Metropolitan Tea Company

This one was so yummy yesterday morning, I had to drink it again this morning. Firstly, I don’t require that my black teas have THAT much crazy flavoring, but it’s nice when they have a little something extra to add another dimension to the taste. This tea fits that description exactly—the vanilla and the grenadine are mellow and light backup flavors, while the black tea truly does take center stage. The smell of the leaves as well as the brew, as it says in the tea description, is very pleasant and relaxing.

Now, just so I can have a teensy bit of criticism in my review, it’s not all that special, except that it seems to go well with just about everything. I don’t think I’ll keep it as a constant supply (although the husband seems to like it quite a lot), but it satisfies that craving I get for sweet black tea. :)

For technicalities, this came from EnglishTeaStore.com, and is called Earl Grey Cream – Metro (Metropolitan) Blend. Recommended by SimplyJenW (thank you!).

This is the 3rd or 4th testing of this tea, and this morning I decided to go back to the basics of only using a T. of honey to properly test. I find that most Earl Grey’s benefit from some cream/milk and will add that shortly : )

There is a slight (only slight) bitterness to this tea, when only sweetened. That should disappear with added cream. The bergamot is on the light side of my preferences, but I like a lot to give it a creamsicle effect. There is a creamy feeling to the tea, but not overly so. Overall a very good Earl Grey Cream (but still prefer Upton’s). I’m off to add some cream now : )

I mentioned in one of my earliest tasting notes that Apricot was the first flavored tea I encountered. Also one of the first ‘loose leaf’ teas. It seems appropriate since my very first employment was on a fruit farm cutting apricots for drying.

Naturally this tea holds within it’s aromas and taste the essences of memories and pleasant experiences. The fruity, natural sweetness only enhances the teaness of the tea. The Metropolitan Apricot is a smooth cup with some of the coppery brightness of a good Ceylon tea. It is quite satisfying to return to a favored flavored tea.

Wow, Indigobloom, you weren’t kidding with the strong on this one. Heeding your warning I gave it a short steep of two minutes. And while it isn’t bitter, it is extremely strong. I am getting a fermented grape note under the strong black tea base, and can definitely see wine drinkers who enjoy tea really loving this one. Me, I’m not a wine drinker at all but couldn’t resist the grape smell. It smells heavenly, but if you aren’t a fan of a strong tea I recommend doing an even shorter steep than I did!

Tried some of this at a local tea room and wasn’t very impressed. I like rooibos but this one just tasted too much like medicine. Somehow I thought I’d love this cup of tea because I’m a big fan of those craisins w/ pomegranate juice.

It’s not a tea that I can get used to. That’s not to say that I don’t like it, it’s just not what I expect from a tea!

This has a very sweet smell, sickly and sweet. Luckily it doesn’t taste so sweet, although it is sweet compared to most teas.

In the taste, the ceylon tea balances out the sweetness of the maple, and they are probably in about the right balance. But somehow the two flavours don’t quite mesh together.

I have enjoyed it, but I can’t say that it stands out as being my favourite tea – just as being a bit interesting and a bit different. Worth a try, but do like I did, and get a pack of a dozen bags, not a hundred!

SIPDOWN!!! (you know how football announcers yell out “touchdown”? well that is how I picture saying sipdown hehe)
yeah baby, I have a tin to fill! woohoo!
In the meantime, I’m a bit sad to see this one go. and what a fantastic cuppa to send off with. Very winey and muscatel, smooth, sweet, and lip smackin good. Second steep was great to!

Guess what?!? I think I’ve made a convert! well, sortof.
My friend, who is a die hard roasty toasty, burn your mouth, double shot Americano coffee drinker… who considers “TEA” to be nasty stuff meant for sissies, enjoyed this tea!
I had a hunch he would, because well, this one was just so strong that I am sure my teeth were stained atleast two shades darker by the one cup I had.
Anyhow, he gave me his rating… and as a cup of tea, he said he’d give it an 8/10. However, on a general beverage scale he would give it a 7, with his precious coffee being 10.
Other notes he mentioned were that he expected it to be less fruity, and was pleased by how much it tasted like wine.
Overall, I would say this is huge progress. I’m so thrilled, I can’t even begin to describe my elation! :P
So, now that I know what kind of tea will get my friend excited, does anyone have a recommendation?
I’ve tried Lapsang Souchong and White Tiger (by DTs- he insisted on having it iced, and actually didn’t hate it, I think he rated it a 6) and Coffee Pu-erh, none of which he raved about. Until this one. I suppose that means I need something with some serious punch and depth but Assams are not quite bottomless enough.
I need ideas here!! gotta keep the tea ball rollin here. hehe, I’m such a tea-nerd. yep, that pun was intended ;)

