1737 Tasting Notes
I am confused. I always thought that the famous Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime was a chamomile tea. That’s definitely my memory of it, though I cannot claim to have bought a box of it in years. Yesterday at Whole Foods I decided to grab one, along with one of Vanilla Sleepytime, because I’ve been on a chamomile kick of late. To my surprise, Sleepytime now seems to contain primarily spearmint!
I do like a good spearmint tisane now and then (Tazo Refresh, anyone?), but this new formulation (I presume) is very different from my memory of the Sleepytime of days of lore. It may be that I should stick with the straight up Chamomile from this line. Now I’ll have to pick up another box of that one again since my box from ancient history is disappearing fast. I hope that it won’t smell like dandelions instead!
I do recommend this latest batch of Sleepytime as a spearmint but not as a chamomile infusion.
Preparation
Another unique herbal blend from Davids Tea, Coco Chai Rooibos seems to me like a cross between a pseudo hot toddy (non-alcoholic) and an infusion of cinnamon. The alcohol flavor is quite marked, and I imagine that it is the secret “artificial flavoring” ingredient. Strangely, no one else seems to be commenting about it. Rum, anyone? No?
Well, to me, it overwhelms just about everything else. There is a strong spiciness reminiscent of ginger here, too, but I believe that the cinnamon adds to the hotness, and I definitely do not catch the taste specifically of ginger. Nor that of coconut. Or even rooibos. Maybe that’s a good thing, though. This could be the rooibos for rooibos naysayers. Also teetotalers…
Preparation
My extremely low expectations for Davids Tea Forever Nuts have been exceeded.
I was skeptical, to say the least, that a little sachet seemingly filled with chopped almonds could possibly produce a decent cup of tea-esque beverage. Then, when it brewed up an almost fluorescent reddish color, I really began to worry. Reading the envelope, I learned that the color was due to beetroot, so that was a relief.
To make sure that I got as much flavor as possibly, I smashed the contents of the infused sachet against the wall of the glass (not a double-walled Bodum, which would have shattered…).
I stand corrected: Forever Nuts is quite drinkable and even rather pleasant. My primary regret is that the ingredients include that ugly black box: artificial flavoring. Why????
There is also a somewhat foody aftertaste which makes me want to go brush my teeth (not typical for me after drinking a tisane!). No doubt because the sachet contained food.
Preparation
I have the filter bags of Tea Forte Earl Grey, and I imagine that it varies from the loose leaf version which some have raved about. The only ingredients listed on the box are:
organic black tea, natural bergamot flavor and natural orange flavor
So definitely no cornflowers.
This is an acceptable filter bag Earl Grey. It’s not delicious, but it’s certainly drinkable. I find it less perfumed than the Tazo Earl Grey filterbags (the purple paper ones, not the white ones, which I have not tried, nor the loose Tazo, which is naturally better).
The liquor brews up reddish orange and tastes a bit too tannic to me. On the box, the tea is described as deriving from the Assam region and “rich in tannins,” so perhaps there are people who look for that quality in their Earl Grey, in which case this filter bag may fill the need. Even with cream, it’s not as smooth as I prefer my Earl Grey to be. I’ll drink this box but will not purchase again.
Preparation
Another not whole leaf “whole leaf tea” in not-sachet (claimed to be sachet) filter bags from Pukka, a company whose marketing editors appear to be severely linguistically challenged—or not. (See Pukka Perfect Day…) I’m trying to be as charitable as possible, so in more closely examining the box, I found this sentence:
“We use sachets to protect the high essential oil content of our incredible organic herbs to bring you the fullest flavor.”
This text strongly suggests that the people at Pukka believe that the word ‘sachet’ refers to the sealed envelopes in which their old-fashioned filter bags are stored. So they appear to be boasting about not using the flimsy fold-over thin paper envelopes favored by firms such as Lipton and Salada. In those sorts of teas, of course, there is no flavor really to preserve, so why would they use a foil-lined or air-tight pouch or “sachet”, as Pukka prefers to call them.
This still does not explain Pukka’s further assertion that these “sachets” contain whole leaf tea. Are they suggesting that the tea is whole leaf because it came from whole leaves? But what tea does not begin as a whole leaf? In other words, if that is what they mean, it is vacuous and cannot be considered a virtue, and therefore a selling point, of this specific tea.
The tea base of Gorgeous Grey is said to single-origin Dunsandle, both organic and free trade. It brews up light golden brown, closer to yellow than orange or red, and seems closer to a Darjeeling than the stouter black (Assam-type) tea which I prefer for Earl Greys, as I drink them with cream.
