Rishi

Trying out another Rishi herbal blend!

I really enjoyed this one; a lot more than I expected to. It was quite intensely peppermint flavoured – and in the way that is extremely crisp and cooling/menthol in the finish. It felt sort of healthful, and that flavour combined with the softer, subtler undertone of sage really did put me in a state of mental clarity and relaxation. Interestingly, I couldn’t taste the lavender – the mint was too strong and I think it swallowed up those notes. I did feel relaxed the same way lavender often makes me feel though; however that also easily be explained away as just being the result of the mint and not having anything to do with the lavender at all…

I don’t drink a lot of peppermint herbal teas – not because I dislike the flavour but because I had a very negative experience with loose peppermint tea leaf years ago that has sort of given me a mental block with straight mint. This is so peppermint heavy without being a straight mint though – I could probably do this quite easily and happily as an alternative to straight peppermint…

Sipdown (594)!

This tea was weird. Dry, the aroma from the tea reminded me of the chocolate rum balls that my mom makes around Christmas time; rich and sweet and delightfully boozy. Steeping up, I lost the rum notes and instead this smelled like chocolate and oatmeal – different, but still interesting and appealing. Now, drinking the steeped tea, I feel like this doesn’t have either rum or oatmeal notes: just the buttery, grassy flavour of guayusa and notes of cocoa. The cocoa feels very surface level though: no real depth, or richness.

Overall, I think this tea just doesn’t know what it wants to be? And so it sort of misses the mark in delivering a solid flavour profile. It’s not bad though, just not really great or necessarily well put together?

Sipdown (595)!

Drank this one hot today during the afternoon; I finished both of the volumes of Saga that I had picked up on Friday and I’m not yet willing to venture out into the cold outside so I’ve started a new binge on Netflix… That should definitely keep me going for the weekend.

This tea started off pleasant; I sense that I deeply craving citrus/lemon today since 3/4 of my tea picks today were citrus themed. I wonder if that’s a sign I need more vitamin C in my diet!? Regardless; initial impression was that this was a pleasant, smooth full bodied cuppa with great, brisk black tea and a strong, natural tasting lemon note. Simple, but quite nice! However, a word to the wise… I let this cool down in between episodes while I was doing dishes, and when I returned to the cooled down cup it tasted acridly of bitter lemon peels. Aw, hell no! So, consume hot for maximum enjoyment for this one.

Nice tea. Minty with savory undertones.