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Wow. So… I really want to write a good thorough review of this tea.

But I can’t. The first drink made me cringe. I tried a couple more sips so I could at least give it some attempt at a review. It tastes like artificially flavored powdered grape beverage, thrown in a blender with a stick of cherry lip balm and a pot of tea.

If I can say one good thing about this cup, it’s that they did not skimp on the flavorings for this brew. Unfortunately, those flavorings are terrible. Oh man would I avoid this if at all possible. I can only vaguely imagine a brew tasting worse.

Another very generous sample from Azzrian. Thank you!

Drinking this tea effectively doubles my experience with oolong tea. I’ve now had two, count ’em two, different oolongs in my tea career. The first was a Maharaja Chai Oolong from Teavana, and the second being this.

Now here’s where my inexperience probably leads me to a bit of a confusion – this looks like a black tea. I would wager, and possibly lose, money at the tea-casino over the family of tea that this belongs to. Intellectually, I understand that green tea is non-oxidized, black tea is 100% oxidized, and you can call anything between oolong. It’s a near black. Like… I’d say it was an oolong that was 99.2% oxidized. Like there was a little factory of workers on starting boards waiting for the pistol to go off, so some large man with a megaphone could yell “Go! Go before the oxidation finishes! We’re losing money by the second!” Preferably with a pirate accent, so he could toss in pirate insults. Insults are always better in pirate.

Opening up the bag, there’s an unnaturally powerful zingy lemon scent. I made the mental association of Thera-Flu, and can’t get it out of my head now. It completely smells like Thera-Flu. But I’m fond of citrus (actually, I’m fairly fond of Thera-Flu), so it really doesn’t bother me… consider yourself warned.

The brew itself was much less pungent, and the steeped aroma was definitely more in line with orange than Thera-Flu, thankfully the flavor follows the same pattern. The flavor is just gently floral, with a hint of orange, but overall I find my tastebuds tangled with more of that zesty lemon taste. It’s a little bit chemically, and a little bit tart. It did drown out the tea flavor to me, which really hid in the background, and just left me feeling like it was all based on a weak black tea. If there was any subtle distinction between the oxidization level of this tea and your standard black, I’m not confident enough in my sense of taste that I think I’d ever find it.

The other thing kicking around in the back of my mind is that I’m not trying this tea at the right time. I drink it, and its decent tasting, but I really think to myself that I’d enjoy it more with breakfast. I think it would shine a lot more on the other end of the day than the one it’s currently trying to star in (Ha! Not intentionally a nighttime joke, but I’ll take it).

Or maybe keep it around for when I’m sick. I really cannot shake the Thera-Flu association!

I received this in the mail today as part of a VERY generous swap from Azzrian. Thank you!

Still being fairly new to all of the different teas that are out there, I have a hard time not reacting like a playful little puppy. Every new tea I get that tastes good is like my new favorite person to play with. I haven’t tasted a tea this good since the last awesome tea I tasted! Now you’re my favorite tea. Now YOU’RE my favorite tea! To sort of ‘leash’ my inner puppy, I’m sloooowly drinking this tea, and writing towards the end of the cup.

There’s a lot to like about this tea. The mint flavor is very tasty, but not overpowering. After the first flavor rush, the mint smooths down and allows the vanilla to shine through a little more. Underneath both of those, hiding ever so delicately is the flavor of the green tea. The black tea doesn’t have much room to come through, and I feel like it may be a more mellow black tea to begin with.

I’ve never had a black/green blend before, and we actually brewed this one a little hot and long for green tea, which gave it the tiniest hint of bitterness in the background. That’s our own fault though, nothing to blame the tea for. Our next go at this one, and we’re going to go with a lower temp and less time… see how that works out.

This is my first Golden Moon Tea, and I have a sampler pack from them coming soon. If the samples I get are up to this level of quality, it will definitely be a company I’m interested in buying from in the future. This cup of tea went by really quick, and we keep fairly large cups around here :)

Thanks again to Azzrian for the swap!

