The dry leaf smells like mulled wine, with fragrant elderberry, cinnamon, and cloves. Pour a bit of water on these leaves and they brew up fast! Wow, what a dark red berry brew after only a few seconds!
Brewed, this tea gets much more tart, thanks to the powerhouse of hibiscus flowers. The ingredients list also include purple corn. I’m not sure how it adds to the flavor, but the brewed tea is a vibrant purple-pink color.
This tea is best served warm, though the fruitiness might be suited for an iced tea, I’m not sure all the spice is appropriate in a cold beverage. I’m of the opinion that cinnamon and cloves are best suited for a drink from a hot mug.
The cloves and hibiscus dominate this tea, which were a perfect combination for a cold, grey, rainy day when I brewed this cup. Drinking Peruvian Spice Berry made me feel like I was tucked in on a cozy autumn day, warming up with peppery cloves and dark currant flavors.
This is definitely a tea for fans of mulled wine and hot toddies. Or, if you just want to be able to say that you tried a tea made from purple corn!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Herbal
Where to Buy: Inca Tea
Description:
An enlivening herbal, fruit tea blend of purple corn, berries and spices. Caffeine free. This is our Original blend to characterize the true ancient Incan recipe.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Fresh and Easygoing Green: Tian Mu Mao #FengGreen Tea from @Teavivre
There’s a lot of green teas out there: potent matcha, sour kukicha, toasted hojicha, or smoky gunpowder, to name just a few. After trying this offering from Teavivre, now I can add Feng Green tea to my list.
First of all, the leaves of Feng Green tea were unlike any of the green teas I mentioned. The Feng Green tea leaves were long and tightly curled, tangling into each other as I tried to scoop some tea into my teapot. This was certainly a different shape than the rolled pellets of gunpowder green, or the flattened hojicha leaves, or the powdered matcha.
The Feng Green dry leaf smelled lightly floral and just a touch sour, like an aged forest floor. There was just a hint of something spicier, like pine resin or citrus, almost making the leaves smell like a box of Christmas potpourri. Brewed, the tea is well-balanced, with the expected grassy green notes, a hint of sour fermentation, and a full scent and aftertaste of sweet apple and green grape.
I don’t often reach for green teas, but Feng Green from Teavivre was so drinkable and naturally sweet that I found myself making a cup to help take the edge off my long afternoons.
Try Feng Green when you need something pleasant and easygoing, like sitting on your porch and taking in the fresh grass of spring and the fresh fruits of summer.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Teavivre
Description:
Organic Tian Mu Mao Feng Green Tea is one of the ten famous Chinese teas. This Organic Tian Mu Mao Feng Green Tea origins in organic tea base of Tianmu Mountain in Lin’an, Hangzhou. The organic tea base of Tianmu Mountain, has passed the organic certification of European, USA and Japan, is a significant base of planting organic dragon well and green tea. When brewing, it tastes light sweet and fragrance. In Chinese, Mao Feng refers to the hairy buds—to be covered by pekoes means a super quality of the tea leaves.
This Organic Tian Mu Mao Feng Green Tea is produced by traditional manual frying method and the idea of modern crafts of tea making. Combined with the advantages of organic tea and high grade tea, it is suitable for tea lovers of organic tea,
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Orange Cardamom Black Tea from Aftelier Perfumes
I didn’t have much information on this tea going into my first cup, so I was surprised to see these black tea leaves unfurl into a deep, dark, red brew. This tea almost seems like a pu erh rather than an astringent black tea. The base is earthy, almost smoky, and much richer and more savory that I expected.
Aftelier Perfumes describes the tea as “red tea rolled into pearls and roasted,” which makes sense with the musky, toasted notes I tasted.
The orange and cardamom are minimal, the most noticeable on the back of each sip. There’s something sweet and herbaceous in this blend, it’s not a full-on smoky black tea, but the brightness is slightly subdued and more noticeable in the mouthfeel than the flavoring.
