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This is my first tea from Praise Tea Company, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. The dried leaves had huge pieces of coconut in with them, and nice little chunks of cacao nibs. The leaves smelled powerfully like coconut with chocolate making up the base note. When brewed, the aroma becomes a little more muted; more chocolatey now, with a more subdued coconut. The taste is back to primarily coconut on the tongue, with lightly roasted chocolatey notes rounding it out. As it cools it becomes even more coconutty. No bitterness to this one at 3 minutes; next time I’ll try 4 to see how it fares. This is a really tasty tea, and I like how the chocolate isn’t overly roasted flavored. I can see myself ordering more teas from Praise!

This is the final tea in the sample pack that I got from twiggles for the Easter HoppiTea. I do love a good vanilla tea, although I don’t have many examples that are just straight up vanilla black. The aroma of the dry leaves on this one isn’t just vanilla, but I can’t really place it. Like many vanilla teas, this one is made up of fairly small pieces of tea leaf. Brewed, the aroma becomes more definitely vanilla with the black tea base coming through. The taste is vanilla, but not creamy vanilla, just a warm vanilla on top of the robust black tea. It’s a solid, tasty black tea, though I can’t help but wish the vanilla was a tiny bit stronger (I am, after all, a flavor junky).

I was excited to try this one (also part of the sampler pack from twiggles) because I really love jasmine teas, and this is a “Chung Hao” grade of jasmine and I’ve read reviews of other Chung Hao jasmines that made me want to try them. The dried leaves on this one have a strong jasmine aroma with an underlying sweetness; I’ve seen a couple of jasmine teas described recently as having honeysuckle aromas, and now I can smell it in this one too.

I was surprised at how dark this tea got after only 2.5 minutes of brewing. The liquor is a dark yellow edging toward orange, and the aroma of the brewed tea is very similar to the dried leaf, except more well developed and “fuller”. This isn’t a wimpy jasmine; the taste is strongly of floral jasmine (not very perfumey, I don’t think, but I don’t tend to get bottle of perfume flavor from florals that some people do) integrating well with the green tea. There seems to be a touch of underlying bitterness from the green tea, but given the darkness of the liquor after 2.5 minutes I think the steep time could be dropped to take care of that. I’m not quite sure how this one compares to the other jasmines I have now; I guess I’ll have to go back and try them to see how they all stack up. In any case, I think this tea would match up well with the others I’ve tried so far.

This is another one from my Upton sampler pack that I got for the Easter HoppiTea from twiggles. It’s a nice looking tea, with tiny candied mango chunks and sunflower petals. Dried it smells strongly of sweet mango; brewed, the mango aroma isn’t so candy-like and becomes much more like mango juice, with the black tea base underlying.

My first sip (while still pretty hot), I get a taste of mango and surprisingly a jasmine note. I went ahead and brewed the full four minutes on this one, but that did cause a some bitterness, so I’ll definitely drop it next time. Nevertheless, I can tell that I really like this tea! As it cools, I still get an overall mango flavor but in a very floral way. I can’t help but be reminded of jasmine somehow. Definitely my kind of tea!

I have a few sample pouches of rooibos from TeaFrog that I still haven’t tried yet, mostly because I don’t get around to making a pot of tea at home as much as I’d like. I chose this one because of the orange and rose and other florals in the mix. When I first got them, all the pouches kind of smelled like all the other ones, and separation hasn’t helped them much, but I haven’t experienced much cross contamination in the other teas from the box. I say this because this one doesn’t taste much like I expected.

Brewed up, I do of course taste the nutty rooibose base, and a creamy, vanilla flavor. Maybe a hint of orange? I also get a somewhat, minty, musty aroma that sometimes gets into the flavor. No florals at all. It’s not a great match up. Maybe I got a not-great batch, but I don’t see myself going for this one very often.

Ah, Paris. This really seems to be sussing itself out as my favorite go-to tea. I brought some sachets home in a recently-emptied tagalong tin, and even though I don’t often drink tea at home for some reason, I decided I needed a pot this morning with breakfast (maple-oat scones). For whatever reason this pot has more bergamot flavor than some others I’ve had. Delish!

This is part of my Upton flavored tea sampler from twiggles! I love almonds, almond tea—heck, almond flavored anything—so I was excited that one of the teas was an almond green, which I’ve never had before. The dried leaves smell almondy and vegetal, and when brewed the almond aroma takes over with a hint of the underlying green. It smells cinnamony too, which somehow ads to the idea of baked goods.

The flavor is definitely a green tea with almonds. I think I taste the green tea first with a very vegetal note, then the almond with a hit of cinnamon. The almond comes out a bit more as it cools; its a nutty almondy flavor, but not quite the flavor of almond extract or marzipan (I’ve yet to find a tea that really tastes like that to me, but that’s ok). I also get a hint of bright citrusy flavors I don’t taste initially but that linger in my mouth.

I’ve been wanting to try this one for a while now; I love chocolate tea, and I love Earl Grey tea, so the two of them together was very appealing to me! And now, thanks to twiggles and the HoppiTea swap, I have a sample!

I might have expected this tea to smell like a chocolate orange or something, but the aroma comes together in a way that you can distinctly smell the roasty chocolate and the somewhat floral EG, and they also meld together. This tea doesn’t hit you over the head with either flavor, and considering how chocolates and EGs can both have a tendancy to do so, it’s impressive. I don’t get as much of a citrusy EG as a floral one (I think the jasmine flowers contribute to that), though as it cools I think I get a hint of lemongrass on the end of the sip. I brewed it for only 3 minutes, but since I get no hints of bitterness whatsoever I think I’ll go up to 4 next time as suggested. This one was different than I was expecting, but very good! I look forward to sipping through my sample!

ETA: The resteep on this is fantastic… the chocolate takes a backseat and becomes a supporting flavor (though still evident), but the bergamot comes out with a more citrusy flavor. The jasmine is evident here as well, adding a smooth floral note. Delicious!

Another one of my favorite teas. I haven’t had this one in over a month, mostly because I look at the tin, consider it, then don’t drink it because I don’t want to use it up too quickly! But today I decided it had been too long since I’d brewed it, so now I’m happily sipping away.

Not much to say here; just decided to have this delicious tea for my morning cup. I’ve started brewing my Harney blacks a bit under boiling (yay for my utiliTEA teapot that easily controls the temperature!), and they always come out fantastic.