Trader Nicks Tea Company

Just finishing off a mug of this right now! I made it how with some caramel flavoured cold foam on top which was a very delicious addition to the otherwise smooth and warmly spice vanilla chai flavour I’m getting from the cup. A little bit more vanilla, I would say, but the cinnamon and clove is there too. I also swear I get a sort of light hint of creamy milk chocolate. Whole thing is a bit on the lighter/softer side and not too sweet either. Just smooth and silky, and definitely snuggly.

This is interesting! It’s a little spiced and a little fruity. I’m enjoying it cold. I’d say it tastes the most like spiced raspberry. It’s a little reminiscent of pastries, which is what it’s going for. Yeah, this one is definitely desserty in a baked good fashion. One of the better Trader Nick’s teas I’ve tried for sure! The rooibos is the perfect base for it.

I don’t know if I necessarily felt like there was a lot of “wow factor” to this blend but it did make for a very solid mug and I think both of the inspiration flavours were pretty apparent, though the raspberry a little more so. Medium bodied overall and the raspberry felt fairly natural though without any tartness/acidity to it. Quite mellow without being delicate/weak. There was an overall sort of airy sweetness that felt pretty cotton candy-like. Not too sugary/cloying in any way but almost like an icing sugar sort of powdery softness that just sort smoothed everything out.

Made myself a mug of this to sip on at the start of the day, as one does with Earl Grey blends… even the ones that fit that definition a bit more loosely.

I’m going to need to revisit this because I ended up fairly distracted while drinking it and I don’t think I really got a great read on the flavour profile. Definitely fruity with a nice amount of body – more than a typical white tea blend, but less than a more traditional Earl Grey on the black tea base. It feels like there’s something interesting here – it just needs more focus than I was able to give it today to really get a proper read on it.

Solid background sipping kinda tea, at the very least.

This tastes more like apple than pumpkin. I like adding soy milk to accentuate the starchiness and make it feel more like pumpkin. It certainly doesn’t taste bad, just boring. I wish it had more spices.

This was a very sweet and fruity cuppa with some really juicy candy-like cherry and kiwi notes with a lot of creaminess of the coconut. It was very, very familiar tasting to me and it took me a long time to figure out what it was making me think of but by the last few swigs I realized it was making me think of a very old discontinued DT blend called Hard Candy. Makes sense – there are some big Jolly Rancher kind of vibes to this tea.

Made myself a mug of this last night and was so impressed by it! I mean, every element just hit me in exactly the right kind of way. Smooth and nutty rooibos base with sort of oat meal or oat muffin liked bakery kind of notes balanced by a sweet, bright and very jammy and cooked down duo of raspberry and rhubarb. Definitely a home baked pastry kind of vibe. I don’t know if muffin or crumble or pie or whatever feels most apt but it was just exactly the right intensity, balance, sweetness… Just all the things.

Made a mug of this today but I was pretty let down by it.

Though I don’t personally care too much about cup colour, this is advertised as steeping purple and not only was my mug not purple but it wasn’t even like a blue or pinkish colour from the two ingredients (butterfly pea flower and red dragonfruit) that I believe are primarily contributing to the liquour colour. Instead, it was a very sickly looking swampy green colour…

Taste wise it was pretty whelming. Very, very grassy tasting from the green tea base in a fairly course sort of way with super light notes of fruit. I get that it’s primarily supposed to be dragonfruit and dragonfruit is a very light tasting flavour but this was sort of just flat and watery to me. Not distinct enough to pinpoint any specific fruits, either. Just maybe vaguely tropical??

I’ll try it again and see if I can produce a better cup colour and stronger flavour, but I have a hunch this one just wont really be my cuppa tea.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this tea since the ingredient list is about half things I like and half things I dislike. However, the ingredients I like won out and the overall cup was a nice balance of soothing peppermint and soft floral rose. I didn’t really taste the chamomile, which was a win for me. The blue colour from the butterfly pea flower was cute, but IMO a little unnecessary. I’ll give it a pass though because this is Sleeping Beauty inspired and the whole “make it blue” is actually a movie reference…

This is a pretty generic red fruity tea. It’s pleasant enough cold with sugar. It’s candy-like in a way that reminds me of jello. This is better than some versions of this tea, but it’s just too average of a flavor profile to bother seeking this one out in particular.

