TreeGal Send Message

This needs a little more oomph to be a first thing in the morning tea. However, it’s a nice smooth option for midmorning or lunch. It’s both lightly malty and lightly sweet tasting (not sugary, just tea sweet).

This is another very smooth tea. The orange peel is present but not overwhelming, and there is kind of a generic spiciness to it. It reminds me of what good old Constant Comment should be. (It’s an old favorite of mine, I used to drink it with my grandma. :) ) I wish it had a more present spiciness – I wouldn’t call this one chai (I know the word just means tea, but we have coopted it to mean a spicy flavor). It’s still enjoyable, though.

I’m not the biggest Earl Grey fan in the world, but if I liked it more, I think I’d love this one. Nicely balanced and very smooth.

I like this tea, but it kind of tastes like two separate things – the white tea, and the coconut. Somehow they don’t quite blend right. They are both nicely flavored, but they need a bridge between the flavors somehow. The coconut is not huge, but definitely present – it’s the nice coconut, fresh and milky tasting, not sticky and sugary. I’m not a white tea connoisseur by any means, but this seems to have a nice flavor and is maybe not quite as delicate as some I’ve mistreated in the past. The aftertaste is a nice soft coconut and is somehow refreshing. I think this tea could be better, but I still quite enjoy it.

I wonder if maybe I got an old tin. It is almost too fake a red hot kind of cinnamon to me, but just barely misses that. It’s definitely very sweet and spicy hot. There is so much of the spice that I honestly can’t get any other flavors from it – I barely taste the tea even when I’m really trying, and there’s nothing orange or citrus about mine in the slightest. I’d be willing to try a sample from Harney – this was a tin I got off Amazon after several acquaintances recommended it, so it might not be fresh. Because of that, I won’t give it a numerical rating – if I were, I would probably give it a 65. My kids like it, they call it red hot tea.

The reviews of this sounded tempting, and since I love all things orange and chocolate, I thought this would be a sure-fire win for me. Meh. It’s a kind of ordinary, medium body black tea with a kind of slight metallic bitterness to it. (It was weird but not as unpleasant as it sounds.) I don’t get chocolate from it at all, and the citrus is very faint and vague. This is basically a tea that I’d serve to someone who doesn’t give a darn about tea. It might be worth trying iced. Sometimes I keep a tea around too long before I review it (and I always take that into account), but this was only about a week old so the fault isn’t mine this time!

This is a nice solid basic flavored tea. The tea base is smooth but strong. The flavor comes across almost a bit as coffee to me while this is hot, and as it cools I get more nutty chocolate from it. It would probably be a great dessert with milk and sugar, but on its own it is nicely chocolate without being sweet. I wouldn’t serve it to someone I was trying to wow, but I think it has nice solid broad appeal.

I like this one, and I generally dislike Adagio blacks. This one has backbone but isn’t bitter. The bergamot is there, but is softened by the cream. I don’t really get vanilla from it. There’s a hint of lemon and orange. It’s fairly smooth, and doesn’t have that kind of prickly feel/taste that bergamot sometimes has for me. It has the nice clean mouthfeel that Earl Greys in general have for me. All in all, nice and solid for everyday drinking.

This is kind of an everything but the kitchen sink tea, with so many different things in it you kind of wonder if someone just emptied bits from a bunch of jars together and decided it actually tasted ok. Because of that, there isn’t really anything special about this tea, but it’s definitely drinkable.

Gah! On the good side, this was definitely full of flavor. But wow, it was so so tart, and with a weird bitterness underlying it. I imagine some sweetener would have mellowed it and maybe made it more berry tasting than sour, but this was so. so. sour. And the bitterness was just weird.