hate in coconut teas…

Not rating though because it’s pretty apparent that I didn’t try this tea in its prime, and who knows how my experience would have been changed if I had!

Sipdown (1708)!

I had this one in the morning and it was definitely nice and very agreeably flavoured. Not too much chocolate in taste or texture, and the strawberry was very even throughout the sip though maybe just a hint more artificial tasting. I definitely don’t think this is something I’d seek out again as it’s not particularly unique, but if this is a profile that you like then I imagine it would make for a really good “everyday” cupboard staple option where you’d be able to produce the same tasting cup over and over – and that’s definitely not something to write off.

I have been doing a rapid sipdown of ‘the tea girl’ sample tins this week. Taking 4 hour online lectures has proven to be a great motivator to cruise through some quick accesible tea (ie tea samplers). I drink out of fairly large mugs or like my tea stronger so i just put an entire tea tin (about a table spoon in size) in my steeping basket. So far I think I have drank a half of the tea girl samples I have received. Hoping to polish the rest off next week.

Prep: Western
Tasting note: I think my tea was a little muddled, I got a bit of rooibos, but the cranberry and other “foresty” flavors were faint. This tea didn’t stand out as much as I thought it would in the flavor department.

Sipdown down theme from a previous month: An Earl Grey tea

I forget how much I like earl grey blends. It’s probably because I have accumulated more tea than is manageable for one person that it isn’t as much of a priority anymore. Looking at some of the past 2022 sipdown prompts, I think there is another earl grey blend that would apply for “tea that makes you happy” theme. It just reminds me when I was first getting into tea as a young teen and it felt both “sophisticated” and tasty. My household was full of coffee drinkers so it felt special to be able to enjoy something they didn’t know a lot of about.

Preparation: Western
Tasting Note: I would say that this is slightly creamy in mouthfeel more than taste. It still has the slight astringency of a bergamot flavored tea. I don’t think it is the best earl grey but it is certainly not bad. I am not getting a lot of jasmine since the bergamot and black tea is stronger.

Been taking a Lead Internal Auditor course this week for an ISO standard for med devices and it goes until next week. It is so much more work than I thought it would be. I feel like I am in college again but it is condensed into two weeks. :P I am so rusty.

Anyways I have been trying a lot of samples this week without really having time to write up a tasting note.

Preparation: Western
Tasting Note: This one was pretty good, I don’t think it was too tart and it was really rich like a blended red wine or fruit wine. I didn’t add any sugar to my cup. If I ran out of my current supply of hibiscus tea, I think I would get some of this again. I think that it was a good red fruit blend, the different fruits weren’t overpowered by hibiscus but the savoriness of the hibiscus came out a little bit in the background which was interesting. I think this is one of the better hibiscus blends I have come across.

Sipdown theme: April: Favorite Jelly Bean flavor

I am actually not sure what my favorite jelly bean flavor is, it has been way too long since I have had one. So my tea pairing today is riffing off what teas remind me of fruity candies. So Watermelon Sugar sounded like a good option. I was really excited when I looked over the ingredients for this tea, it was Tieguanyin, apples and watermelon flavoring. I haven’t had an oolong blend in awhile.

Preparation: Western- Straight
Tasting Note: This is really interesting, it reminds me of watermelon jolly ranchers and the freshness of Tieguanyin. It’s really nice and refreshing. It is plenty sweet on it’s own which is to say the tea base has its own sweetness and the watermelon flavor does the rest.

I am having a lot of nostalgia with this tea and there is one specific tasting note that almost reminds me of pop rocks, that sort sugary effervesce. Don’t worry- there isn’t actually pop rocks or that fizzy candy, but a part of my brain just is reminded of it because of the watermelon flavor.

I think this is going on my wishlist.