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My fiancee decided to take advantage of the great post-new year’s sales yesterday. As my reward for trudging through the women’s sections of several department stores, and helping her critique her potential new wardrobe, she offered to take me to the nearby Teavana store and buy me some more tea! No wonder I’m marrying her!

Teavana also had some great sales and I left the store with three new teas to help kick off the new year! This morning I reached for the Amandine Rose.

This tea has a rich sweet almond aroma while brewing. It is almost like almond biscotti. I’m not sure but I think I started to drool as I waited for my one-touch Breville tea maker to beep its completion.

Brewing this tea at 195 degrees for three minutes (as recommended) resulted in a dark honey-like color. The hue is similar to orange pekoe tea.

When I took my first sip, my throat was filled with the sweet taste of an almond cookie. (My fiancee is a pastry chef and her professionally trained palate discerned the taste of Cap’n Crunch cereal!) The flavor is steady and well-defined but not strong.

I don’t go out of my way to buy or try flowery tasting teas, but the rose flavor in this blend seems to just make this selection a little sweeter without drawing a lot of attention to itself. My greedy sweet tooth hungrily lapped it all up.

Like Teavivre’s fine products, Teavana teas have yet to disappoint me. If you like sweet, medium-strength black teas without astringency, you may enjoy this tea as much as I (and my sweet fiancee) do.

Today, as my exciting tea adventures continued, I was introduced to Rooibos tea. I wasn’t sure if this unstimulated herbal experience would be good for me since I prefer the caffeine kick of bold black teas.

I brewed this loose leaf tea for five minutes at 212 degrees as Adagio recommended. While brewing, its aroma gave me flashbacks to the wonderful smells of my mother’s kitchen, when she would make sweet and delicious vanilla cake frosting from scratch using fine vanilla extract.

The brewed color of the tea is a rich, reddish gold. Having an insatiable sweet tooth, I enjoyed the very robust vanilla taste. Again, I would compare the flavor more to vanilla extract than to vanilla ice cream.

This tea has an extremely savory and sweet taste that lingers on your palate after each sip. There also is a twinge of spice. The vanilla flavor is so full that any bitterness would be well hidden if it did exist.

For the first time, I am starting an afternoon tea rotation list to accompany my morning lineup. This tea is currently numero uno on the new list!

This loose leaf English Breakfast selection was in my New English Teas gift pack that Santa brought me this year. I am sipping it now as I speak…uh…type.

I am enjoying this tea. It has a bold and full flavor. My tastebuds are reading malt and a hint of spice. I am not detecting any bitterness.

I brewed the tea for three minutes at 212 degrees. This method produced lots of flavor, even in the first cup.

All in all, this has the rich, complete, and signature flavor for which fine British teas are known. It’s still too soon to know how the caffeine content will revive my metabolism, but I do believe I feel my eyes starting to open wider.

Santa must have stopped off in London before he got to my house this year and picked up a New English Teas gift pack for me. I really like the cute little tins that are shaped like a British double-decker bus, phone booth, and royal guard station.

This London Tea has a nice mellow flavor. There is a taste of malt, as well as the familiar full black tea flavor that seems to be standard with most of the British blends. The tea has a light mahogany color after brewing for three minutes at 212 degrees.

This variety was phenomenal with the addition of a few cakes of genuine Scottish shortbread. Tea and shortbread are obviously made for each other. Like all of the British varieties I have tried so far, this tea is best described as pleasant and tasty.

Santa Claus was very good to me again this year (even though I wasn’t always a good boy). He brought me some Partridges English Breakfast Loose Tea.

I love powerful bold black teas in the morning to knock me out of my post-slumber stupor; the stronger the better. However, I may have found a black tea that is potentially too strong even for me. This is not a criticism of the tea, but rather, my brewing method. I steeped the tea for five minutes at 212 degrees. I think this tea would have a more mellow flavor with three minutes of brewing. I will try that next time.

This selection has a prominent malty taste. The flavor is full and enduring, providing a big bang with every sip. Even with my over-steeping, the flavor is not bitter, just very rich and strong. The color is like maple syrup.

I do like this tea. It reminds me of other robust UK black teas that I was offered when I visited Scotland years ago. This is the kind of tea that will slap you awake in the morning. I will definitely keep it in my daybreak rotation for those mornings when I need an extra shove to reunite with the land of the living.

Let me begin this note by saying the True Love Flower Tea by Teavivre is the most entertaining tea that I have experienced thus far. It was a lot of fun to watch the little tea bundle slowly molt into the pretty flowers and greenery!

