Cherry Marzipan

This last sampler from the Tea Forté’s skin-smart antioxidant amplifier tea is another special reserve green tea with the tart-sweet lushness of acerola cherries and the depth of nutty toasted almond.

Steeping instructions:
Bring freshly drawn, cold water to a near boil
Place filter bag in cup
Slowly pour water over filter bag and allow steeping for 3-5 minutes.

This antioxidant beverage is golden brown in color; liquor is floral due to the cherry notes prevailing in the air. I smell the almond more so and when I take a sip of this tea it is the nutty flavor of the almond that I am met with. It is very nice. There is a hint of chocolate mingling with the almond.

Color: golden brown
Aroma: floral and nutty
Overall characteristic: This tea is nutty in flavor with the almond prevailing while the cherry seduces the palette with its sweetness. And for me the lasting taste is liken that of almond found in some fudge (almond fudge).

This marzipan is almond heaven. Yum!

Today I am reviewing another tea by Tea Forte, Cherry Marzipan,a Green Tea blended with Rooibos, Cherry Flavoring, Raspberry Leaves, Almond Flavor, Berry Flavoring, Superfruit Berry Flavoring, and Acerola Cherries (all organic and natural flavorings). I love cherry almond as a smell, for years I used a soap that had that scent and so did my mom so to me it is extremely nostalgic. Instant happy aroma points! Oddly I have never had this combination as a food/drink, I love cherries, I love almonds, but never had them together so this tea excited me. The aroma is very VERY sweet, lots of cherry and almond. It is a great mixture of tart cherries and sweet, nutty almonds. The only problem is I do not smell any tea at all, you could have told me this was just a fruit tea and I would not be at all surprised.

Once the teabag is popped in its hot water bath and given a nice steeping the aroma mellows out a bit. It is still a sweet mix of almonds and cherries (with almonds being more prominent) but there is also a tiny hint of leafy green under all that sweetness. The blend is really smooth and is pleasing to my olfactory bulb.

This tea is surprisingly mellow and smooth! There is absolutely no tartness like some cherry teas can have, and no bitterness like some almond teas can have, bravo for a good blend! The almond is the most prevalent taste and the cherries take the back seat while a hint of hay like green peaks through. I wish the tea would have been a little sweeter, like marzipan and not just almonds, but that was easily rectified with a bit of sugar. There, now it tastes like cherries and marzipan with green tea. This tea is not bad, it certainly gets points due to the nostalgia factor, but I could see myself sipping on this tea when I want to drink tea without having to think about it.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2013/10/tea-forte-cherry-marzipan-green-tea-tea.html

This is my next to last sample from the skin smart line. I gave the cucumber mint to my boyfriend as I don’t like cucumber and he does, as well as preferring mint teas in all varieties. [incidentally he liked it, said he could taste the cucumber but it wasn’t bad, though he wouldn’t want it daily. And that’s the most I got out of him. :)]

But on to this tea, which the smell of was a pleasant cherry almond that reminded me of a hand soap I used to love the smell of (that is actually a good thing). Brewed using the provided tea bag at the below parameters, the steeped smell was identical to the dry smell – so quite yummy.

It gets a few bonus points for tasting just like it smells- first I get the almond, which is surprisingly smooth. Normally nuts can tend to go astringent pretty quickly but this one didn’t. The cherry follows after, but the almond is definitely the dominant characteristic. The flavors blend well together, though, and I’m so very thankful that my taste buds have returned (at long last!) that I think I’m enjoying this even more than I normally would.

It was a perfect choice for tonight.

Rating this after my second drink. The first one I was impressed with the scent, but not terribly impressed with the flavor. It was too subtle to me. I remembered reading on the dicussions here that adding some sweetner usually makes certain flavors pop, so I added a packet of Stevia in the Raw, and BOOM hello Cherry! This, with sweetener (I’d say half a packet is better, this is a little too sweet) is a daily drinker for me. If I order from tea forte again, this will be on the list of things to order.

Another sample. Uh at least the almond is not bitter. Hooray! Tea Forte got the almond right which few companies can say. There is a slight nutty toast but hardly any cherry…it seems to be covered up by the vegital green tea… I suppose since this is a skin tea so why not make a spritzer for you skin out of it…(I’ve done that with White and Hibiscus for vitamin C ). Ah well again not a tea I would purchase. But others might like it. Each to their own.

This tea smells heavenly dry. Like cherry. No icky green tea smell. Not too overpoweringly sweet, but just s little sweet. It retains it’s sweet cherry smell while steeping and the almond is more pronounced. It almost has a chocolate aroma. Upon first sip, this might be the most cherry cherry tea I’ve had. However, it’s now degenerated into something flavored that I can’t quite identify. More than a little disappointing.

Mmm, this is good. It’s not syrupy or fake, just a bit of sweet cherry tang balanced by some nutty almond, neither overpowers the green tea base. Awesome with a bit of honey!

This is the 2nd review in a series of six Skin Smart Beauty Tea Samples

Experience buying from Tea Forté: Good. Website is very colorful and easy to navigate. Sent free samples after responding to an invitation on Steepster. Package came in reasonable amount of time. Other than sending my address, no e-mail or phone contact.

Age of leaf: Unknown. Steeped within weeks of receiving.

Packaging: Colorful: each tea came attached to a colorful paper backing labeled as a Skin Smart” sampler. Each tea bag comes in standard tea bag packaging—with a picture of the flavors that the tea replicates prominently displayed on it. The tea bags themselves look like standard paper bags with a small Tea Forté label and string attached to the bag by a staple.

Dry leaf: teabag smells like amaretto, and as with the Cucumber Mint teabag, when I first took it out of the packaging I got a faint whiff of some kind of chemical smell, like glue.

Brewing guidelines: in a ceramic cup with a touch of Stevia.
……..1st: 180, 3’
……..2nd: 190, 6’

Aroma: Mild cherry amaretto smell.

Color of liquor: Light copper color.

Flavor: very mild taste, like amaretto.

Value: Free sample (thank you Cindy at Tea Forté!), but their price on their website is more than I would be willing to pay if I purchased it.

Overall: Although I occasionally use teabags, I much prefer loose leaf; I invite you to keep this in mind for each of these reviews. I was not at all impressed with this teabag. I have had many a teabag that was tasty (using similar parameters as I have above), but this was not one of them. The second steeping had even less flavor than the first. Although I didn’t, my wife liked this one better than the Cucumber Mint. Again, it may be that these teabags need a higher temperature and a longer steep time to get any appreciable flavor out of them. I plan to do just that with the next teabag in this series.

Well, it really tasted like cherries. Too bad about the taste of hot cherries though…

The box for this tea kept beckoning me at the store and I finally relented. It was SO worth it. Wonderful cherry fragrance, tastes natural and sweet. The green tea is subtle here and the rooibos adds a mellow character. Tempted to get this in loose form next time, but not sure since the bags are so convenient and easy to obtain.