Both the lavender flower, said to comprise a whopping 5% of the ingredients, and the bergamot and lemon essential oil are so light as to be virtually undetectable in the dried tea. I’d have concluded that this tea was just plain old, except that the “best before” date is: 2016.06.01. What? Another three years? I thought that tea was supposed to be dated for two years from production. Hmmmm….. Not chez Pukka.
This is a fail. Sorry. Charity can extend only so far.
Preparation
This cherry-laced green tea from Harney & Sons is much more about cherry than cherry blossom, as its name would suggest. My distinct impression from many cases is that artificial cherry flavoring is much stronger than natural cherry flavoring.
I generally steer clear of artificial flavoring for two reasons. First, it’s a big black box: all bets are literally off. When someone lists “artificial flavoring” on a product line-up all you have to go on is that it’s “not natural”. Not a lot of information, and frankly a bit scary in a world in which melamine has been added to not only cat food but also toothpaste.
Harney & Sons is of course a top-notch operation, so they aren’t going to be adding any poisons to their blends. Still, it’s always best to use natural flavorings, in my opinion, whenever possible. I never, ever buy food with artificial flavorings, and had I known that it would be included in this tea, I likely would have declined.
It might sound as though I’m going overboard here, but I’m just trying to be consistent. I do not eat artificially flavored food, so why would I drink artificially flavored tea? I was disappointed when visiting the post-holidays sale at Teavana to discover that virtually all, if not all (I gave up after looking at several), of their flavored tea blends contain artificial ingredients. No sale, certainly not wittingly.
I can think of one exception to the rule, and that is vanillin. Why? Because vanillin is a natural component of natural vanilla. I’m okay with that. It’s not some totally new molecule invented by some synthetic organic chemist to mimic the scent and taste of a naturally occurring essence.
My second concern about artificial flavoring, especially when it comes to fruits, is that they are often too strong. Just as sucralose is way, way, way too sweet (to the point of being repulsive to me), I find most cherry flavorings to be more akin to cough syrup than to the natural taste and scent of cherries. Which makes perfect sense, of course, because cough syrup is nearly always artificially flavored!
Harney & Sons Cherry Blossom lists both natural and artificial cherry flavoring, and I’ve no doubt that the latter is a high-quality artificial cherry flavoring, but it is rather strong and masks the underlying tender green tea flavor. I detect no florality (as in “blossom”) here whatsoever. That’s too bad, because judging by its dry appearance and smell in the sachet, this is high-grade green tea. I’ll drink the remaining nineteen sachets in my tin but will not purchase this one again.
Preparation
This is my new favorite ginger infusion. The combination of bright ginger and citrus is wonderful and the brew is sweetened by the licorice root.
I learned last night that Settle can be multiply infused, which I did not realize in the several previous infusions. In fact, the second round was even stronger than the first, and my house guest (who happens to be the world’s foremost expert on preparing fresh ginger root beverages with lemon juice and honey) suggested that I leave a third infusion to “brew” overnight. He drank it this morning and reports that it was delicious.
Here’s a link to my earlier blog post on this scrumptious stuff:
http://salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/2013/12/when-tea-is-not-tea-but-panacea-and.html
Preparation
Someone needs to talk to the people at Pukka, since they obviously have severe language barriers. First, they claim on the box of Perfect Day that this is whole leaf tea, which it is not. Second they claim that the box contains twenty sachets, when in fact it contains plain old filter bags. If this is not an English-as-a-second-language communication breakdown, then it’s just good old-fashioned false advertising.
The finely grained (= not whole leaf) tea brews up light golden brown veering toward orange and is said to be single origin Nam Lanh tea from the rainforests of Vietnam. It is also said to be organic and free trade. I’m not sure whether I should believe any of this, since the bags are manifestly not sachets, and the tea inside is manifestly not whole leaf.
The tea is okay. There is a light flavoring of licorice. Again, they claim that there is 18% licorice root here. I frankly doubt it, because the bags do not smell at all like licorice, and as we all know licorice root has a very powerful scent and is extremely sweet.
Perfect Day tastes like a middling Ceylon tea with a smidgeon of ground licorice root thrown in. I tried it three ways: first with cream, which wasn’t very good, so then I added sugar. Then I brewed a second cup and added two large spoons of sugar but no cream. That was the best solution. It’s not very good unadulterated, to be perfectly frank. It’s not bad, but it’s not good.
I am tempted to return this box on principle, given all of the falsehoods of the text. The tea is drinkable but this is not what I thought that I bought. Maybe they thought that no one would notice????