This tea was unexpected, but very enjoyable. I was waiting for the astringent bite of orange, or the baked-good sweetness of cardamom, and instead tasted a complex, smooth, and earthy tea. This makes me curious to check out other flavors Aftelier Perfumes has to offer!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Aftelier Perfumes
Description:
This delicious full-bodied tea is flavored with Aftelier Chef’s Essences: the perfect marriage of mouth-watering blood orange and the spicy warmth of cardamom. Organic Red Pearls Black Tea, a rare tea from Fujian, is fully-oxidized Mao Feng tea leaves that have been rolled into small black pearls. They are then pan-fired where they develop a burnished sheen, toasty caramel-like aroma, and spicy, assertive — yet wonderfully sweet — flavor.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Power Up with Purple Tea from Kenya. . . .
Just when you think you’ve tried every kind of tea you can think of, you stumble across something new. Not black tea or green tea but, Purple Tea? I had to give it a try.
This batch of tea had enormous, voluminous leaves that puffed up the sample bag. The leaves were long and dark, tightly curled, and exceptionally elegant.
Though the leaves were beautiful, they weren’t purple in color, but instead looked like traditional black tea. Would the brewed leaves be any different?
Black teas brew up dark sienna brown, rooibos teas are reddish amber, and green and white teas brew up golden or melon green. Does this Purple Tea actually turn the water purple?
Not exactly, though I will say that the brewed tea is a notable cooler color than most brews. The Purple Tea brews up a muddy, blue-green. It’s far from traditional grape juice purple, as far as the tea color wheel is concerned, brewing up blue-green still pretty unusual.
With all this thought about the beautiful appearance of the leaves and the brew, we finally get to the taste. This Purple Tea tasted surprisingly light and juicy, like green grapes and white wine. There was also a flash of black currant tartness at the back of each sip that reminds you that this has a flavor palette beyond a typical green tea or an oolong. As the tea cooled, I noticed more of a muscatel, earthy, grape flavor that helped flesh out the forward, bright fruit notes.
Purple tea is grown near the equator in a sunny environment with lots of ultraviolet rays. To survive, this tea is high in antioxidants, like blueberries and pomegranates. When you want to expand your palette and get a health-boost, brew up some Purple Tea and feel the purple power!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Purple tea
Where to Buy: Kenya Purple Tea
Description: Recent studies on Kenyan purple tea indicate that this new tea has high levels of anthocyanins which are known to have powerful antioxidant properties.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
I Dream of Macchiato Dream from Steeped Tea
I don’t discriminate when it comes to tea and coffee, I like them both, hot and iced, and I often find myself drinking one or the other depending on my mood. I was very intrigued to try a rooibos tea with real coffee beans mixed in the dry leaf. Visually, this blend is intriguing, with the fine red grains of rooibos mixed in with dark, roasted coffee beans and chunky cocoa shells.
The smell of this tea is amazing right from the start: there is the sharp, earthy, depth of roasted coffee beans, the sweet decadence of cocoa, and the bright vanilla nuttiness of the red rooibos. Without even brewing a cup, this tea smells like a mocha dessert or java ice cream.
Brewed hot, the cocoa and coffee take over, completely masking the rooibos. This can be a benefit– I’m not always in the mood for the particular taste of red rooibos, though its caffeine-free status is hard to beat. The brewed tea has a smooth mouthfeel, warming and coating my throat, and the sweet flavors almost trick my tongue into thinking we’re having dessert instead of tea.
Even with the coffee beans, there’s not as much caffeine in this blend as other black teas or full-on coffee, so there is more flexibility as to when you can indulge in Macchiato Dream. I’m not as ambitious as some SororiTea Sisters when it comes to building lattes, but I can already tell that this tea will be a winner when mixed with milk and sweetener.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Rooibos
Where to Buy: Steeped Tea
Description:
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!