I didn’t like this at all. It has a weird sour flavor. It’s supposed to be like popcorn, but it really didn’t work for me. I tried it two different times hot and cold, with milk and without, and I couldn’t escape that unpleasant sourness. I guess it’s from the apple?

Made a cup of this one today and I have mixed feelings about it…

The dry leaf smells really good with very bright notes of sour tropical gummy candies and a hint of banana. Steeped up, it’s quite juicy and bright with an upfront sourness and then a mix of mango and banana flavours that come through quite strongly. I’ve had a bit of a recent obsession with the Sour Banana Gummy Bears from Squish and there was something about this combo that really reminded me of that. I feel like sour banana candy isn’t exactly easy to come by, so I was vibing with the flavour profile.

However then it gets weird. There’s genmaicha in this blend and though it’s not super strong it does give a very distinct nutty/toasty flavour to the finish that feels all wrong with this really sour fruity candy kind of vibe. The finish is also a little funky in the way that tropical fruit is sometimes a bit funky and body-odor like. I did gag at one point because of it, when the tea started cooling and it got more prominent…

So, idk. I feel like I went on a whole roller coaster with this tea and right now I’m in that place where I’m deciding if I need to sit down and take a breather or if I want to hop right back on and ride the wave of adrenaline.

Made a mug of this last night, and really just got swept up in it. The smell of the steeped tea coming off the mug was so mouth watering a delicious. Very, very caramel forward but also sort of creamy too. At times I felt like it was really reminding me of butterscotch pudding. There was a little bit of a disconnect with the taste since it was quite bright, fruity and apple forward. However, this tea is intended to a caramel apple sort of profile so it is accurate – it’s just that the apple doesn’t come through in the smell so the very prominent taste was moderately jarring in those first few sips. As it cooled I found the caramel became more prominent with a richer, buttery finish. Overall, I thought this was very well executed!

Still not totally vibing with this one. It’s brisk and full bodied and definitely has that red fruit note I’d expect based on the description, but it’s also kind of medicinal and not incredibly unique. Plus, I’ve still yet to have a mug that actually glitters.

Eh.

I feel like, based on the description and ingredients list, this blend is supposed to subtly shimmer when steeped in a similar way to teas like DT’s Glitter & Gold. However, I really couldn’t see anything sparkly in both the dry leaf or steeped tea. Not the biggest deal for me personally, but seems like that’s the whole gimmick of the blend so I wanted to make sure to point it out for people who do care.

Taste wise, this was… fine? When I saw it was pomegranate and cranberry I thought that at best this would be either sweet and grenadine like or jammy with a pleasant cranberry tartness and, at worst, it would probably taste like generic red fruit. Well, it’s got a lovely brisk black tea base but the combo of red fruits in the blend is very medicinal tasting to me. Especially in the finish/aftertaste. I will for sure have to play around with my steeping next time to see if I can make a better brew.

Iced Latte!

Made this as an iced latte with some oat milk in a tumbler, and then brought it with me to my weekly board game night. Honestly, I thought this was pretty good! Not too intense tasting, but still right with a mix of cream, coffee, and milk chocolate notes that did a pretty solid job at conveying the tiramisu type of flavour that the blend was going for. Definitely chocolate primarily, though!

If I could nitpick just a bit, I would probably remove the chamomile. They’re not doing anything for this blend flavour wise and it’s pretty silly IMO to put chamomile in a blend with coffee beans/flavouring…

Clearly I’ve really been craving fruitier tea this weekend since that’s like 90% of what I brewed up over the last few days. I had this mug just a few hours ago earlier tonight, and it was very enjoyable. It reminds me a lot of Trader Nick’s other blend Drop of Sunlight (inspired by Rapunzel). I think that’s because both have a very sweet, juicy yet kind of tangy and sour tropical pineapple flavour and the same green tea base. However, the blend has undertones of deeper, more “red” tasting fruit notes and a hint of creamy coconut in the finish – so that’s not totally identical even though there’s some flavour overlap.The green tea is also a little stronger tasting overall in this tea. I think I prefer Drop of Sunlight, but both are good.

