New Mexico Tea Company

Exuberant 4/5, tempted to make it 5/5. Still struggling with weird mental blocks about how I can’t put everyday pleasure things like this above stuff like, I dunno, gongfu tea, but I need to get over that.

Love this one, the way it’s the best things I crave from an Earl (just a couple days ago I was reading about how bilochun greens often have orange blossom notes and I was like “ah-HA! That’s why I’m a freak about them like never before with other greens…me and that darn orange floral stuff, whether it’s orange blossom or bergamot!”) but lightened up thanks to the geeen tea base and mint, really an Earl Grey + Moroccan Mint hybrid, ideal for this context (displaced Yankee who wants her Earl but in city that feels like the dog days of summer 9+ months out of the year :( ). A little surprised too as I’m not the biggest gunpowder green fan (I always want to like the idea of Moroccan tea, the whole gorgeous colored glass tumbler thing and the refreshing nature of it all, but anything that requires massive amounts of sugar to be palatable can kinda put me off…and that’s not an issue here).

It’s also a beautiful reddish gold color (quite bright!) in the cup.

Sometimes you hear of really novel blends and are like “I wonder why I’ve never seen that before, how cool!” and then you try them and think “…uh, that’s why”. This is definitely not a case of ambitious novelty with disappointing or weird offputting results. Feels rather East-meets-West in a good way.

Crossing my fingers it’s glorious cold steeped too, can’t wait to try it that way.

I really do adore NMTC. Still kicking my idiot self for going to Albuquerque this summer with time leftover to kill and totally blanking on the possibility of visiting the shop. D’OH.

I must say that I love the name of this tea – it’s just so cute! I have been wanting to order some more of my favorite creme caramel from Teapigs, but shipping is so expensive! I thought that I would try to find a new alternative that would taste the same, but would be more readily available! This one smells promising: buttery, sugary, woody.

Sipping… It’s a bit different than I expected. This isn’t to say that it’s bad, it’s just not the buttery caramel rooibos tea I’m used to. The rooibos base is good – not medicinal at all. It’s just the caramel flavoring is a bit more burnt tasting, a little bit spicy even. It doesn’t leave the nicest flavor on my tongue. The spicy caramel is paired with a bit of a watery rooibos background. The other blends I’ve had feel a little bit thicker and more buttery. I’m going to finish the amount I have, but then I’ll probably continue the search for other caramel rooibos teas!

Both this tea and the huckleberry tea from NM Tea Co. have Blackberry leaves and cornflower petals in a black base, so I wondered how different they would really be. I liked the Huckleberry tea, but this tea seems a lot more bitter and astringent than the other (much like my husband thought of the huckleberry tea. . see that tasting note too). I think it may be that I just liked the Huckleberry flavor better so it compensated for otherwise unpleasant bitterness.

Both teas have a better flavor while they are hot, but the bitterness sets in as they cool.

A rough day was made infinitely better by a box of tea on my doorstep. Not a surprise box, for the generous Dexter3657 warned me before sending it, even asked what else did I want inside it, but anyway, out of all the teas in the box this is what got picked first.

What do the people in New Mexico know about Ontario ice wine? Well, they apparently know enough to make this tea taste a little bit like it. I’m a wino. I go to our ice wine festival in Niagara-on- the lake every year, spend the weekend imbibing so imagine my surprise when I learned there’s a tea mimicking ice wine. Ontario ice wine none the less.

I’m not sure if this will appeal to non-Ontarioans but that’s neither here nor there.

The tea brews quite dark. I expected a lighter brew because well, it’s white tea and also because the cheaper ice wine, and therefore the more popular, is the whiter one. You can have a Cabernet ice wine but a 375 ml bottle will set you back $80 here in Ontario.

It is fragrant and the aroma matches the flavour. It has no sweetness, although you can see how one might expect it. With some sugar it does come quite close to the ice wine flavour, I will admit. Although the flavour is subtle, even with sugar. But it is there.

The moral: don’t expect sweet and don’t expect white. But …
Good job, NMTC.

Much thanks to Dexter3657.

