Peach Apricot Black

Second snow day in a row! I’m resting up now because tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and if anybody else here is in the service industry, you know what that means. Non-stop crazy busy all day!

Anyway, this is a lovely tea. Calendula petals mixed into short, dark brown tea leaves with little green flecks of lemon myrtle. It smells more like apricot than peach to me, but that’s not a bad thing. I love apricot things! The scent mixes well with the bright, clean lemon myrtle aroma. It’s like sweet lemonade or lemon candy.

The flavor is very fruity and juicy. It reminds me of jam, especially after some sweetener. This would be a great tea to have with buttered toast. While I can taste peaches, I still mostly notice apricots. The black tea base is very mild with zero bitterness and very mild astringency. Nothing about this tastes artificial, which is a problem I encounter a lot with peach teas. No, it tastes real, and I’m really enjoying it.

Edit — Also, signal boosting Just Organic Tea’s Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/justorganictea/just-organic-tea-the-very-best-tea-delivered

This is actually an enjoyable cup. But it wasn’t what I was really expecting.

First, I’m really digging the base they use. It’s smooth, with a full body, and just a little malt. It’s not bitter, and just a bit astringent as the tea cools to room temperature.

The flavoring is where it was more unexpected. The first flavor I pick up isn’t peach or apricot, it’s lemon myrtle. It adds a pleasant amount of creamy and sweet lemon notes, but seems to dominate the peach and apricot on the whole. The stone fruits are relativly easy to differentiate from each other and don’t taste candy-like or cloying (or like peach gummies), and are pretty natural tasting, but don’t seem to set in until midtaste. These flavors blossom in your mouth and linger through the sip, though. I just wish they occurred sooner.

While I did like the tea well enough, and would drink it again if it was offered to me, I really just think it’s not quite a peach/apricot tea.

I am going through some serious withdraw, I haven’t been able to play Minecraft in a while because a combination of everyone in the house being sick and snow days has meant no access to the Xbox 360. I have a castle that needs completion and a world that needs perfecting. If everything goes my way I will have the house to myself tomorrow and I plan on using a large chunk of it indulging in one of my favorite past times.

Today’s tea has nothing to do with gaming, in fact it has to do with summer fruits and nostalgia. Peach Apricot Essence by Just Organic Tea is a blend of Black Teas with Apricot and Peach essence, Calendula Flowers and Lemon Myrtle. The aroma is very sweet and fruity blending peach and apricot, but unlike most the peach flavored teas I have encountered it smells like the fruit and not fake peach. I grew up in the South, Georgia to be exact, and we know out peaches (I mean we name everything after them, so that makes us experts, right?) and the aroma of this tea smells just like a sun warmed fresh peach straight from the plethora of roadside stands. There is milder note of apricot, and a touch of lemon myrtle.

After giving the tea leaves a steeping the leaves become much more lemony and bright, the warm, sweet peach aroma is more of an afterthought as the lemon myrtle takes center stage. The liquid’s aroma is smooth and creamy blending the peach and lemon myrtle evenly. I admit I find the blending of those two quite intriguing.

The taste is initially sweet with strong notes of lemon myrtle. For those who have never had lemon myrtle it tastes like a blend of vegetation and lemon, similar to lemon balm but more sweet than green. There is also an initial taste of floral that is very faint and fades quickly. The midtaste is sweet and warm peach that stays until the aftertaste. The tea itself is just a bit astringent which I think blended well with the other flavors present and gives it a good bold quality. I wish it had been a little peachier, and that the apricot would have been present at all, this was the most realistic smelling peach teas and the taste was not at all artificial so it makes sense that I would crave more.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/02/just-organic-tea-peach-apricot-essence.html

Yum, this tea is tasty! One of the best peach apricot blends I’ve had!
Often, peach apricot flavor just blends into one taste, but this tea you can easily distinguish both stone fruits! Quite natural tasting too, with the fruit flavor on the heavy side.
This heavy on flavor quality is a running theme in all the Just Organic teas I’ve tried.
The base here is okay – a little bitter, but is rounded out with the fruity. With sugar, this tea tastes like juice, with a hint of malty black at the end to remind me it’s tea.

Wish I had more as I could see this being a great iced tea!

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/just-organic-tea-oolong-owl-tea-review/

Sipdown (199/203)!

Ha! Finally under 200 teas – let’s see how long that lasts. My guess? Not even three days. Of course, I do hope I’m wrong.

I must say, I had mixed feelings on this one because while I do like apricot – peach is a flavour I’m very fussy about, and neither are flavours I immediately turn to or reach for the same way I do with pears or bananas or pineapple. That’s why I was really surprised when I brewed this one up.

The black base here is really nice. Very smooth and I’ve found kinda malty, and it doesn’t get bitter or astringent very easily. All of those are things I can get behind, and I don’t think it’s premature of me to be saying that I’m really a fan of the black base used by Just Organic Tea.

The flavouring in this one was an interesting experience in and of itself. Where I was expecting peach/apricot I was immediately sucker punched with the lemon myrtle/calendula which was very tasty and creamy and just delicious. However, I found that they were the dominant flavour in this tea and the apricot very heavily sat in the background. I couldn’t even taste the peach in this at all.

So, I have to rate this accordingly because it was incredibly delicious as a black lemon tea, but it fell really short on its name because it was not a Peach/Apricot tea at all.

Brewed this a little different from the steeping instructions, because it was already getting really dark and I didn’t want it to get up and walk away! As before this smells strong. I think it might be the base. There’s a lot of black tea smell and a little apricot, and I’m getting lemon myrtle too.

This is a decent fruity black tea. There’s no bitterness to the base like I’ve noticed with other apricot teas, but it is too astringent for my taste. The lemon keeps it from being boring, and there’s a juiciness to the aftertaste. I probably wouldn’t restock but this cup is pretty good!

Backlog from a few days ago.

I’m almost done this bag, but I’m noticing how that the tea is more fruity/lemony than it used to be, while before it was more subtly floral. I think all the lemon myrtle settled at the bottom of the bag.

Not a bad thing, of course….

Another sample from Just Organic

This one also had the odd medicinal herbal smell that permeated my sample envelope. Luckily this time it didn’t seem to effect the taste.

First few sips. Yum! But where oh where is the stone fruit? I taste lovely lemon against a smooth black base. I swallow. Oh there it comes, juicy peaches and apricots. Yum.

I do feel like the name is a bit misleading because the lemon is so strong it verges on dominating the blend. Overall it’s a great tea that I’d definitely drink again.

This tea is pretty tasty. The flavors are unexpected. For a peach apricot flavored tea it’s much heavier on the lemon flavors than peach or apricot. The peach comes through very lightly.