Argo Tea

This is so fresh tasting! much better than any other bottled rooibos blends I’ve had (rooibee comes to mind). It was great with my Organic Bistro frozen dinner (wild caught salmon in Rosemary Orange Glaze with Cranberry Pilaf & Broccoli). The walnuts, cranberries, and orange glaze paired wonderfully with the tart, fruity tea. I’d buy this again (I also love reusing these Argo bottles with the screw on lids – they are very sturdy!)

I dont know what went into my brain that I tried this one..I think it was a vague black currant gum association that I used to love as a thirteen year old….and in memory lane – I tried this one..

The flavor was very artificial and the tea certainly was one of the lowest qualities I have tried!

Tough luck Hazel!

I’m always intrigued by herbal blends that don’t lead with lemon and chamomile. The cocoa and almond in this one is a nice touch.

Most of my white tea reviews lean heavily to the complaint side. Thanks to laurenpressley, I finally found one to love. The apple-peppercorn thing gives this delicate tea some flavor, and even though it’s nowhere near the ingredient list, I could swear there’s a white chocolate thing happening in the background.

Nice, nice, nice!

I’ve had this teat a hadnfull of times now, and I’ve learned that if you over steep it (even if only a bit) it will become VERY bitter. The best results seem to come from 3.5 minuets with a water that is about 175-180 degrees fahrenheit / about 80 degrees celicus.

However, if you don’t over steep the tea it OK. I say “ok” because the fruit flavor can be a bit too much for me.

Water was too hot, I ruined what would have been a good cup of tea. sigh will try again when I can give it better attention.

Being lazy; don’t feel like making a new record for what I’m actually having, a Gingerbread Chai. I used to live right across the street from this Argo Tea, but I’ve since moved, so I always have to stop by when I’m in the neighborhood. It’s great that Chicago has a chain of tea shops like this, though most of their teas are sugared and milked within an inch of their lives. I’ve never tried any of their loose leafs available for purchase.

Rainy August morning. Cuppa green tea. Riding in the hobo corner, staring out the back window of the L train. Prefab Sprout’s “Steve McQueen” album. Perfect.

There’s green tea in this?! There’s lemon in this?

Great bottle, but I don’t know why they’re filling it with… whatever factory rejects they’re filling it with. Watery. All you can taste is the vanilla and sugar. Occasionally you’ll get a burn of ginger as an aftertaste. There is no universe in which this murky vanilla-flavored sugar water is worth almost $3.

Good news, everybody! I finally escaped O’Hare and made it home.

Before leaving the Argo in the terminal, I picked up another tea to sample. Iced black tea with honey and lemon sounded great, so I went with a Carolina Honey Tea. This stuff was CRAZY sweet. Growing up in the South, I can drink my fair share of the sugar water they like to call tea. This tasted like it was Southern sugar water/tea to which they had added heavy amount of honey and a dash of something that was supposed to be lemon-flavored. Not good at all. The only redeeming quality was that the honey they use was really tasty. If they would have just sweetened the tea with only the honey, it would have been a much better experience.

I got to enjoy my birthday dinner at Frontera, so being stuck in O’Hare wasn’t a complete disaster, even if the teas were a bit of a bust.

Well, I didn’t expect that I’d be celebrating my 25th birthday alone and stuck in O’Hare, but I’m trying to make the most of it. I’m already planning to treat myself to Tortas Frontera by Rick Bayless for dinner. The fresh lime margaritas at the bar looked awesome when I passed by, so I may just have to indulge.

In the meantime, I’m hanging out at Argo Tea enjoying the first of what I expect will turn into 2 or 3 cups of tea. The first I picked up to try was Ginger Peach. They serve it both iced and hot. I went with hot and almost immediately regretted the decision. The ginger is a bit spicy, but not overdone. It tastes like there was probably dried ginger chunks in the tea rather than a ginger flavoring. The peach, however, was just okay. I’ve had much better tasting peach teas. As it cooled, the ginger really started to shine through. I’m kicking myself for not getting the iced version of this!

I have been an Earl Grey fan since I went to Oxford University (New College) in 1985. (They really do have tea time and the whole school breaks for tea- or did, I cannot imagine they’d ever stop…)This Earl Grey is smoother and tastier, more soothing and delicious than Twinings. It’s a great morning cup if you like Early Grey! I do not sweeten teas or add milk for now because I am trying to taste the tea alone.

No matter how short I try to steep it, this is not going to work. Maybe I haven’t played around with the steeping times enough, but any shorter, and I don’t think there would be any flavor at all.

Ok, so you open the jar, and the smell is just completely blueberry. It’s not a bad smell, but the fact that the bitterness is apparent as soon as you open it is a bad sign. The package suggests a steeping time of 5-6 minutes. To that, I say: you have gotta be kidding me. Even with steeping times around 2 and a half minutes, the taste is just all bitterness, astringency, and maybe the tangy bite of blueberry.

Blueberry and white tea isn’t a bad idea. What is, however, is the fact that the leaves come in clear glass containers. WHITE tea leaves. I bought this before I knew that light would have a bad effect on tea leaves. I found this at a convenience store, sitting underneath bright fluorescent light for who knows how long. Maybe it’s not the tea, then, but the godawful packaging.

An interesting blend of roasted brown rice and green tea. I didn’t really know what to expect when trying this, and wasn’t really sure what I thought after my first cup. I went off to do research, learning that genmaicha was originally consumed by poor Japanese and became known as the “people’s tea”.

I had multiple cups, playing with the steeping time and temperature, the most successful of which is to use boiling water, steeping for anywhere between 30 seconds to a minute, pouring into a cup and letting it cool for a bit. The resulting tea has the scent of the roasted rice and the flavor is difficult to describe, but, it’s smooth and delicious to me, in this particular blend I can barely taste the green tea, most of the flavor is of the rice. After the 7th cup of this or so today, I think I have to allow myself to like it because I keep drinking it…

So far I’ve not managed to brew a great cup of tea out of this stuff. I’ve tried everything I know how, but, haven’t been able to drink enough tea to try all the options on steep time. The directions on the label say 4-5 minutes, but, so far every variation on temperature and steep time I’ve tried has left me with something that’s not quite that good, I’ve yet to explore some of the shorter times. It’s not bad, but, it doesn’t have the sweet almost chocolatey taste that I’ve gotten out of some of the other oolongs I’ve tried, leaving me drinking some slightly weird flavored water. I might be doing it wrong. :|

Not bad, but make sure that you don’t over steep. Otherwise it is just undrinkable. It gets that kind of mouth puckering powdery feel to it. So, under controlled circumstances, cold… not bad. _

is one of the best chamomiles other than in my yard .. lol but I use these flower buds whenever i had an abscess from infected tooth to heal the abscess.

steep for couple minutes and take pinch of hot chamomile and place on abscess
for about 45 minutes 3x per day .. for two weeks even if swelling disapates .. :)

My first attempt at this was an utter and dismal failure, I was almost ready to agree with everyone else, the tea was overpowering, too strong, and just didn’t taste very good with instructions on the container.

I looked up some sites on brewing loose leaf tea and decided to try it a little different. First instead of using a full teaspoon, I put just enough to cover half the bottom of my little styrofoam cups. I know that’s not an exact measurement, but, because this tea has lots of chunks of apple and such, you could probably translate it to a light teaspoon, just be a little less eager to get a huge amount. Second, instead of boiling water, I had hot water and let it cool for just a minute or two and then steeped for about six minutes. I shall do more science in the future so that I can get exact temperatures and such, but, doing it this way produces a very delicious cup of tea and is not near as overpowering as my first taste.