So far, I’m not having any luck with sheng puerhs. Only once did I ever have an aged sheng that I really liked. Young sheng has been too bitter and heavy on the mineral notes for me. This aged one is not bitter at all and the flavor is best described as earthy, but still not quite to my liking. The one aged sheng that I liked was only a couple of years older than this one and I got it from the Bana Tea Co. as a free sample with another purchase. I don’t know exactly which one it was or if it was aged in loose or compressed form, but maybe that makes the difference?

As I’ve been doing a lot lately, I brewed tea to share with my parents and sister. My father wanted coffee, but he sampled some of this from my mother’s cup and said it was a superb tea but that he didn’t think that my mother was going to like it. My mother tries it and immediately associates it with “tea brewed in the environment of diesel trucks and manly stuff,” not as an insult to the tea so much as an affirmation that it is definitely my father’s kind of tea more-so than hers. Nevertheless, she finished her cup, asking only that I provide her with a couple of tea cookies to help it go down :)

My little sister claims to love every tea I have ever given her with the exception of Lapsang Souchong. She gave the thumbs up to this one too, but she traded with my father for his coffee half way through her cup.

I gave the rest of the bag of tea to my father, where it will be much better appreciated.

This is a pretty good fruit blend. So far, I’ve preferred strong hibiscus flavored blends, while other fruit tisanes have been too artificially sweet or too heavy on berry flavor (which makes me feel sick).

This tea contains hibiscus, but it does not take over. The apple comes through as well as a cherry-like flavor, though it doesn’t list cherry in the ingredients.

It’s not a stellar cup, but it’s worth drinking again.

Sipdown :) Another nicole tea (there are more coming…) I have been not so fond of my peach teas lately but this one made up for that. While it was clearly a peach tea, there was also the apricot notes that came through, and likely made it more enjoyable for me. I think this would make a fantastic iced tea. I think i’ll be placing an order with these folks once i get my cupboard down to a more manageable size. thanks nicole!

Ooooh a wuyi oolong flavored with plum!

Gosh, it was hard to do my usual thang and review a tea from my collection. The travelling tea box is in my possession and I want to explore it more drinking random teas.

Anyways, Plum Oolong was a bit of a surprise – I was expecting something tart and hibiscusy, similar to other plum teas I’ve tried. The wuyi base works quite well adding some complexities of nutty and roast plus creamyness in the resteep. The plum hits as an aftertaste with a slight floraly note.
The plum flavor is okay. It seems on the flat/artificial side, but I still enjoyed it.

Iced, plum oolong is a different animal – more plummy with honey notes!

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/2013/08/14/plum-oolong-from-new-mexico-tea-company-tea-review/

Thank you, QueenOfTarts, for giving me the opportunity to try this tea! It completely lives up to the name, and the dry smell is wonderfully pervasive. There was a little more cream and a little less of the traditional Earl Grey flavor profile than I usually like, but it was still fun to try!

You can read my full review here:
http://wordsabouttea.blogspot.com/2013/08/cream-earl-grey-by-new-mexico-tea-co.html

Exactly what flavor do Calundula petals impart on tea? They’re in a ton of the flavoreds that I have – Weeping Angel, Rhubard + Custard, Carrot Cupcake, this one, and on and on – but what do they do? Do they add any flavor or just look pretty? It’s a great mystery to me.

Anyways, I’m sampling this one thanks to QueenofTarts. The steeped smell is that of honeyed vanilla. It actually reminds me more of honeybush than rooibos – sort of a sweet, woody scent.

I took a sip of it plain at around 5 minutes, but it didn’t taste much. So I added some brown rock sugar and let it steep for another minute or so. The taste is still mild, but it’s better. Again it’s reminding me of honeybush. The taste is honeyed, with kind of a vaguely syrupy quality. I’m finding that the vanilla is noticeable more in the aftertaste than in the sip itself.

I haven’t had this one in a while, but thanks to my goal of drinking one non-black tea a day, I thought I’d give this a go.

It’s orangey, and floral, creamy, buttery, green. Sweet. Perfumed.

Not really my usual cup of tea, but definitely something I’m enjoying right now. :)

Thanks, CrowKettle. I have 1 tsp left. When will I drink it? Soon, I hope!