Hmm…

This blend was pretty weird, and I’m still not totally sure if it was the good kind of weird or the bad kind. Basically the flavour is a mix of pistachio and orange on a very thick, earthy shou pu’erh base. I quite enjoyed the flavours as individual parts of a whole. The pistachio was super buttery and less sweet than a lot of pistachio teas. Very familiar, too. I’m almost 100% certain I’ve had the exact same pistachio/shou pu’erh combination in other teas from the same supplier Trader Nick’s uses. The orange was also nice. Bright and just a bit juicy, with just a really fresh kind of feeling to it.

I think the weird comes in with how this super lively and sweet citrus flavour was interacting with an otherwise very dense, heavy kind of tea. They aren’t really on the same wavelength at all. On one end you have a profile that feels very cooked and heavy with an underlying umami/savory quality. The other end is liquid sunshine. And there’s nothing to bridge the MASSIVE GAP between the two. Like, I don’t want buttery oranges? Except, sometimes maybe I do if it’s in the context of like a shortbread or biscotti. But you need other flavours to be present in order to connect those dots…

Sweet, sour, tangy… All of the flavour that make this feel like liquid sunshine. I’d probably best describe it as lemon forward in either a sherbet or lemonade type of way but heavily mixed with a tangy pineapple hard candy kind of taste. Like if pineapple was a Jolly Rancher flavour, I suppose? Definitely enjoying this blend a lot of drinking through it quicker than I’d expected to.

Last couple blends I’ve tried from Trader Nick’s have been, well, not quite misses but also not anything exceptional. This tea, though, is majorly hitting the spot right now. It’s super bright with a playful pop of acidity. Very much a lemon sherbet or lemon drop (the cocktail) type of flavour in an almost effervescent kind of way but with a twang of tangy, ripe tropical pineapple weaved throughout. Like the name implies, this tastes like liquid sunshine in such a delectable way.

#mugtober

The theme on the day I drank this tea was “Madhatter” so it seemed only right that I pull out this blend (and drink it in a rabbit mug) for some Alice In Wonderland vibes. It’s my second time drinking this tea and I’m still feeling a bit undecided on it. It’s definitely not unpleasant but I just find the mix of fruity and floral notes a little too vague and ethereal. I neither really specifically get jasmine, peach, or bergamot and instead they kind of come together to create a rather medium bodied and ethereal mix that just tastes a bit “Spring-ish”. I suppose it would be a good tea for high or afternoon tea with finger sandwiches and little pastries, and in that regard maybe the flavour is quite appropriate afterall. I think I just wish this was either more peach or more jasmine so that it would feel a bit less topsy turvy and more anchored in general.

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

Drank this earlier in the week, though a bit absentmindedly. Though the floral leaning peach note was pleasant, there wasn’t really any quality about this blend that dazzled enough to pull my focus away from what I was working on and solely onto the tea. I think I’ll need to drink this in another context to really make up my mind, because as is I found this to be a bit of a middling blend.

Though I feel like this tea will be best made iced or cold brewed I found myself craving something fruitier a few nights back – and turns out it’s actually quite lovely hot! Very bright and juicy with just a smidge of sourness/tartness to it. The profile is quite peach forward in more of a candy-like and sort of artificial way. Though, I don’t mean artificial in a negative sense. But I also tasted a mix of different tropical fruits and some kiwi, and the finish has a soft but lingering coconut note with just a hint of creaminess. I’d call it a cross between, like, a peach gummy ring candy and a tropical smoothie.

Made this one last night and it was fine tasting, though didn’t particularly make me think of muffins. The green tea that made up the bulk of the base was smooth and just a little grassy and nutty, but mostly pretty neutral. The rest of the cup was a balance of somewhat flat tasting blueberry and a sweeter, more buttery finish that made me think of butterscotch.