Touch Organic

I’m not sure whence or whither this box came from … but I brought it to work for easy prep purposes. I didn’t use a timer, so I think I may have pulled the bag a little too soon, but it’s a very mild oolong that leans toward the sweet and roasty side. I see “roasted barley” in previous reviewers’ descriptions. From where I sip, that’s accurate.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about this one. I love green tea but it’s vegetal and mixing that with vanilla sounded strange to me but I decided to give it a go. This comes in a little tube shaped packet that is filled with matcha powder which you rip open and sprinkle into your mug.
I poured my boiled water in and stirred. Waited for it to cool a bit and took a sip. Not bad! Not my favourite but definitely interesting. The vanilla is unmistakable. I still prefer my green tea plain or with a fruity flavour but it’s always good to shake up your regular fare with something a little outside of what you’re used to now and then.
I likely wouldn’t buy this one again but it’s a nice change of pace.

This one contains some pleasant spices. It tastes cozy and wintery. There’s also some bitterness/drying that I expect comes from the base tea. My first sip of this was quite lovely, but subsequent sips were more medium. I still sort of like it. But it was a fun way to end the advent calendar!

This one is pretty leafy tasting. I prefer my green teas to be more gentle, but this one bodly announces itself as a green tea. Not bad, but not really my thing. If you like your green teas tasting quite green, I’m sure you’d like this.

I wouldn’t call the flavor passionfruit necessarily, but it was fruity and tasty. The main flavor was the fruit. The tea just provided a light background. Not bad at all.

I don’t love the flavor here. The main flavor is the murky green tea. The lemon makes an appearance, but I didn’t notice much ginger at all. It was quite mild and muted.

The berry flavor is quite subtle. I really wish the flavor were more clear. It’s a bit hard to tell what it’s going for, and there’s some artificiality and dryness again. It seems that Touch Organic’s strong point is definitely its green teas.

This tea doesn’t taste like much. It’s mostly water with a bit of dryness and a tiny bit of bitterness at the end. You can’t really tell that it’s trying to be apricot. Maybe this would be better with more precise brewing methods.

This green tea was pretty light and delicate. Not super appealing, but a plain, calming brew.

Had some more advent calendar teas today. This tea is pretty weak to be considered a breakfast blend. It’s sort of tasty, but not nearly bold enough.

The mango flavor is pretty authentic here. I’d prefer it as an herbal as I don’t love the mix of the green tea with the fruit. I don’t think they mesh particularly well in this case. But I definitely wouldn’t mind an herbal using this mango flavor.

Not much to say about most of these teas, but I figured I’ll give at least brief reviews for all the advent calendar teas for future reference. This tea is much more gentle and sweet than I would have guessed. It was pretty light and enjoyable.

This is actually a better jasmine tea than most. I found this to be sweeter and more pleasant than others, no bitterness or strangeness. I still wouldn’t seek this out, but it’s decent.

A family member bought me the Touch Organic advent calendar for Christmas, and I’m finally getting around to trying the teas – whoops! The flavors are pretty generic, but the box is cute. This flavor in particular was pretty boring. A kind of murky floral flavor. Not a huge fan.

This was my cup this morning before work. I really enjoyed it. Nothing fancy, just green tea with light ginger. Sometimes, all I want is something simple. There was no bitterness and the ginger wasn’t overpowering, very nicely balanced flavours that weren’t competing against one another.
I was lucky enough to find a box of this tea on the clearance shelf at Winners/Homesense for 4 dollars which was a steal!

A nice light green tea. Flowery. My favorite find at Home Goods. Have ordered directly.

I just recently discovered Oolong Tea, mainly because of its health benefits. I don’t really like green tea, but I decided to give this a go even though it’s said to be a mixture of black and green tea. I was pleasantly surprised! The flavour is mellow and smooth, and natural tasting. I have a cup of Oolong after all my meals to help with digestion and metabolism. The only issue I have is that it’s not readily available where I live, so I have to travel to stock up. It’s worth it, though, because I love this tea!

Teabox Tuesday! I grabbed this from the Discovery Teabox; I have never heard of this company, and it appears this flavor has been discontinued. Steeped this up this evening in my small dobin. I usually don’t make green tea in the evening, but I’m at least making this rather early tonight.

It actually smells a little floral to me, oddly enough, though there is an apparent pineapple aroma. The tea is indeed just a bit floral with some tart citrus notes as well, with a fairly forward pineapple flavor, but despite the fruitiness, the green tea, which has a very mild grassiness, is quite astringent in the aftertaste. I get a slight tart/sour feeling at the back of my tongue as a result. Half a teaspoon of honey did help improve the astringency some.

A fairly average cup.

This was the other tea I attempted to make at work on Saturday, and another failure. This time the teabag was left in the hot water for over an hour, and by the time I got around to it was ice cold. I expected extremely bitter tea, and was pleasantly surprised to find that this was not only drinkable but actually not bad. No mango flavour to be found, but the base tea was mild and not at all astringent until the final sip. I gulped it down iced and it was fine.

I drank this hot and iced, but found it much more flavourful hot. I generally like my fruity teas over ice, but this one actually holds up as a hot tea.

The pineapple flavour was authentic, but the green was a bit astringent. I’m going to try brewing this for longer in the fridge and serve it with sweetener over ice. I’m hoping the sweetener will balance out the astringency.

Since this tea is usually sold in 1mg packets, and because the strawberry flavor adds a decent amount of sourness to it, I feel this tea is better used in smoothies. The sour aftertaste is very strong and kind of overpowers the earthy flavors matcha normally has.

Tried it again, but with a different ratio of water to tea. I must’ve gotten it wrong last time because it was much less bitter and grainy this time around.