I have had a few peach teas and one or two were ginger peach varieties. Some of them slap you in the face with a powerful ripe, juicy peach flavor and then burn your tongue with ginger. Sneaky devils.
I am not the world’s biggest fan of ginger but I like it in small amounts, whether in beverages or recipes. I just don’t like for things to get too hot. (My neighbor would love a big hunk of ginger with ghost pepper sauce and eat it while it is on fire. Soooo not me.)
When I had some stomach issues I took to eating ginger candy and drinking honey with ginger, and I grew a little more used to it but still wasn’t a fan of the heat. But a sniff of the dry leaves of this organic white tea blend had me intrigued and eager to taste it. The scent was mild and smooth, and the ginger very well behaved. The peach was just a light, fruity background scent, no face slapping here. The lemon added a little sparkle. I swear I thought I even smelled a hint of vanilla. That could be coming from the jasmine and calendula.
The steeped liquor is deep golden color and good gravy what is happening to me? Ginger is the dominant flavor, but I keep going back for more. It’s not that you can’t taste the ginger. I still find it to dominate the cup. It does have a little heat, but the heat is juuuuuuust right. And the other flavors in this make a nice base for the ginger. The peach is pretty subtle compared to some I have had, but it is pairing oh so nicely with the ginger. And my dodgy tummy is enjoying this ever so much more than my former tummy rescue drink of honey crystals and ginger. Well, I guess it is my mouth enjoying it more, but my tummy is grateful!
Will it resteep? Oh joy! Joy! It does resteep…superbly! The second batch is still a nice deep golden color. The light dry briskness of the white tea, with the lemon possibly playing a part, is making me want more and more! I have already iced a glass for supper, and the taste I sneaked promises that this is good both ways!
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: Storehouse Teas
Description
Delicate, honey like white tea blended with mouth-watering peach and ginger rejuvenates both body and mind. This is one of our most popular white tea offerings. This tea is excellent as a relaxing hot beverage or served as a refreshing iced tea. White tea contains the highest antioxidant level of all teas.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Organic Nonpareil Fujian Black Tea/Teavivre. . . .
This story begins with a tragedy. A tea tragedy.
What is a tea tragedy, you may ask? A tea tragedy is anything tea related that breaks your heart a little bit – or a lot – like dropping the tin and spilling the last of a now-discontinued tea, or forgetting you were steeping a tea you were looking forward to and ruining it, or failing to read the instructions on a special tea that doesn’t go by “the usual parameters.”
The last was my tragedy. I was looking forward to this tea and didn’t look at the instructions. I assumed the sample pouch was heavier than it was and made 22 ounces of tea with enough leaf for twelve. All was not lost, and the tea was nice but it was obviously not all it was supposed to be.
To make up for my blunder, I had a gongfu session with this tea this morning. Many of the finest teas are really good steeped Western style but downright gorgeous gongfu. I gave it the full treatment – traditional Asian music playing, a tea tray on the carpet, and a surprise guest – a ladybug – who wandered around my linen tea towel the whole morning!
To begin: Steep one – much thicker mouth feel than the underleafed Western cup as one would expect. The honey notes are intense. If someone else had prepared this, and said to me “By the way, I took the liberty of adding some honey to the tea,” I would have believed them. The aroma was that sweet and the feel that thick, but not sickeningly sweet. Honey overwhelms me easily, and this was a lovely, natural taste.
Steep two – Oops. Minor tea tragedy. I got lost in thought for just a moment and slightly oversteeped. And I only had to pay attention for twenty seconds! But it turned out to be one of my favorite steeps. Now the baked sweet potato is joined by a hint of orange and the flavor is even more intense than the first steep. The honey aroma is still there, and the sweetness.
Steep three and onward – increasing the time a bit for each steep, this 5 grams of leaf continues to deliver. On steep eight I do see a noticeable decrease in color but the aroma is still at a desirable level. Perhaps because the sweet potato flavor is fading, a light briskness is now present. And on steep nine, I know it is time to stop. The color has lightened further, and the body is thinner. Still good and still drinkable, nevertheless it is time to stop, and to sit back and enjoy the lingering flavors of the tea.
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Teavivre
Description
Thick, full bodied texture with pure and clean profile
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Love In The Afternoon from Kipers Lil Tea Shop. . .
Well, I should have taken the name of this tea a bit more literally! I saw on the website that they have many movie themed blends, but I didn’t realize just how accurately they try to blend the tea to match the name!
I will list the ingredients of this tea for you here, as it is not available at present on their website. This blend contains green tea, peppermint leaf, spearmint leaf, calendula, cinnamon, and catuaba bark. All of these ingredients were familiar to me save one – the last one. Naturally I did a google search to find out more about this ingredient. Oh me oh my! It is widely used as an aphrodisiac, a treatment for low libido in males, and for neuralgia, including neuralgia following shingles. (Good to know should I ever meet up with that malady.)