Steeper beware!! this one brews up STRONG!!!!
I had the bag in for two, maybe three minutes and it ended up more bitter than a scorned woman. That had never happened to me before. A new experience to be sure. No matter. Heaps of agave fixed it right up (and I mean several. At least four times more than what I normally use, if I use any at all)
Next time, I’ll try it with a one/two min steep and see what that reveals.
Anyhow, once that was dealt with… the bitterness was peeking out for awhile, and I couldn’t taste much beyond the agave/bitter aspect. Almost like black coffee. I was not impressed.
However once it cooled a bit, I started to see the wine influence. Not quite ice wine per se, but definitely wine. There was that mouth drying sensation, along with a definite grape-like puckering. Like sweet green grapes. or maybe a hybrid green/red grape. Certainly not a plain red grape of course. No, it was not quite that sweet.
I went in for a second steep and that one was quite lovely as well. I added only two swirls of agave this time and steeped for three full minutes (plus an accidental twenty extra seconds). and guess what? it was still strong! not quite bitter. More what I expected the first infusion to be. any longer and I’d have bridged bitter territory. I’m still a little shocked at just how intense it was. Is it possible they added tea dust? I’ve heard it can make a tea bitter…
but that can’t be, I enjoyed it!! I could never like the taste of tea dust. right?
If it hadn’t been for the work event I was obliged to attend, you can bet I’d have stuck around for a third or even fourth cup.
Oh and I figured out what it reminds me of!! Cloud nine from David’s tea! I don’t know why, it just does. Maybe I need to do a side by side comparison one day. It has been some time since my stash ran out.
And for those who may (or may not be! I’m not assuming anyone reads me haha) wondering, yes I did break my tea buying ban. Again.
Ice wine tea had been on my list for ages, and this is the first opp I’ve had to get a decent version. When the shopkeeper said that people come specifically to her store for that tea, well who was I to shun it?! it was no longer in my power… the decision had already been made… sighs

Here’s another one of four Metropolitan Tea Company teas I purchased from Tweed & Hickory. I won’t be reviewing the final one because it’s just Monk’s Blend. Anyway…

I’ve been looking for a good peach tea for some time now. MTC Peach and Apricot black tea was pretty good but I am not a fan of the tea base, and DAVIDsTEA Southern Belle was a disaster. So I decided to purchase this Georgia Peach from MTC because it uses rooibos as a tea base.

Sniffing inside the bag, I’m reminded of the way too powerful peach smell from Southern Belle. The brewed rooibos liquor smells like peach, jolly ranchers, mint, and koolaid (seriously).

I was a bit hesitant to drink this stuff, because I had such high hopes for it. But my fears subsided when I took my first sip. It tastes FANTASTIC! It’s just the peach tea I’ve been looking for! This totally tastes like a peach should, plus it has some other nice flavours associated with red rooibos like mint.

I am 100% satisfied with this purchase. Rooibos has always been a “tea” I’ve liked but never fell in love with. But it works so well here with the peach flavour. The description suggests it’s good iced so I’ll have to try that sometime too.

470ml glass mug, 3 tsp (I use 1 and 1/2 tsp of rooibos per cup), 1 steep

This is another one of the four teas I bought from Tweed & Hickory’s massive online selection of Metropolitan Tea Company teas. I don’t usually buy flavoured teas now, but I still enjoy them occasionally. Mostly though, my husband loves to take black tea to work and it’s also nice to make up a pot of cheap flavoured tea every now and then. I find brewing flavoured black tea to be incredibly easy, which is terrific for whenever I am feeling lazy.

Smelling the brewed tea liquor, I’m reminded of the usual Ceylon base MTC uses, mild creamy vanilla and cinnamon. Nothing unusual and everything I expected so far.

Upon drinking it, my expectations were fully met. It’s a very smooth black tea with vanilla and cinnamon. I’m not usually very crazy about their Ceylon tea base, but this flavour combo works out pretty well.

I actually like this tea quite a bit. I’ve obviously had much better, fancier teas, but Vanilla & Cinnamon just aims to be a simple, pleasurable tea to brew western style. For what it is, I think it’s perfect. If you see this MTC tea in your local tea room, it’s definitely worth trying once. I can see this as being paired really well with some coffeecake!

470ml glass tea mug, 1 steep

I was really disappointed the first time I prepared a cup of this, so I decided to have another go today.

Drinking in the liquor, it tasted too tarry and smoky. Lapsang Souchong is one of my favourite types of black tea, but I cannot find anything here to love. It’s like someone dissected a smoker’s lung and then steeped it.
The lingering aftertaste is not pleasant, the tarry and smoky characteristics stay with me even when I move onto drinking water. Blech

I’ve heard that some people keep new LS for aging to let the smoky characteristics mellow, but I don’t think you could salvage this one.