It’s really fun adding a new tea to Steepster. A) It makes me feel like I’ve uncovered some lost treasure of the Sierra Madre by buying this tea that no one else has reviewed. B) When you add something like this tea, you just get to click so many boxes! It’s a Chai, it’s a Rooibos, it’s a Maté, it’s SUPERTEAAAAA!

ahem.

I bought this with a little bit of giddyness (read: spite) that it might replace Teavana’s Samurai Maté. Close Colonel, but no cigar.

It’s a very good blend, and I’m so far ecstatic with the quality and flavor from my Ovation purchases. Definitely a company I will buy from again.

To me, the standout flavors are the cardamom and the rooibos. The fruit blends a little bit behind those two, and gives a little bit of a… lift, for lack of a better term, to the flavor. The cinnamon and anise are noticeable in the blend, but take a much more subdued backseat than I’m used to for either one of those two spices. These are typically strong, domineering beasties, and they’re comfortably waiting their turn on this one.

Overall, the smoothness of the flavor here really impresses me. It just feels like silk gliding over your tongue, and none of the flavors are overtly grabbing for your attention. It is very relaxing… which is probably a bad thing for a maté blend. This could very easily be one of those awkward moments where you had to explain to your boss that you were up all night drinking tea. Try it with a straight face sometime.

So why no bell and no cigar? I really do have a big love on for my cassia cinnamon. To me, the most disappointing thing about this blend is that the cinnamon is so passive. I think this has to do with Ovation using cinnamon chips instead of cinnamon/cassia flavoring. It is also possible that Ovation is using ceylon (true) cinnamon, which is supposed to be less ‘HI I’M CINNAMON LETS BE FRIENDS’, and my ignorant American tongue just doesn’t know what it’s missing.

Definitely a good brew, but it isn’t going to dethrone my Samurai. There’s got to be a better joke there than that. Oh well.

The irony here is that what, two days after I say that I’ll never request this tea… I request this tea.

But I’m not changing my rating, no no. So here’s the humor. I went to a semi-fancy beer place, and bought a semi-fancy bottle of mead, imported from Denmark. Missy also wanted tea, and the question was posed:

What kind of tea should we drink, that won’t spoil or overpower the flavors of the mead?

That really mild Nonsuch Estate tea that we tried the other day, of course. Worked perfectly. The same timid profile that left me feeling ‘meh’ a few days ago accompanied tonight’s drink rather well. Though, I kind of feel bad for it. It’s a terrible measuring tool to comment on how well this sits in the shadow of the night’s other beverage! If Nonsuch was a child, I’d be giving him a complex.

So… Strawberry Sunset (take 1) is a tisane I made using Ovation Teas custom blending, using the following options:
Tea Base – Chamomile
Herbs, Spices & Flowers – Cinnamon Chips, Lemongrass
Fruit & Nuts – Strawberries, Figs
Flavorings – Strawberry, Spearmint

Let me start off by saying THIS IS DELICIOUS, even though it isn’t as strawberry-y as I wanted. It’s very, very tasty though. The strawberry flavoring isn’t as dominant as either the mint or the chamomile flavors, but it picks up a little more as the beverage cools. The amount of lemongrass they used in this blend is perfect, just a hint of zing as a finishing note. It lingers a little bit too.

The fig flavoring is lost, which I somewhat expected, since fig is a little tame on it’s own. I think I’ll actually replace those with more strawberries the next time around (oh yes, there will be a next time, this isn’t over between us Ovation).

The brew has a very pale, almost white grape juice color. This was a little surprising to me as I was expecting the vibrant red that I had in the Strawberry Sunset that I was basing this from. It probably just means that Ovation is using a more ‘natural’ product, where the one I had before was a more artificially colored and flavored blend.

I’m finishing up the second cup, and this chamomile is totally knocking me out. So I’m going to rate this 100 and run off to bed. Yes, I’m going to give it 100 even though it can be improved slightly. I figure any lacking in flavor combination is my own darned fault, so I can really only rate the tea on the quality and flavor of the chosen ingredients, which is AMAZING.