Cup of Té

A sample sent to me from VariaTEA :)

I am not generally a fan of earl grey teas. I’ve tried a number over the years and they never sit well with me. However, that doesn’t stop me from trying them every so often!

This one is not overly offensive with the bergamot, but still not my fav. I could maaaaybe get on board with a creamy earl grey. I was hoping for a creaminess I realized after my first sip.

It’s been snowing non-stop for days here, so creaminess seems perfect for the season. Back to the cupboard to find just that!

Thanks for sharing VariaTEA!

TTB Tea

I took a teabag (~1 tsp) of tea before I sent off the TTB. I dislike the bergamot in this – not citrusy enough, more like metallic/musty and minerally. It reminds me of the smell of car grease. I also found the base a bit “meh”, not offering any malt or cocoa notes to bring out the vanilla. I also feel like I missed out on a wonderful notes typical of Darjeeling. I would have never guessed this was a Darjeeling.

TTB. This is some strong, sharp bergamot. The vanilla holds up surprising well considering how intense the bergamot is. Added a bit of milk and it definitely enhanced the vanilla.

I can’t read the name of this tea and not get The Clash song of the same name stuck in my head, so for the last 30m or so that is what my internal radio has been playing. The base of this tea is kind of malty. I also get… green beans?! Strange. The berg was more prominent when the cup was hot and is harder to find under the other flavors now that it has chilled. There is something a little sharp on the tip of my tongue at the beginning of the sip and reappears in the finish. I’m not sure what to make of this tea, but I’m off to listen to The Clash now!
Thanks for the sample, VariaTEA!

more minty than lemony from what i recall but it was tasty enough as the mint wasn’t overpowering. thanks for the share VariaTEA

Cold Brew Sipdown (1119)!

Thank you for sharing this one VariaTEA – I was so curious after it ended up being something you surprisingly gravitated towards so much this summer! Sadly, I think the summer of lemon mint teas is coming to a close – but I couldn’t let it end without trying this sample!

I was surprised how menthol tasting the mint in this blend is and to be honest at first I didn’t love that quality about it – but the citrus, which is primarily driven by lemongrass notes, does work pretty well with it and it gives the overall blend a much more natural feeling. After a few sips, the flavour grew on me a lot and by the end of my cold brew I was really wrapped up in it! I can actually super easily see how this ended up growing on VariaTEA so much over time!

STTB Tea

I didn’t realize this has stevia in it. :( Who would you ruin a perfectly good blend with stevia? I guess that explains why I had an upset stomach a few days ago.

The hibiscus wasn’t too strong. It actually got smoothed over by the other ingredients (green rooibos). Fairly flavourful with some berry notes. Nothing specific (I wish it was specifically raspberry, but I found it was more like generic berry). The rose hips were not needed but I guess this blend was aimed at people who like sour blends. Maybe the stevia actually made this blend better. I think this would make a fine iced tea for someone who enjoys this type of blend. It was nice to try some of the offerings from Cup of Te.

The last time I had this, I made it as a tea infused hot chocolate. At the same time, I made a plain hot chocolate for my sister the same way. Turns out she really liked it because about two weeks later the ingredients I need for the hot chocolate showed up in our grocery shop. When I asked what they were for, she told me so I could make her another hot chocolate.

Well, today is the day she wanted her hot chocolate. And I’m not just going to make it and not make one for myself. That would be silly. So I pulled this tea out again because this is the best way to work through it.

The hot chocolate really should be made with dark chocolate instead of milk, which is how my sister likes it. It’s just way too rich but in a sweet way, not a decadent one. The earl grey made for a nice counterbalance to the chocolate at least.

I don’t like plain earl greys. I like some flavoured earl greys that trick me into thinking I like earl greys and leads me to buying bags of what are essentially just earl greys. That’s what happened with this tea. The solution? Earl grey-infused hot chocolates. Yum!

So here’s the thing – I don’t really love earl greys, though they’re growing on me, but I do love vanilla. When I was placing my Cup of Té order, not a lot of the teas appealed to me but I noticed they had both this tea and a cream of earl grey aka a vanilla earl grey. I was intrigued and thought since this had vanilla bean, perhaps it would lean more to vanilla. If it didn’t, I figured I could use it as a base for London Fogs which you add vanilla to anyways.

Roswell Strange got a sample of this tea in a TTB and mentioned it not being very vanilla-y which had me putting off trying it because the vanilla bean was the whole appeal of this tea to me. Then September Sipdown happened and one of the prompts was to do something unique with a tea you don’t like. I have a unique recipe that uses earl grey teas (the hot chocolate ive made several times before) so I figured I could drink this on that day for that prompt. However, I figured I should probably actually try the tea to determine I actually don’t like it.

So, needless to say, I didn’t expect to like this when I started drinking it and while it’s an okay enough earl grey, I’m not really a fan. It’s too much bergamot and not enough vanilla for me to drink this plain. It also has an astringent/metallic note which I think is from bergamot oil. This is pretty much what I expected following Ros’s tasting note and similar to her findings, there isn’t much vanilla here.