This one got dumped in the trash but I’m not entirely disappointed with my purchase. I was genuinely curious what the heck this tasted like! If you have a deep love for Lapsang Souchong/Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong don’t touch this one. There are much better options out there.
I’m not sure who this tea appeals to… perhaps people with very little LS experience or those that are heavy smokers (no offense, this is just a very smoky and tarry tea).

This is one of four teas I ordered from Tweed & Hickory. Their online store carries a lot of stuff including a wide range of Metropolitan Tea Company teas.

Anyway, this tea caught my attention because I love Lapang Souchong and omg I love Taiwanese teas! So to figure out how good this tea is or really how much I like it, I’ll be preparing it twice (long steeps and then short steeps).

(1): 200ml glass teapot, 1 tsp, 2 steeps (4min, 5min)

These two steeps brought out a lot of familiar LS flavours. It has the “burnt rubber” flavour that I often find with other cheap LS. The main Taiwanese character I can taste is the menthol sensation, which I am attributing to them using Taiwanese camellia sinensis. The tea body itself was fairly strong in the first and second steeps, I only used 1 tsp and it did not taste too weak. Otherwise it’s nothing extraordinary, I’ve had much better LS before but I still like this tea.

(2): 100ml gaiwan, 2 tsp, 3 steeps (45s, 1min, 1min 15s)

The first steep tastes pretty good, it has nice malty, smoky, menthol flavours. The tea is very strong given that I only steeped it 45s.

Unfortunately with the second and third steeps, it just tastes like weak tea with smoke and rubber.

I am only slightly disappointed with this purchase. It’s very similar to their regular LS (Lapang Souchong Butterfly #1) and had a lot in common with other cheap LS (like David’s Tea). So for what it is, you could do worse. That being said I would not recommend it to anyone seriously in love with LS. There are so many better LS teas out there sold under the “traditional” name Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong.

Okay, so yes I’m a tea snob. And when I first started drinking tea I would probably consider this one pretty good. But once you’ve tasted how excellent a tea can be (in this case Lapang Souchong) it’s hard to go back.

Tea of the afternoon……

I picked this up last summer on our Boston trip. I really wanted it more for the container than the tea inside, but Metro’s Earl Grey is usually pretty good. I plan on using the tea bags for travel, but I wanted to make sure I liked it first. Not bad. It passes the test……

3 tea bags, 24 oz. pot, freshly boiled water, 2 1/2 minutes. Lightly sweetened.

One rounded spoonful of tea leaves creates a beautiful orange-red-coloured drink with noticeable vanilla flavour.
For red rooibos lovers, this is highly recommended. I usually drink this without sugar or milk and after steeping for about 5 min, the leaves still provide satisfying flavour after a re-steep.
My favourite for lazy (and cold) afternoons.

I got this as a Christmas gift from my brother, who knows I’m interested in tea. I’m usually skeptical about mixing anything sweet like flowers or fruit with such a delicate green as Sencha, and even more skeptical about the packaging steeping instructions (fully boiling water, 3-7 minutes). I resorted to my knowledge of traditional Sencha, and steeped as follows:

1 heaping teaspoon
175 F
1.5 minutes

The result was a very flowery-smelling tea, with a rather bitter non-sweet flower/cherry flavor that rests high on the tongue. It was difficult for me to taste the grassy flavor usually associated with Sencha, and the actual tea flavor (as opposed to the flower flavor) was reminiscent of a simple, rather low quality green tea. Perhaps different steeping times or temperatures (such as the seemingly absurd ones on the package instructions) would result in a different taste.

Backlogging, again.

The hubby and I decided to experiment with making hash browns from scratch Sunday morning, and since I did a lot of the cooking, he picked the tea to go with breakfast. He selected this one, which I would never have thought of as a breakfast tea. Surprisingly, I liked it very, very much! We had sausages with the hash browns, and so it was the combination of all those savory/smoky flavors with the earthy sweetness of this tea that made breakfast a complete success!

I honestly don’t get the butterscotch flavor unless I’m really looking for it (which isn’t a whole lot of the time). However, the caramel is there in full force, and the pu’erh is a complex enough flavor that I don’t mind not having the butterscotch. I don’t miss it. It steeps to an interesting reddish color, with hints of purple/magenta, especially when milk is added, which I did (that’s just how we do it—if it’s a black tea getting drunk for breakfast, it’s going to have milk in it). Anyway, been a while since I had this tea, and I’m glad the hubby dug it out! :)

I don’t often have a craving for this tea, but today, I did. I’m glad I was able to pull it out and brew it up right (because this tea done wrong is a travesty beyond words). When it’s right, it’s SO right…

The brew is very dark, typical for a pu-erh. The leaves have an almost smoky scent to them, but even in the dry leaf you can smell the caramel, which is not normally a strong scent. The almonds come out in the brew, where the smoky, woodsy flavor is kept more at bay by adding sugar (I’m not fond of having TOO strong of a pu-erh flavor, but that’s just my personal taste).