Another tea I missed trying after the Victoria tea meet. Again, from CrowKettle. Heh. I think I need to re-inventory my teas and start a “haven’t tried yet” box.

This tea is a sweet milky orange oolong. It’s not too vegetal from this first steep (yay!) and the milky flavour of the oolong goes so well with the orange.

I accidentally let my water cool for about 15 minutes, so the temperature wasn’t hot enough for the leaves to fully unfurl. However, it’s produced a really nice, light, orange flavoured cup.

It’s a bit of a toss-up between this one and Della Terra’s Orange Brulee. This one doesn’t have that dark sugary/caramel taste, and because of that I feel that it’s not nearly as sweet of an orange flavour.

I might try mixing them to see what I get. :)

ok, im a little surprised by the current ratings but maybe the other (10+) teas i tried with this with werent all that good that is why this one stood out (with a couple others)

it is sweet and tasted fine enough while warm. it didnt get to the cool stage because i brewed only small samples haha

but this is good. thanks Kasumi for this sample! wanting to try other plum oolongs :)

Thought I’d give smokey teas a try again with this one. Still not loving it. My feelings about it have nothing to do with quality of tea, so I’m sure this is a good quality Russian Caravan. It has all to do with taste. It must be an acquired taste or something that just hits some people right. I’ll be passing this on to my dad who loves a good lapsang souchong.

After the success I had with Casablanca, I was excited to try this one. Jasmine, like mint, tends to be quite overpowering but the bergamot worked so so well in Casablanca, how could I not be excited!

This tea has a nice, fluffy base that smells strongly of both bergamot and jasmine. Well duh, of course it does! It smells like heaven while it’s brewing, I just want to stick my face in there. I wish there were tea perfumes! Well I mean, there are, but I’d like an endless variety of them.

I think 3 minutes is a little too long for this, since the jasmine is just a tad soapy. Not overwhelmingly so, and I think a 2 minute steep would fix that up nicely. The bergamot balances so nicely with it, both are quite strong but neither one is too strong. It’s exactly what you would expect—a light green earl grey with jasmine! I’m not going to rate it until I get the steep time right, but it’s pretty damn yummy.

This is alright. Im too exhausted still due to hubby having been on overnight schedule this past week – to do a proper review. I will not rate yet either.
Its good but not mind blowing but I was also half asleep still when I made the cup so it could be my fault.
There may be some fakey like flavor in it … its perfumey sort of but please don’t take this for sure until I have it again. I will update and do a formal review.
I do like it a lot better as I let it get cool. This may be one of those I save for iced tea in the summer.

Second tea I tried from LiberTEAS for day three of the 12 Days of Christmas swap, thank you! I didn’t have time for three black teas (or a black green blend, or really any tea) yesterday, so I enjoyed this one earlier today while making stew. It’s a very nice blend, it feels luxurious but not overly floral. It’s more of a smooth, candy like floral, perhaps the cornflower and vanilla? I might have made it a bit light and will probably steep it a second time. French Vanilla and hopefully Black Currant for tonight, will share the latter with the husband!

Home from work!
Today I brought this one with me – it was SO good paired with my spicy pad thai from Thai express! Quenching, delicate but full of flavour – and man did I EVER get a kick out of today’s 3rd day of Christmas from LiberTEAS!!! Made my DAY! I’m still smiling :D

http://www.daisychubb.com/on-the-third-day/

Last cup of my little sample. This is thick and rich. Pie.

Wouldn’t you know it—-cold dreary day giving way to cold crisp sunshine today; perfect tea weather; a mug has been omnipresent in my hand all weekend … and we’re having Internet fits so I couldn’t log a one of them. Oh, the joys of ISP’s that don’t see much of a need to service their rural areas. But I digress.

Nicole kindly shared this one, and it is mighty tasty! The flavor surprised me. Extremely rich and extremely strong. Leans more heavily to the apricot side, and the black tea base has some meat on its bones, too. (Oh, look, a bunny! Not really, but my ADD just kicked in while….

….

…..I went to the kitchen and put a spoonful of raw sugar and a dash of cinnamon in my cup.)

Now it’s apricot cobbler!