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Harney & Sons Vanilla Comoro + Frontier Natural Foods Sunset Rouge

I can’t believe there’s something VC doesn’t go with, but this is it. The tart Sunset Rouge berry flavor, which I was trying to tone down, mutated into stale & vinegary flavor that was just flat nasty.

Regretfully reaching the end of my sample. This has a lovely clean, clear, coppery taste that (I’m not going to deliberately mess it up for experimental purposes, but…) I suspect you can’t oversteep. Not a hint of bitterness potential.

After completely ruining a pot of loose green tea yesterday, I crankily dumped the whole mess and decided to go for simplicity in a sachet. This is a nice bagged oolong; I didn’t get much on the fruit/apricot side, but the safflower and marigold gave it a nice sunny disposition. Which helped mine a bit.

I ruin this one more than I get it right. There is about a half of a fourth of a degree leeway on this one before it goes wickedly bitter. A basic green ought not to be that finicky!

This was a gift from the extensive and famous Teaequalsbliss collection, and I was grateful to try it!

Steeped the recommended 5 minutes, this is dark, almost ebony, and rich and thick. There’s not a bit of fruit in it, but it made me hold my tongue the same way I would if I was eating a bowl of black cherries. A very good black tea with subtleties you wouldn’t want to miss by having it too early in the morning.

Woke up craving “sweet” and this was a good alternative to a Twinkie for breakfast :) Good basic vanilla black. Might hold its own against Vanilla Comoro, which I know is the gold standard for many of you out there.

Adagio Mambo (1 t) + plain cut mate leaf (1/2 t).

Dragging anchor after a drudgery and trudgery-filled workweek. Needed something that, like Powdermilk Biscuits, “gives you the energy to do what needs to be done.”

The plain mate takes the cocoa-y edge off the Mambo and adds just a bit of vegetation to the mix, but not unpleasantly so.

No good energy rush yet, but it’s still early…

I’m not a huge fan of smoky stuff, so lighter is better here. Just a hair less leaf helped; I can actually detect a little of the separate ingredients’ personalities.

Just wrote this one up for www.itsallabouttheleaf.com, so I won’t repeat, but it’s nicely done. I’m usually a little leery of teas marketed largely on the basis of packaging—in this case a Scripture verse on each tag—but this is tasty and would be a nice and thoughtful gift tea, especially for a newbie or non-teaophile.

The box provides steeping instructions for sun tea, which I have none of (warm sunshine) to try. But for now, it’s fruity, naturally sweet, and a little bit of spring in a cup. Spring is coming, yes?

Morning resteep. No severe reversals or personality shifts in flavor…wood, earth, cocoa, and minerals as stated in the description.

My husband loves all things “cave,” did some reckless amateur spelunking in the Ozarks back when he was younger and could fit through the crawl holes, so I read him the label that mentions the tea is cave-aged. He took one sip and said, “Yep, tastes like stalactites.”