Samurai Travelling Tea Box – Tea #26

Something else that I had at work today and, while it was a solid/classic tasting English Breakfast with all those lovely malty and grain-y/fresh baked bread notes, there wasn’t a “spark” with this blend that interests me personally enough to want to add it to my cupboard…

However, if you want a cupboard staple/every day type of English Breakfast and you don’t already own a dozen of them then I definitely think that this could fill that void for you! I’m just already covered on that front.

Samurai Travelling Tea Box – Tea #24

When I started looking into finding more black owned tea companies I could support, a TON of people recommend Cup of Te to me – so I was excited to see London Calling and a few others included in the TTB!

As a ton of you already know, I’m not a big drinker of earl grey but I have always found the cream/vanilla varieties much more approachable!! This was robust and full bodied with a subtle vanilla flavour layered over a tannic, brassy Darjeeling black tea base. It’s impressive the the vanilla is so clear without the use of vanilla or cream flavouring – though I still want more. I’m greedy like that. Like the name seems to allude to, I think it definitely has the body to hold up to being made into a London Fog or similar type of drink!

It’s not really fair, but I can’t help comparing this to Very Berry Delicious from My Cup of Tea. I was drinking that one yesterday and loving it. I used the same steeping parameters, but this one just isn’t as flavorful. It has that same red jello / sweet red fruit flavor, but it falls flat for me. I can tell that this has rooibos, because there’s a woodiness in the background. This is a miss for me iced, but I’d still like to try it hot. My husband, on the other hand, loves it both ways. He actually preferred this one over the Very Berry Delicious and has had two cups today already.

Samurai Traveling Tea Box – Tea #7

Really happy to see these blends from Cup of Te in the TTB – they’re on the list of Black owned tea companies, and there’s one blend on their site in particular that I’m really curious about but I can’t bring myself to order for just the one tea – so my hope it to find at least one more (ideally two) blends in this box that I like to help justify that order…

This is pretty nice! It’s sweet and syrupy berries with notes of hibiscus, woody rooibos, and raspberry – in that order. It does have stevia in it, and you taste that lingering “back of the palate” sweetness a little bit; I’m not overly adverse to stevia like some so it’s not bothering me in flavour but I am making a mental note of that sweetness.

Thing is, it’s not an incredibly unique fruity/raspberry rooibos blend and if I didn’t already have a TON of other rooibos teas with comparable profiles it probably would not be hard envisioning this having a place in my cupboard for that berry/fruity rooibos profile – especially for iced teas or cold brews. I do have a bunch of comparable blends though, so I don’t know that this is the one I’m looking for to help flesh out that order…

It’s still nice though!

Roswell Strange’s note had me thinking of this tea…just had to make a cup.

We had Wendy’s for lunch which left me feeling very full. I wanted more tea though. This tea is nice and light and minty and I have had it many times now.

Simple but good.

Upping the rating from 70 seeing as I seem to reach for it often.

Made this this morning because I was craving the menthol notes of it. Didn’t end up drinking it until lunch time with some leftover Chinese food. It was a nice pairing given the Chinese food was peppery and the mint and lemon was rather refreshing next to that.

I drank the cold brew of this and it is very similar to the iced tea. Serving this cold seems to tone down the menthol aspect of the mint which lets more of the lemon through. However it’s lemongrass and lemon myrtle which is sweet (but not the lemon pie type sweet) but herb-y and not my favourite. So this is definitely a hot tea.

Also since I didn’t mention it in my last note, I just quickly want to say how awesome this company is. It’s one of the companies I discovered through compiling the list of Black-owner tea companies with Shae and Roswell Strange. It’s one of the few Canadian companies so while most of the blends weren’t super appealing to me (they were more standard blends that I’ve tried many times, though still worth checking out the site) and they were a touch pricey, I wanted to show them a bit of support.

Honestly I’m so glad I did place an order because this company is amazing. I ordered on Sunday and an hour after ordering I got A notification that a shipping label was made. The package arrived by Wednesday. It truly was some of the fastest turnaround I’ve seen.

The speedy turnaround should be enough reason for my recommendation but in addition to that, I received a personalized email from the company owner (rather than the standard business email/confirmation companies send) on the Monday thanking me for my order and offering to answer any questions I may have. It was just a lovely added touch of customer service.

Speaking of lovely, the packaging for the teas is really nice but more than just the packaging, even the bubble envelopes (and boxes and tissue paper per their Instagram) are branded. Now we all expect that from DAVIDsTEA, with their signature teal mailing boxes, but it was awesome to see from another company as well. I genuinely get more excited for these things, which I know is shallow but it’s true.

The attention to details and level of customer service is just really amazing and I’d recommend buying from them if you can. Plus, my order came with a thank you discount for a next order so they are also really appreciative in a financial sense as well. It’s just clear that their focus is customer satisfaction and retention and that makes shopping with them a pleasure.

I made this iced yesterday and wasn’t loving it. I added lemonade and that wasn’t doing much for me. Today I set up a cold brew and once I had the tea out, I decided to make it hot as well. The cold brew is still in the fridge but the hot tea was really quite nice. Where the iced tea I found to be on the sweeter (almost cloying) side with more muted mint, the hot tea was a lot more refreshing. The mint came more to the forefront with a nice citrus flavor from the lemon. I will see how the cold brew goes but this might be just a hot tea going forward.