Metropolitan Tea Company

The flowery smell is really overpowering. It’s making me nervous about tasting this. Alrighty, here we go…okay, not as bad as I thought. The initial taste is actually much more subtle than I was expecting. Leaves a distinct aftertaste of flowers, though. A tea to have on it’s own, as I can’t think of anything it would pair with. I think next time I brew this I would steep for only 2 or 3 minutes to try and avoid the overwhelming aftertaste.

I wasn’t sure what Canadian Breakfast tea would be, so I picked this up at a local coffee shop. It’s good! Strong! Would love some (almond or soy) milk and sugar!

Tea #7 Great Canadian Traveling Tea Box

I don’t mind this, it’s a decent fruit/vanilla black tea. I wish the base tea wasn’t Ceylon (now that I’ve learned about the different styles of black, I can say that). It’s a little bit too sharp, or astringent for me. This description says pomegranate, I think it’s more cherry ish. The vanilla is really subtle, doesn’t come out much until the tea cools.
There is quite a bit of this in the TTB, I’m going to play with steep times and see if I can get it to my liking. All in all not bad, would be up to trying Monk’s Blend from other companies.
Reserving rating until I’ve played with it.

I was brewing this at my normal 3m time and I’ve found it comes out a bit bitter for my taste. Seeing someone made it at 1.5m in the review makes me wonder if that was the problem. At any rate this isn’t a terrible tea, I’ve been using my generic green tea to supplement it when I make it to make it a little less bitter. I’ll have to try making it for less time. I wasn’t realizing Sencha was a different blend of tea. facepalm

1.5tsp for 12oz water 3min steep.

I feel that the 3min steep was a bit too long. I have the slightest bit of bitterness coming through.
I think a 2 or 2.5min steep would have been enough.
I love the coconut flavour against the black the base. I’d definitely get this one again I think, but I’d wait until I have finished up a few others.
I love having milk/sugar added to it. It makes the tea a smoother, creamier tea. Again, I wish I hadn’t steeped it as long, but it is still good.

Backlog:

Had this at Selah Tea Cafe iced. Just ok. I did not pick up on the berries, although it was a little sweet. Very generic black base. It mentions there is green tea in the blend as well, but I didn’t taste it.

Backlog from vacation:

My cousins took me to Selah tea Cafe in Waterville, Maine. Went through two french presses of this as we sat and chatted for a few hours. Pretty good! Strong earthy pu’erh base and a nice, creamy caramel flavor- not overly sweet or fake.

Sipping on a TARDIS mug full of this. It comes off as naturally sweet and I’m definitely getting a pastry/pie crust taste. It’s nice but I wish I had cold brewed my sample instead of drinking it hot. I think it might have tasted better that way.

Many thanks to Lady Londonderry for this, her namesake tea :)

We had a huge meal out and when I got home I was craving a light, summery, but black flavored tea that would be nice with milk and sugar. Most of my dessert teas feel wintery to me, and I was rejecting each flavor left and right before coming upon this one. Ah, lemon and strawberry — this could work!

Once brewed, I tasted a medium bodied tea with a sort of sweettart flavor. It didn’t read lemon or strawberry per se to me, but definitely fruity. Really nice, and just what I was in the mood for. Summer afternoon perfection.

I picked this one up at the Bottom of the Cup tea room in the French Quarter in New Orleans. I’m pretty sure that this is the same blend, though Metropolitan Tea Company was never mentioned, heh. The cherry flavor was a little strong when I drank this hot this morning, but the big pitcher I made of it iced this afternoon really hit the spot! I suspect the same will be true of the three flavored blends I picked up at the Spice and Tea Exchange. I will say that the packaging at the Spice and Tea exchange is a lot more attractive and professional looking. They use 1 oz ziplock bags with pretty labels. This one was in a sealed cheaper looking bag with a cheapo looking label. The teas inside are similar in quality though :)

I just remembered the girl said the store gets their stuff from Metropolitan, so the tea reveiw below actually belongs to this tea. Just fyi

Purchased this one at the tea meet in Victoria yesterday. :) Mine is loose-leaf.

It’s a nice black tea, but the maple flavour is really mild. I was hoping for a stronger maple flavour. Oh well. The tea has a good black base, takes a little milk and sugar well, and I will definitely drink it all. It’s not likely I will repurchase, though.

1 heaping tsp in 12 oz water. (I couldn’t find brewing instructions on this one. Hmm.)

of the 14 teas i tasted today, this was among the top 3. the bergamot was very subtle but the lavender was just right.

hm, i wonder how it will turn out if i mix it with some EG?

i like it but buy it? maybe. will have to try other lavender EGs :)

thanks to Azzrian for this sample!

This tea was getting old, and I drank the last of it today. It served well, through years of singing, to clear throats.

subtly nutty?
light yellow liquor

will update on resteep

MTC’s teas are very hit or miss with me. When I first got into tea, I placed a huge order with them because the prices seemed too good to be true. And, of course, I found myself a bit disappointed with a few of their teas I had ordered. But I came away from the experience with a lesson learned.

MTC black teas are super easy to oversteep. I steeped this for about 2 minutes and there was still astringency, even with brown sugar. It has an alcoholic taste to it but it must be decent enough because I found I gulped down the cup pretty quickly without even realizing it. It offers more than one resteep, but I found that I only liked it around the third steeping (more flavour, much less bitterness).

Rating: 45.

My favorite tea

Holy smokes Batman! Strong tea is strong. Now that I got that out of my system, I have to say that I did only steep this for two minutes as per short steep suggestion via Indigobloom. I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect because I never heard of Ice Wine before I got on steepster.

When it was hot, it smelled so grapey, like the big, fat red seedless grapes. It tasted really tangy and a little overpowering. So I put a big tablespoon of sugar in my mug and then dumped the rest into a glass of ice. Voila! An iced ice wine tea.

It actually tastes pretty good iced. It is still tangy, but the sugar cut out the slight bitterness I was tasting. From what I can tell the black tea base is smooth. And instead of the overwhelming concord grape jelly taste, I am getting a light fruitiness out of it.

Yep, this would probably be a tea that the wine drinkers I know would adore.

High point of the whole week: luncheon at Savannah Tea House Nashville with two of my favorite people on the planet. They private label Metropolitan Tea goodies there. This just sounded fun. Huckleberry. It’s just fun to say! Good black tea; the berry flavor was blackberry-like with a slightly sharper uptick at the end.

With butternut squash soup and a ham-apricot panini, I was able to relax a little, laugh a lot, and just bask in the blessing of getting to be with some long-lost friends.