Tumblewood Teas

I was in Montana this last week visiting my grandparents and I found this tea at a local cafe. I had to try some, it’s just not a vacation unless I come home with new tea. When I penned the package the dry leaves smelled exactly like a creamsicle. I steeped for 3 minutes with boiling water. The tea keeps that same smell. It is a lighter orange in color and slightly cloudy I think due to the melted white chocolate. It tastes like a warm melted push pop. I think i am going to try it iced since this just seems like an iced flavor to me. I did not add any thing to sweeten or milk. It is a sweeter tea already. It is a very nice orange tea.

This is kind of interesting! My husband would call the look on my face my “frown of approval”. This has a nice minty scent and a light minty taste. There is a hint of chocolate that is carried well by the heaviness of the puerh. When I sweeten it the mint comes out a bit more and some of the earthiness goes away. The chocolate is a little more true, but I think I liked it better plain. This is a nice mellow chocolate mint! I like!

TTB Tea 10: This is really good! It’s much more chocolate than mint. The mint hangs out in the background and and complements the other flavors. The chocolate really goes well with the earthy puerh flavors. I didn’t even need to rinse, and there was no fishy flavor! I really like this one.

I just don’t think that rooibos and cherry is a good combination. it’s a guaranteed recipe for cough syrup. There’s nothing particularly unpleasant about the flavor, but it tastes cheap, like kool-aid tea.

Aside from the cherry flavor, rooibos itself isn’t so exciting. The first few times I had a rooibos tea, I thought it was alright, but the more of them I have, the more ‘meh’ they become.

Tea #5 from Another TTB
Shelley_Lorraine !!!!!!!!! Thank you thank you thank you sooooo much for including this in the box. I’ll have to keep the last serving for myself. I’m sad there wasn’t more:( this was so delicious! When I opened the sample it waft the scent of those oh so delicious Popsicle brand CREAMSICLES!!! Wow and steeped it is definitely that same taste! I add sugar and milk and it brings this dessert tea up a few notches!! Wowzah! I love it! It was another below freezing day today and I loved that I could have a Popsicle but keep warm as well! I never thought it possible!!!

Well, consider me unbelievably impressed!

This has got to be the both the best flavored puerh and the best chocolate tea that I’ve ever had. Ever. Seriously. And if you know me, you know that I have never rated any chocolate tea high and only once before enjoyed a flavored puerh.

So what’s this mean for most of you reading this? probably that you won’t like it as much as I. All you who enjoy those della terra chocolate teas (so gnarly!) might not find this tea to match your tastes. . .but who knows. To me, this is exactly how a peppermint-patty wanna-be tea should be. The mint is strongest, while the chocolate hangs out in the back ground. The puerh gives the tea a weightier/creamier mouth feel than would another base, but it doesn’t contribute a lot to the flavor, which is good imo. I like unflavored puerh, but I haven’t found its unique flavor well suited to dessert blends.

I am especially impressed that this comes from a little Montana tea shop that is only a few years old.

I meant to try this tea again with different preparation and BrewTEAlly Sweet’s note reminded me. I took her suggestion for milk and sugar (rock sugar). It’s sooo much better this way. Sorry BrewTEALLy, I almost had it in mind to send you the rest of mine b/c I didn’t think I’d be drinking much of it. :p

I opened the rest of the gifts from my family and there was more tea! (it wasn’t all tea ;) )

I am so jealous that they are all back in Bozeman and I am not. I left 8 years ago when I got married, thinking I’d be coming back real soon. . .such is life :/

I received three teas from this company. This one smells sooo divine I could be happy just smelling the dry leaf. But, as is the case for almost every good-smelling dessert tea, it just doesn’t taste as good as it smells. It’s not bad. It does vaguely taste like a creamsicle. Sometimes I can appreciate orange in teas and sometimes not so much. This one of the not-so-much times. I can’t really say what it is that differs between the orange teas that I like and those that I don’t, but I think it’s that I prefer orange and spice. Well, now that I’ve put it in words, it must be the “cream” thing. I have a well documented history of not enjoying cream flavors in teas. Then, of course, the occasional exception confuses me and makes me reevaluate what I didn’t like about the others. So complicated are flavored teas!

I might try this one again, adding some cinnamon and milk. . .maybe it needs more cream. I have a whole two ounces of it, so I might as well experiment.

Argh, tasting note eaten, this time not by Steepster but by stupid university guest wifi that decided to ask for a login after navigating around several pages.

Short story: This is another tea from this local company, called Raspberry Rose Petal in the cafe from which I got it. They didn’t have a pouch of this for sale, though, so I didn’t have any idea what was in it besides, presumably, raspberries and rose petals. After drinking, definitely hibiscus, which is not too surprising. But the result is too much hibsicus, not enough rose. A raspberry hibiscus blend is decent, and I probably would have enjoyed it better iced and sweetened, but it doesn’t live up to the raspberry rose petal idea.

Also Steepster decided to move my ratings-slider markers (you know, the ones that tell you where other teas you’ve rated are) to a bunch of supremely unhelpful locations. Three markers in the 0-50 range, when I rate most of my teas 80-99? Why?? Ugh. Now I have no idea numerically where the teas I rate are going to fall until after I hit the submit button.

I wanted to get a cup of this tea because I saw the big pouch of it at the cafe and the ingredients looked promising. Of course, this tea company has no online store and I don’t now remember everything that was in it. There was for sure lemon verbena, rose petals, valerian root, and I think chamomile and maybe also lemongrass? Oh yeah, and strawberry pieces.

Anyway, this is pretty tasty. It’s lightly lemony, appley from the chamomile, and I do get a hint of strawberry but not too much. Not really any rose, unfortunately, but I feel like it gets drowned out pretty easily. I like this tea but I’m not sure it’s quite the herbal blend for me and they only sell it in ginormous bags. I think I want more verbena and less chamomile. I have a feeling I might be blending my own sleepytime herbal at some point. I’m also not sure that I want valerian in an every-night kind of tea. But it is pretty tasty.