This was my first English Tea Room tea… and it will live in fame and glory for me. It was my first pu-erh, also, and thanks to its delicate but firmly convincing flavors, it will not be my last. :)

I’ve actually tried this tea several times (I got mine from the Tea Table, which must share a tea source with Metropolitan Tea Company) and not logged it, for which I apologize.

This tea has too much hibiscus for me. It means the tea has a lovely pink color, but it also means a sourness that is quite hard to overcome. If you like tart herbal teas, this is great, but I don’t (and I have GERD, which means too-tart liquids are a bad idea for me in general, especially right before bed…and when am I drinking no-caffeine teas? Right before bed). The fruitiness is not obscured by the tartness; it’s definitely there all the way through, in leaf scent, brew scent, and brew taste. When I am constantly adding sugar all the way through drinking the cup, though, that’s just too tart for me.

It’s possible the 5-10 minute steep listed on the package is too long. I want to say this has been less sour with shorter steeps in the past. Last night’s steep of 7 min. was FAR too long, apparently.

But I don’t want to rate this tea down purely because of my own preferences. In ingredient quality, scent, fruitiness, etc. this tea does really well. So I’m giving it a decent score even though I don’t seem to be able to enjoy it. Try it for yourself. It’s way better than CS’s Zinger teas if you like hibiscus.

So Friday we got paid and promptly returned to Say Tea and dropped a significant amount of money there. Oh well, most were Christmas gifts. Anyway, after the other two icewine teas I’ve tried, I had to get this one. Plus, the little wooden box is so cute! It was really tasty, juicy like the others with a slight tang that does remind me of wine. Yum. When it got cold, though, it was bitter and horrible, but that’s my fault. Overall, this was pretty dang good for a bagged tea!

I really love the idea of lavender Earl Grey because, well, I like bergamot and I like lavender, so why not? But I have found that lavender is a tricky beast in teas, even for someone who loves florals, so finding the right blend is difficult. Here’s another lavender Earl Grey for me to try, this one from a swap with aisling of tea. Thanks!

The dry leaf on this one smells pretty nice, but I find that’s usually the case with these teas. Steeped, I get strong black tea aroma with some lavender and a hint of bright bergamot. The scent of this tea reminded me of something from my childhood, and I finally placed it: the smell of the soap while I was washing my horse. I know, not the best olfactory association for tea. :P So I didn’t expect to like this tea, but I was surprised. The taste actually isn’t soapy, as long as I can get past the aroma. The black tea base is really smooth, and the lavender is herby and fairly strong. The sips I take vary from slightly bitter to rather pleasant, which is a bit weird to me. I wonder if I need to steep it a slightly shorter time to bring the lavender down just a notch. As far as the Earl Grey portion of this goes, I don’t get a lot that says “hey I’m an Earl Grey”, but you know there’s something there that keeps it from being just a lavender black. I don’t think this one is completely successful as a lavender Earl Grey to me, but it’s also not a bad tea all around.

Had this at the NaNo write-in, asked Starbucks for a cup of water, rather than risk any of their overpriced teas. On the way to the write-in, we got off a subway stop earlier and walked over, since we knew there was a DavidsTea between the shops, and they were giving a free tea of the day to anyone wearing a poppy, and one of the teas of the day was Santa’s Secret, so you know we went. Anyway, on the way, we spotted a tea pot in a store window…and then another. And then we realized it was an entire window display of teapots. Including the Alice in Wonderland one I’ve been wanting forever. We rushed inside “Say Tea” and I can honestly say we’ve found my new favorite tea shop in all of Toronto. It’s cozy and filled with teapots and tea and tea accessories….guh. Heaven. How have I not heard of this place? Seriously?

So I opened up my little package of this and fell head over heels in love. It so good, so berry-y and sweet and juicy…yum. Buying more next time we’re in the area. Check out http://www.sayteaonbloor.com/ and if you’re in the area, stop by and check it out! So much love.

Got this from LefTea – Thank you so so much!
It went to a good home, let me tell you.

We brewed one heaping perfect teaspoon (if that makes sense), in the Steeper with not quite boiling water. mmm no bitterness, great quality green tea for Metro teas, I’m happily surprised! I love the buttery sweetness of sencha, it’s my favorite by far, in the green family. Yum. Even the boytoy is liking it tonight, and he’s not a green tea fan.

The rose taste and smell is mild next to the sweet syrupy smell of cherries! What a delight. A nice mild taste, if it didn’t SNOW 5 FEET today, maybe I could try it iced. _ Maybe next year. haha!