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It’s always fun to get tea in the mail when you forgot it was coming to you… such is the case with my envelope of teas from TeaEqualsBliss that came last night! Thanks so much for the jam-packed envelope. This was one of the samples that was included and I decided to jump right in and try it this morning.

The dry leaf on this one smells like cherries, but like actual cherry fruit, not cherry flavoring. Whew! I’m really not a fan of cherry flavoring (like in cherry candy), but I do like the fresh fruit. It reminds me of a french “four red fruits” tea, probably because cherry is often one of the red fruits in those blends. After steeping it has a tart cherry aroma backed up by a brightish black tea base. I don’t get much almond except perhaps as a slightly nutty light note to the aroma.

The flavor is very subdued and pleasant. This isn’t an in-your-face flavored tea. A bit tart cherry, a smooth black tea base, and there’s the nutty almond flavor, blooming in the aftertaste. I would like it if there was a bit more almond flavor to this, since I am an almond freak, but I do really like that the cherry tastes nice and natural.

I’ve had Lavender Earl Greys and I’ve had Green Earl Greys, but I’ve never had a Green Lavender Earl Grey. Given my good experiences with Verdant’s Alchemy line so far, and my interest in various Earl Greys including those of the lavender persuasion, I had to ask for a sample of this one with my latest order. Thanks, David, I’m excited to try it!

The dry leaf smells pretty lavendery with some greenish teaish scents and is that some bergamot? The bergamot isn’t really the main player in the aroma of the dry leaf. I steeped this according to the directions for the base tea (Jingshan green) and the resulting cup smells very intriguing. Lavender, yes, but with a warm, almost cookie-ish aroma. Well that was a surprise. Again, I can’t really pick out the bergamot in the scent. The flavor is intriguing and unexpected. Lavender is the most forward flavor in this tea, but overall it is very light and delicate with a faint sweetness. It is somewhat bright, but more “crisp” than anything else. I’m afraid I don’t actually taste the bergamot nor the lemongrass. I am very much enjoying this cup of tea, but what it’s really making me want is a cup of this tea unflavored, and perhaps to see it in a straight Green Earl Grey blend sans lavender. From reading tasting notes of the base tea, I feel like the lavender, light as it is in this blend (seriously the least obtrusive I’ve ever had in a tea), is steamrolling over the other flavors a bit.

Thanks to Teavivre for providing me with this sample to taste! And a generous sample it was, I’ll be drinking this one for a while (spoilers: luckily that won’t be a hardship!). For someone who loves green oolongs, I haven’t tried very many tie guan yins. It’s basically been the two Verdant pickings and one from Harney that I tried in their tasting room, but I don’t think I really appreciated oolongs when I had that one as much as I do now. So I’m really curious to taste this one! I’ll be trying a lot more oolong varietals over the coming weeks, which I am also excited for.

The dry leaf on this one smells lovely, with nice floral notes and a good “greenish” base. I normally wouldn’t steep an oolong (especially a green oolong) at boiling, but that’s what the package said, so I did it. The liquor is a nice medium greenish yellow, and it has a great scent. I feel like it’s getting harder for me to describe that scent over time as I come to associate it with green oolongs because it ceases to smell like anything but a nice green oolong to me. But it’s that fresh floral/buttery/creamy/sweet aroma.

I have to wait longer than usual for this one to come down to drinking temp, but early hot sips yield a pleasant leafy flavor with a light sweetness and some magnolia-ish notes in the aftertaste. As it cools this flavor profile continues, with the leafiness growing in intensity. The florals are pretty prevalent as well, while the sweetness just kind of lingers lightly at the back. I don’t get a lot of buttery or nutty notes with this one, but I do love a very floral oolong so I’m willing to forgive it those characters. Definitely a pleasant TGY that I really enjoy drinking.

The first time I had this I tried it with boiling water, but I just noticed that the instructions say 95°C. Also this does look kind of like a black/green blend post steeping. I didn’t have any adverse effects last time from the boiling water, but I dropped it this time anyway.

I really like the orange/jasmine combo in this one. I think jasmine pairs really well with all kinds of fruit flavors, but in particular citrus flavors. I also like that the orange isn’t super strong here; I feel like a lot of orange teas are maybe too much orange for me; it’s lightly orangey without tasting like someone dropped a ton of orange flavoring on it. This tea is a tiny bit astringent, which I wonder if it isn’t the black tea base that MF uses that I tend to find a bit off. This is one of the few teas I actually like better when it’s still hot because that astringency hasn’t come out yet. Still, I do enjoy this tea a lot.

