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Omgoodness, I forgot I had this tea (the hubby insists on keeping it in the tea chest it came in, instead of out on the shelf with all the other tea… le sigh). I decided to dig it out this morning with breakfast, and it was the perfect fruity minty deliciousness to start the day with. The white tea added a wonderful soft mouthfeel, the orange and pineapple were tangy and sweet, and the mint was just detectable, not in your face.

Hmm.

Hmm.

This tea has definitely got pu-erh in it. So, points for that flavor still being able to come through with all the rest that’s going on. :) The first few sips are QUITE bitter, because I didn’t add any cream/milk or anything, just a Perfect Tea Scoop of sugar like I normally would with a flavored black. So the coffee makes the first few sips a little too astringent… but about five or six sips in, my palate adjusted, and I can really taste just about everything that’s going on, except the chamomile (not sure what chamomile is doing in this blend, anyway, as it’s never going to outshine the pu-erh OR the coffee. The black tea base is also pretty muted, but if it was all pu-erh, I wonder if we’d even taste the coffee. So I’ll allow that the black tea serves a purpose. Overall, I am not as turned off by this as I was afraid I might be. The price point was good, so I might consider purchasing it again, if the hubs likes it.

I had this one last night as a warm-me-up-before-bed tea, and I decided not to sweeten it, just to see what it tastes like plain. I was actually not disappointed! The butteriness came through quite nicely, with overtones of vanilla and almond. More like a shortbread than a sugar cookie, but that’s probably just because I didn’t sweeten it. I like this tea because it’s rather different than any of the other herbals on my shelf… speaking of which, my one-year-old is getting into them.

Okay, so the spices in this aren’t that pronounced, so the end result is more like a cinnamon apple black… but man, is it tasty! There is an edge there that is probably due to the cloves, so one could say that that flavor is present, too. This tea is a staple on our tea shelf when fall/winter rolls around. SO yummy~

Got this as a sample from Angel at Teavivre. :) I was really excited to try all of the teas I was sent, but I went with this one first, because I was looking for a black tea at the time. Anyway, the dry lead smells lightly… fruity? I can’t quite put my finger on it.

The flavor is… all right. I tried this tea on two separate occasions, thinking the first time was just a fluke. Maybe I didn’t use enough leaf? The second time I know I used more than the first… but I just can’t coax much flavor out of this tea. I steeped it according to the directions, which is even longer than I normally do with blacks. For some reason, it just tastes like hot tap water to me. :/ I want to like it, so perhaps I’ll try it again, with different parameters. Stay tuned.

I’m actually not entirely sure that the Cinnamon Fig tea I have is THIS tea, because the lady at the shop wouldn’t tell me where she gets her teas (grrrr), but the description seems close. We’ll go with it.

While I do really like this tea… it just hasn’t delivered the fig flavor I wanted. The cinnamon is a very sweet cinnamon, not a spicy cinnamon, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Overall, this tea reminds me of a fresh cinnamon scone, with some slight breadiness from the black tea. There is a hint of fruit, but it’s more of a pear or apple flavor than it is fig. It’s tasty, but not one I will buy again.

This is one of my husband’s favorites. It wasn’t one of mine at first, because lavender is just not a flavor I go gaga over, but it’s grown on me. When I want something delicate and floral, this tea is great! It has notes of sweet hay and a scent almost like roses, with the lavender being the star of the whole show, of course. Quite lovely, actually.

This was my black tea in my order from August (I would have ordered Leatherbound if they’d had it in stock, but I had to settle for this one). Man, am I glad! This tea smells quite rough and pungent (my husband said they pretty much nailed the tobacco smell), and there’s a slight burnt aroma, like someone grilled the pineapple, which sounds awesome. It’s also got one of the best pineapple smells I’ve ever gotten from a tea (Lupicia’s was slightly better, but this one is a very close second). I had very high hopes, and I was not disappointed. We sweetened this one, because it seemed like the right thing to do, between wanting to bring out the pineapple flavoring and tone down the overall edginess. It was all at once punchy and smooth, sweet and spicy, with a flavor that reminded me of almond extract that oddly helped to marry the tobacco and the pineapple. This was absolutely delicious, and unique. I may have to reorder this one.

I was so excited to get this sample (along with a couple of others) in the mail! I tried this one first, and I didn’t steep it for the full five minutes that it said on the package, because I don’t feel like any oolong really needs that long… but maybe I should have, because I feel like I didn’t get all the flavor that was promised to me by the AMAZING smell coming off the dry leaf. I think this is the first time that I have been able to detect all of the scents that the package said were there, instead of just some of them. The most prominent scent was the peach, followed by the pistachio and the crème fraiche, and then after a few whiffs I could smell a hint of lime. But the brew just didn’t deliver. I could taste the peach, and a little bit of the crème fraiche creaminess, but even after sweetening, I couldn’t coax any pistachio or lime flavor out of it. The oolong was nice and bready, and slightly naturally sweet, but weak, like someone swapped half of it out for mineral water (or didn’t steep it long enough… maybe I will try it again steeped for five minutes…?). I liked this tea, but it’s nothing to write home about.

Picked this one up on vacation, since there are NO Harry and Davids around where I live (boooooo). It has a wonderful cherry aroma when steeped, like good cherry cobbler. I sweetened it, because it seemed like the right thing to do. It turns out, it definitely was the right thing to do. The black tea lends just enough flavor so as to be identifiable, but otherwise it stays out of the way and lets the cherry shine. This tea is almost juicy. I will enjoy this canister to the last bag!