The Republic of Tea

This tea came in an absolutely gorgeous envelope, the color of which alone was enough to set the mouth watering and ramp up expectations for a really luscious brew. Unfortunately, the container lied. So did the description of the tea. The “ruby-hued” liquid this tea produces is a faint purple. There was no red to be found, and that was the first clue that this was going to be a disappointment. It smelled like fruit while brewing, but it wasn’t a good, clear, identifiable fruit aroma. In the cup it had little flavor and no body. I followed steeping instructions to the letter and still ended up with an insipid brew that had a watered-down artificial fruit juice motif and a very unpleasant dusty aftertaste. I got it as a free sample, but this is awful stuff at any price.

Since the last note that I made on this tea, I’ve gone without it, and only recently ended up with some again. (I’m trying to have some good decafs on hand—for myself in the evening and for my son in general.) Again, this tea is better than I’d expect, and hits the spot when I need green tea but want minimal caffeine. I let the little one try a sip, expecting him to hate it since he normally has herbals and flavored teas, but he loved it. So it’s about to become a staple, I’d guess.

I am finishing off a tin of this at this very moment. It’s crazy to know, but I’ve had this tin for exactly 19 months and 1 week. My in-laws brought it to the hospital when we had little Leif. And I just didn’t have time to make tea for the first six months or so, and then when I did have time, I always made “real” tea. I have fond memories of this one, though, as my Dad kept teasing us about having the people’s republic tea. I believe we even have a photo of it in our album.

It’s a decent decaf green. I don’t know that I’d get more since I can have caffeine again, but it was a perfect one to have on hand for this last year and a half.

Today I chose poorly. This tea is all wrong for today. The cheery, light floral back notes are completely at odds not only with the blustery gray day but also the semi-negative anticipation which is building about holiday travel in just a few days time.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my family and I love visiting them and spending time. In fact, only seeing them once a year for a few days is one of the few genuine disappointments about the current state of my “grown up” life.

But the four hour flight to and from Philadelphia, coupled with the time wasted in both IAH and PHL — dealing with park’n’ride, the complete lack of automated baggage check for people who are already checked into their flight and have already paid for baggage, dealing with the TSA, dealing with the complete lack of anything that actually resembles food in either airport… that I am not looking forward to at all. Thank God we don’t have to deal with connecting flights.

I like the actual act of flying. I find it completely magical. But for the practical task of getting from A to B, I am much more of a road warrior at heart than a jet setter.

I know, I know. First world problems. I’ll shut up and drink my floral tea now.

I think this must be another Central Market exclusive, because it isn’t on the RoTea website, either.

I seem to have picked up a djinn that attracts The Crazy to all my social networks. I am hoping that the phoenix can dispel the djinn.

If nothing else, it tastes good. A bit like a darjeeling, but with the floral scent over the top.

The leaves for this tea are enormous.

Now this is how you floral scent a tea.

There is no presence of the flower on the dry leaf at all.

The wet leaf does not hit you with a bomb of flowers the way so many do.

There is just the tiniest hint of a floral sweetness behind a gentle, but firm toasted finish in the liqueur.

This is my second tea of the day, as very few teas that I own are “cold weather” teas. Anyway, the first infusion creates a wonderful aroma of toasted rice, with hints of grassiness and vegetation. The flavor is a mix between a sencha and the rice, but the rice is slightly stronger. The aftertaste is very much that of a sencha, but a bit more astringent than any of the straight-up senchas that I have in stock.

I started drinking this after my other tea gave out, but I don’t have time for a full review (Physics is snapping up my free time like it’s a door-buster sale on black Friday). It was just as good as last time, especially as the weather was freezing today. Again, I’m happy that I have a lot of this tea to last me until January or February.

For more details, just look at my previous tasting note.

I just got this in the mail today, and was eager to try it out. After five cups of Oolong, the sun set and it got cold, so I figured this would be a great way to warm up! As a side benefit, I’ve never gotten more than 4 good cups out of Genmaicha (emphasis on good).

This tea had all of the typical things: The toasted rice taste, the pleasant aroma (which was strong enough that I could actually smell it though my congestion). The only problem was, it was by no means unique. There was nothing to make this stand out, and the flavor wasn’t exactly strong. The first infusion I made was accidentally steeped for minutes, and yet, I wouldn’t consider it to be over steeped. I think that this is a good tea for a beginner, as further experimentation proved that it was remarkably forgiving with respect to steep length and temperature, but it isn’t a flavorful tea by any stretch of the imagination. I’ll probably keep some on hand until I find something better, but make no mistake, if something better appear at a reasonable price, I’ll snap it up.

tastes like tap water. Yum.

I’m pretty new to the tea world and just bought several varieties of The Republic of Tea tin cans. This is the first one I tried and it was delicious! I’m partial to Twinings’ Earl Grey but Double Dark Chocolate Mate is a yummy change ;)

I went to my Dad’s house for Thanksgiving this year. His wife, my stepmother, offered me a selection of Republic of Tea teabags. I chose this Ginger Peach green tea. It is a bagged tea, so my expectations weren’t that high to start with.

But honestly, it’s not bad. It’s not fresh, and it has that off taste of non-authentic Americanized bottled green tea. But I’ve had worse. My biggest complaint is that there’s no string!!! How do you steep a teabag with no string?!