I hadn’t brewed a flower tea before so I may not have used the proper procedure. I nuked (microwaved) water until it boiled and then I dropped the little bundle into the water. This method made the process very cool to observe. The nest-like ball immediately started to sizzle, open, and bloom, as it gradually sank to the bottom of the pot. I then let it steep for three minutes before I strained the tea into my cup.

If you have been following my tasting notes, you already know that I do not, as a rule, enjoy flowery tasting teas. However, this tea is a great exception to my standard thoughts about floral teas.

The Love Flower Tea has a soft, nice, semi-sweet, nutty flavor. The flowery attributes blend harmoniously with the taste but do not take control. I also didn’t feel like my mouth was full of perfume as I had with other flower power teas I tried in the past. I didn’t detect any bitterness. The flavor lingered pleasantly on my palate after each sip. The brewed color is a light orange/yellow.

This product changed my (tea) life in that I will now be open to trying other flowery teas in the future. True Love Flower Tea is an enjoyable tea, not just due to the delightful flavor, but also because of the great floor show!

Although I usually follow Teavivre’s brewing instructions exactly as recommended, today I deviated from them for this green tea. Teavivre states on the packet that you should brew this tea for one minute at 176 degrees. I didn’t have a problem with the temperature but I knew one minute of brewing was not going to produce flavor strong enough for my tastebuds to tune in. So, I brewed the tea for two minutes instead.

I am very glad that I added an extra minute of brewing for this selection. Even with the additional steeping, this tea does not have a lot of flavor. What is there is pleasant, light, and grassy, but there just isn’t enough taste to rouse me or make me count the minutes until I try it again.

If you prefer green teas over the bolder and more robust black teas, this tea may be just fine for you. Personally, the teas that get me most excited are the ones that flood my senses with flavor and linger on my tastebuds after each sip.

This morning I was having even more trouble than usual shaking the slumber off of my metabolism so I could face the day. I yearned for some potent black tea which usually does the trick.

However, fate dealt me a different hand as I accidentally, with squinting eyes, reached for the Teavivre Organic Silver Needle White Tea instead. Since, in my half-asleep state, I had already ripped the seal from the packet when I realized my mistake, I decided to make the best of the situation and go with it.

As I raised the cup to my lips and the first few drops of liquid trickled down my throat, my eyes popped open, not from the usual caffeine jolt of black tea, but from the incredible flavor that emerged from this amazing white tea!

I’m not a fan of flowery tasting teas, but the wonderful sweet floral flavor of this tea brought me back to memories of my childhood when I would suck out the sweet nectar of honeysuckle blossoms during the hot and humid New Jersey summers.

This tea has an extremely smooth taste to it. The floral and sweet flavors are in perfect harmony. There is no bitterness and neither flavor sensation overpowers the other.

The clean light golden yellow color of this tea, like white wine, is very inviting. You may want to serve this one in clear mugs to get the full effect.

Teavivre has once again broadened my horizons with another fantastic tea. I now see (and taste) the value and good in all tea colors. Black, white, green; they are now all equal in my sight (and tastebuds).

This is my first sampling of Pu-erh tea. If Teavivre’s Ripened Aged Pu-erh Mini Tuocha is representative of other teas of this type, I will be seeking out additional members of this club soon!

This tea is absolutely delicious! It has a rich, robust, and bold wood taste with a sweet edge to it. The color is a full-bodied dark brown, like maple syrup filtered through mahogany wood. The aroma reminds me of freshly cut fine wood in a furniture maker’s shop.

I found myself swirling the tea around my mouth longer than usual with each sip. I just didn’t want to swallow it and end the fabulous flavor ride.

As always, I followed Teavivre’s preparation instructions to the letter. I brewed this tea at 212 degrees for two minutes. That method seemed to perfectly produce one of the best tea experiences I have ever had.

If there is such a thing as a tea drinker’s tea, this has got to be it. I would enjoy this beverage at any time of the day or night. This tea is now listed at the top of my rapidly growing tea shopping list.

I’m very new to Oolong tea so I am not sure what to expect when I try each variety. Teavivre’s Tie Guan Yin “Iron Goddess” Oolong tea is fascinating by any distinction. I was struggling to put the wonderful flavor into words until I read the information about this tea on Teavivre’s web site.

Teavivre explains that this tea is from “an area with a mix of mountains, forests, and small creeks.” Bingo! That is also a great description of the flavors inherent in this tea.

The taste of nature is abundant in this selection. It is earthy, fresh, and woodsy. The flavor is not overpowering but just right. I steeped it for the recommended maximum time of three minutes and it was perfect for my tastebuds with no bitterness. It has a light golden color that underestimates the power of its flavor.

This tea would be great to sip all day. Teavivre says that it can typically be infused seven times. I probably won’t be putting that claim to the test today, but excuse me while I prepare infusion #2 for another four cups.