So, literally this tea is trying to enhance your “Love In The Afternoon.” All righty then!
Since I will only be drinking one to two cups of this tea, I do not expect to have any medical reports for you, but I can report on the taste of the tea!
The dominant aroma was spearmint, which suits me because I prefer it to peppermint which is actually listed before spearmint on the package.
As for the taste…the mint is actually a little more muted than I would like. The green base was not terribly distinctive, the mint flavor was milder than a Moroccan mint, for instance, and I couldn’t taste the cinnamon at all. I have no idea what catuaba bark tastes like but either it or the green base was lending a light metallic aftertaste.
It wasn’t bad but it isn’t something I would seek out unless I was looking for the herbal benefits rather than just taste. If you love mint tea and want something that isn’t screaming in your face level mint, it might be a good tea for you!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Kipers Lil Tea Shop
Description
This blend is not listed on the website but click below for teas that are!
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Light Side from Geek+Tea. . . .
Tea just goes with geeks. Or maybe geeks go with tea. Either way, if you get a bunch of tea lovers together you are likely to find a high proportion of geeks, or at least people who are really passionate about more than just tea.
Geek+Tea caters to this group of tea lovers with fandom blends for nearly everyone. Being a Star Wars geek myself and mother to a 501st member, I was pretty excited to try Light Side, even though the Dark Side allegedly has cookies and would probably be more up my alley.
This is an organic Bai Mu Dan with blueberries, blue cornflower, Scotch heather, and elderberries. Of all those ingredients, there is only one that is completely new to me – Scotch heather. It can be a bit of a challenge to describe an ingredient you have never tasted when it is blended with other ingredients, but I will do my best.
First of all, I have had a few blueberry teas that are quite delicious but taste like grape Dimetapp. While this well-known antihistamine is indeed delicious and candy-like, it is not quite like real blueberries.
I found this tea to be more…believable. The white tea is organic, the blueberries are the real deal, the elderberries I recognize from my sambucus concoctions, so… that remaining hay flavor must be from the heather. Although many white teas have a hay flavor, Bai Mu Dan is more floral, so I must credit the heather. I searched sites selling pure heather tea for a description and didn’t get an adequate one, just a statement that it tasted like regular tea but milder, which I am not finding here.
Fun fact: The tea steeped up blue, and surprisingly with such light and natural ingredients, it resteeped quite handily and the second pot was as strong as the first. I also tried it cold since they remark that it makes a naturally sweet cold drink and I enjoyed it that way. It is a light sweetness and nothing like the Southern sweet tea I grew up on, which is nearly syrup. This is something light and natural, and thanks to the natural ingredients, you can drink up without guilt, more like the ready made unsweet or lightly sweetened teas that are the rage now in health food stores.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: Geek + Tea
Description
… and 43,300 light years from the Galactic Core covered in dense woodlands, tall mountains and savannah, you will find a foreign forest moon filled with fresh, crisp scents and floral breezes in the morning fog of Endor.
An infusion of Bai Mu Dan white tea and organic herbs, the Light Side is an exotic blend of blueberry and scotch heather and is relaxing as a hot tea, and comes out wonderfully sweet when iced
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Sleep from We Are Tea. . . .
Oh, my aching back! I have a severe case of text neck that has traveled down my shoulder and upper back and sleeping has been a bit rough lately. A friend told me that tulsi is the best pain-in-the-neck reliever and I would love to get a good night’s sleep, so let’s see if it gives some relief.
When I mix my own tulsi blend I usually just put tulsi and lavender. This blend also has chamomile and rose. It looks beautiful in the sachet and is clearly nice big pieces and not dust. You can tell it is fresh by the lovely colors of the ingredients – no oasty gray here. And the sachet is made of cornstarch! No nylon in this baby, so I can toss the whole thing in my compost tomorrow – after I resteep it, of course!
After three minutes of steeping, I am ready to be enticed away to la-la land. The tea tastes and smells primarily of tulsi to me even though that is the last ingredient listed. Secondly, I taste chamomile and then the lavender and rose equally and subtly. It is a little bit savory and a whole lot relaxing. There is a lingering herbal aftertaste and it isn’t really floral, but still savory.
I could swear I feel my jaw unclenching, and I didn’t even realize it was clenched…
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Herbal
Where to Buy: We Are Tea
Description
There aren’t many things that a good night’s sleep can’t fix, so we created this ultimate night time blend to help you along the way. Settle your mind, sink into your pillow and let this caffeine free tea melt the pressure away. No sheep counting required!
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!