It was kind of inconvenient. But not as inconvenient as the cup of tea on the table became. Apparently, it was blocking my boyfriend’s view when we played the Mexican Train Game. So he blamed the tea when he lost. Hahahahaa! [Insert evil maniacal laugh here].

Anyway, back to the tea. I steeped it in almost boiled water for somewhere around 1.5-3 minutes. I’m not very precise without my tea paraphernalia. The liquor was an orange-tinted, dirty brown color. It smelled and tasted mostly of peach. Not much ginger, which is a good thing. The ginger stayed subtle and paired well with the tea base.

It’s not the best example of green tea, but it’ll get you through the day. If it were on Netflix, I’d give it 3 stars.

I’m not familiar with matcha outside of green tea ice cream, so it was great to be able to try this. (That’s one great thing about visiting people for holidays, drinking their tea!) Not bad at all, although I’m sure matcha prepared the traditional way is much better.

This was okay, but not my favorite tea. The smell sort of reminded me of pipe tobacco. Maybe it would be better with milk as a tea latte.

Love this tea in the summer! Just need to remember that it takes less sugar than usual for this one.

I like this tea for the holidays. The licorice in this gives it a much more “comforting” vibe to me than your standard spiced tea, which in my experience limits itself to orange and cinnamon, possibly apple. I enjoy this one with a splash of almond milk and, when I accidentally brew it too long, a flat spoon of sugar.

I nabbed this as a freebie (sense a trend lately?) and I kinda assumed I’d hate it. Sweet cinnamon tea? Blegh. Yeah, I know, I do have a habit of trying teas I think I’m going to hate. However…

With some vanilla soymilk this is good. It’s cinnamony, but not overly sweet, and the vanilla is present but again, not in an overly saccharine way. I’m really enjoying this as an afternoon tea despite my negative expectations. I like it enough that I could even see buying a tin.

You know how some flavored rooibos’ taste 85% like rooibos? This doesn’t…. I can hardly taste the rooibos component. I’m digging it. (I do like rooibos, but it can be disappointing when it overshadows the alleged flavor gimmick of a tea.)

I’m not even in need of much of a detox but last night I really wanted some tea before bed and my mom was in the kitchen so I asked her to surprise me with something “delicious and decaffeinated”

What she brought me was this with some vanilla almond milk in it. Definitely fit the bill for what I was asking! Calming, rich, smells delicious, and of course if you like red tea (like I do) it tastes delicious and earthy like red tea is supposed to.

Good to know that when I DO need a detox (read: after thanksgiving) that I’ve got a delicious tea to fall back on!

I’ve been drinking this tea for a few years now, I like it pretty well but I just finished the tin and I don’t intend to run out and buy any more soon. I am used to drinking my tea strong so I normally put two teabags in a cup. I like the balance of flavors here between the blackberry, the sage and the black tea. Not at all tart and also no hibiscus because it’s really not a favorite of mine. Sage is supposed to be good for people with asthma so I got it for drinking during the winter season.

I was honestly worried about trying this tea because of the negative reviews. I personally think that The Republic of Tea does rooibos well, and I love rooibos.. so I thought, why not? The cinnamon is a bit like cinnamon candy or gum. I don’t normally like cinnamon, but when I do, I prefer the darker, richer flavors. I must say that the cinnamon blends well with the wood flavor of the rooibos. I don’t detect much vanilla in this cup, but I’m content with the mild cinnamon and rooibos combination. It’s a warming cup and its name fits it perfectly! I DO want to dream by the fire while sipping this tea. I don’t think I’d purchase any more of this, but it definitely has me looking forward to the holiday season.

So far, besides the sencha I order from o-cha.com, I’ve been trying various samples, either from Zhi Tea or just the bulk sampler bags at Whole Foods. While leafing (get it?) through the sampler bags during my latest grocery-shopping adventure, I was smacked right in the face by the incredibly strong smell of SOMETHING, which I subsequently identified as this tea. I’d never heard of Lapsang Souchong before but I decided if it was bold enough to capture my attention without me even seeing it, it deserved a taste. I looked it up when I got home (and took a few more whiffs of the leaves) and the strange odor suddenly made a lot of sense. However, it smelt something like tobacco or smoked meat (neither of which I enjoy too much) so I was somewhat skeptical about what kind of tea would result. Fortunately, the taste of the tea was not nearly as strongly smoky as the aroma of the dry leaves, and I liked it quite a bit. It strikes me as a tea that would be great to drink while at the banya.

Oh my god… this one is GOOD. Good good good. I haven’t been surprised by a cup of tea in a while, but I’m adoring this one. (Jim, if you read this we must bring a tin of this for your mother at Christmas. She feels as I do about peppermint-cocoa rooibos.)
Ahem.

There was a tea that I found in Chicago that came in a Cocomint flavor- I think the brand was Khalihari, or somesuch? Anyway, they only carried it in the Chicago South Loop Whole Foods, and I haven’t seen it since. This is a really good match for it, and might actually even be better. The mint and coco remind me of a less sweet mint-hot chocolate, and of course this lacks both the caffeine and the calories.

The girl at my Whole Foods counter insisted that I try this one on the house, and she was so right about me liking it. It really has all of the flavor of a cup of mint hot cocoa drink but just less sweet in a really good way- less overwhelmingly sweet that is.

Er, as I was typing this a UPS truck went flying down my street… backwards.