Teavana

…like a cooling breeze coming from the desert….
Great tea during summer time. Very refreshing indeed.

But no doubt that the chosen tea leafs (probably from Zhejiang province, China) for the base of this blend are below second class quality. Well, which tea grower would cover his painfully nurtured harvest with mint oils and fragrances?

Still…a great tea to have if for the length of a cup you manage to forget the above.

Aha! I’ve finally figured out Teavana’s secret to their delicious samples: Use lots of tea!

Delicious iced with a lot of sugar

Smells of chocolate and mint. Tastes faintly of chocolate with an interesting minty aftertaste.

Iced is the way to go with this one. But I am not saying I love it or even like it…but…it’s drinkable to finish what I have in my stash…

I just don’t know…I mean the white tea is promising but then they had to ruin it with hibiscus. The rose petal helps cut it but not enough. Can taste the the Acai, Pineapple, and currants which make it sour, too

Light, clean, and tasty. By far my favorite. Just…a cut above.

Smells nutty. Taste is mild and smooth.

I <3 this!

Good at first today BUT can’t get past the aftertaste! Blah! Totally my fault tho – I used way too much loose leaf!

A very fragile floral and sweet moss type scent upon opening the package. Wet Leaves smell like buttered vegetables. Mixing the black with the green gives it the best of both worlds when it comes to the coloring of the liquid. Not much for smell after infusion is complete.

The taste is pretty nice…I think the word LUSH comes to mind. It’s more of a green than a black taste but I’m fairly impressed.

I was in the mood for something fruity, but not too fruity. I’m hoping that this is the right blend for tonight. I haven’t drunk this blend too often, but I remember it as being reasonably acceptable.

With 5 drops of vanilla stevia (I know, but I crave sweets) this becomes a sort of grown up koolaid. It’s fruity, but the rooibos gives it a more sophisticated flavor. It’s not a blend where the rooibos stands out, but it definitely adds to the flavor. If you get this, consider using a bag to brew it. The rooibos goes through a lot infusers.

Not too impressed. Lots of stale, dull woodsy notes, almost an ashy flavor. Maybe I steeped it too long, but the syrupy nature of the tea really amplified these unpleasant flavors. Tried to add some honey, but it didn’t improve, so I just drank it down like a very bitter medicine.

Sorry, Teavana.

(backlogging)

We were waiting for the vet to do some tests on our cat, so we went to the mall to kill time and run errands. One of the errands was to stock up on stuff that we drink regularly at Teavana. We ended up buying so much that they gave us free drinks! That’s never happened before, but we usually shop at a different store on the other side of town.

I decided to try one I hadn’t had before and ended up buying a few ounces of it. I like this one because neither the fruit nor the tea taste dominates, there’s a nice balance of both. I’ll do another review later when I’m sitting at the computer with it (and so can write more detail). I just remember it being a very well balanced cup of tea.

The aroma of the unsteeped leaves is very orange. There is a hint of chocolate along with the nut blend (macadamia and almond fragrances), but it is the citrus note that leaves the lasting fragrance.

The aroma is the same for the brewed tea. I tried this hot with no sugar or milk first. It was good, but perhaps a little too overpowering with the citrus. Adding sugar to the hot brew allows for the chocolate and nut undertones to shine through. This makes it taste a little like coffee, but it is not well blended and the flavors come in waves. Finally, adding milk (and sugar) to the hot brew makes for a well blended coffee flavored tea with all components working synergistically. This was pleasant because tiramisu should taste like coffee.

Overall decent, but you would have to like tiramisu in order for it to be really worth it to try.

I just don’t know about this tea. I was expecting alot from these leaves and came up empty-handed (not an uncommon event with Teavana teas).

I’ve never had anything from the Yunnan province, but this stuff tastes distinctively Assam to me. It’s alright, but not $9 alright. They describe the flavor as complex, but it just seems kind of one note, in my opinion. You can pick up some of Teavana’s Himalayan Majestic for a few cents cheaper and get much more bang for your buck.

Argh! My review got eaten. x.x Take two!

I really enjoyed this, and I definitely did not expect to.

The dry leaf smell was very strong. Heavily nutty and very strong. I tend to be easily off-put by the idea that something will be overdone when it’s flavored, or that the flavor will be in some way artificial. I tend toward wanting a certain purity in the tea that I drink…or perhaps the word I want is ‘cleanliness’. I want a flavor that’s a clear note; I want flavor that knows where it’s going and feels pulled-together. Rich is fine, but over-assertive — especially with anything that runs the risk of seeming artificial — makes me wary.

My first sip surprised me, though, and I was delighted. Keep in mind that this may be due to any number of factors, such as
a) not having had much tea in the last week,
b) my mouth still healing after having my wisdom teeth out, and
c) the probability that most things taste good as a latte,

but with that said, I’m able to say that I plan on having another cup of this after I finish writing this note, so there you go.

I made it the same way that I make my chai. 1:1 water to milk, simmering the water in a pot on the stove, adding rock sugar, adding the tea, simmering a few minutes, adding the milk, heating, removing from heat to sit, strain and serve. I did add a little dash of light cream when it looked as though the nearly-no-fat milk I was using wasn’t quite creamy enough for my tastes.

As it was simmering, I was giving the pot funny looks. ‘You smell like black tea,’ I thought. ‘You say that you are a mate. Are you both? I bet you’re both. If you’re both I can’t simmer you for as long. How long have you been on the stove? Crap. I’m adding the milk before you get bitter. …now you DEFINITELY smell like black tea. I bet you’re going to be bitter, ugh.’

The flavor was warm chocolate milk with hazelnut, black tea, and an exhaled aftertaste of the aroma of coffee beans. When it was hot I had a vague sense of something like rosewater, but right now I don’t really trust my palate.

Without a doubt the aftertaste is my least favorite part of this concoction, and I’m not certain to what I should be attributing it. It’s a very slight tang of something. Fruity? Sour? Floral? The source of my rosewater impression? Not quite any of those things, but definitely there. I’m not sure if the yunnan in there was angry at me for subjecting it to so much heat, or if mate has a tangy aftertaste. I suppose I should pick up some plain mate sometime to find out, eh?

In all, this tea seems to fill the niche that my Chocolate Delight from Tea Guys filled, only it fills it in a much more satisfying way. Sad to say, I think the aforementioned blend may have seen its last days in my cupboard (which is extra-sad because I have basically a new batch of that at home. If anybody wants some, let me know…but be advised I’m dispensing it not because it’s tremendously good but because otherwise it will probably wind up wasted!).

I had this in my travel mug today. It’s nice, light, and very drinkable!

This is a really nice blend of teas. Next time, I’m not going to buy them pre-mixed, that way I can control whether it has a fruity flavor or a tea flavor. The half and half blend from Teavana has a very fruity flavor. I like it lightly sweetened. Today I’m trying it with agave nectar and it’s bringing out the jasmine flavor some.