So I haven’t tried this one plain, but given my track record with 52teas black teas, I’m not going to bother. That also means I’m not going to rate it because I always rate a tea sans additions. That being said, this was fairly tasty with milk and maple syrup to sweeten. I think I could have done a slightly higher tea:milk ratio (favoring tea), but it was decidedly pumpkiny all the same. It has a pumpkin flavor that’s less pie or sweet bread, but of uncooked pumpkin puree. That might not sound as appealing, but it’s actually a nice authentic tasting flavor and it means that the tea tastes really like pumpkin, not just pumpkin pie spices (which often seem to be used to give something a “pumpkin” flavor without actually any pumpkin flavor). I don’t get a lot of maple flavor, even with the addition of the maple syrup, nor buttery pancakes, but those could have been wiped out by the milk a bit.

Overall I did enjoy this one with milk and sweetener, which really helped the pumpkin come out and not get overwhelmed by the black tea.

Thanks to the American Tea Room for sending me a sample of this to try! Since I don’t usually drink tisanes at work I waited until I had some time this weekend to brew this one up. Like some others I was impressed by the huge whole ingredients in the blend: a whole star anise, a big hunk of cinnamon stick, lots of halved cranberries.

Steeped, it is the promised pink color, really a dusty rose, and it smells pleasantly of spices with orange and cranberry notes. My boyfriend said, “it smells like Christmas.” (He also said, “That actually smells good!” … he is not a tea drinker, heh). I get a strong orange note from the flavor, followed by a tart burst of cranberry, and then a warm mix of spices. The star anise leaves a light anise flavor in my mouth, which has the unexpected result of making this tea seem even more like Christmas to me. My mom always makes Springerle cookies for Christmas because they’re my dad’s favorite cookie, and those are anise flavored. So this tea kind of makes me think I’ve been eating a springerle at Christmas.

There’s something about fruit infusions that always makes me want them to be sweet. This is very nice plain, but I think I will sweeten it a touch next time because my palate wants that. Overall a nice blend for the holidays!

I got this one in the mail last night and I couldn’t wait to try it. Like almost everyone else I loved the spring picking and was excited to try the autumn offering.

To start with, the differences are apparent from the scent of the dry leaf. Like many have pointed out, this tea smells richer and more buttery than its spring counterpart. The dry leaves of both have a floral aroma, but the difference is like that between fresh, bright, light, spring florals and darker, heavy, rich, thick florals. It’s a comparison I made recently for some flavored teas, but it works here (though on a slightly narrower scale). In the aroma of the brewed tea (brewed “western style” in a 12oz cup) these florals are still present and thick (primarily lilac, I would say), with a health dose of buttery creamy nutty notes.

Well I’m not shocked that this tea is awesome. The notes I described above are in the flavor, but also a distinctly green leafiness that I never really got from the spring picking. That’s really the main note in the sip, and all the florals and butteriness and nuttiness is just coming and going. I feel like this one is a little less sweet than the spring… it’s just a tease, a hint, a faint whisp of sweetness playing on the edges of what is really more of a savory quality. All in all a delicious, intriguing offering from Verdant.

I forgot how pleasant this tea was. There’s so much extra citrus in the blend that you definitely get hints of lemon and such, but the overall flavor never loses sight of the bergamot. It’s a really nice pairing between the green tea and the bergamot, too; neither overpowers the other. An Earl Grey green can be so nice because you don’t have to overload on the bergamot for it to be the primary flavor, so there’s less chance of getting that bitterness or astringency that can come from too much bergamot. I mean really citrus and green tea go so well together anyway, it’s a natural extension to bergamot. Yum.

Mmm, marzipan. Ok, so I can tell this isn’t the highest quality black tea base in the world, being that it’s a little bitter/astringent at less than boiling, but this is still the only straight almond black tea that I’ve come across that really tastes like almondy marzipan to me. The low quality tea base bothers me more than it did before, so I guess my palate is refining itself as I lose myself in high quality oolongs, heh. Still pretty tasty, but I wish I could find one with this level of almond and a better base.

First of all I have to say thank you so much to Angel Chen and Teavivre for providing me with so many samples for tasting. Along with a few samples of teas I know I like—Tie Guan Yin and jasmine pearls—I requested a few of the green teas I’m not familiar with but was intrigued by their descriptions. Up to this point I have generally only drank flavored green teas. So I guess this review comes with a helping of ignorance about green teas, but you have to start somewhere, right?

The dry leaves smell a bit grassy, like I tend to associate with green teas. The leaves are very long and spindly, which means I was unsure about my portioning, but I forged ahead since the directions actually used a teaspoon measurement. The steeped tea is very light, a hint of mint green color. The aroma is surprising to me: buttery, a bit floral, almost like a green oolong, but lighter and fresher. It really doesn’t smell much like the dried leaf. The flavor is a bit vegetal and grassy (green tea-ish, really), but it’s also buttery, floral and a hint sweet. I do think I didn’t use enough leaf for this cup, but I’ll remedy that next time. I’m really enjoying this one even slightly weak, so I’m really interested to see how it brews up with more leaf. I could definitely see myself exploring more of this type of green tea.