Tea Type:
Rooibos/Green Tea Blend
Where To Buy:
Whispering Pines Tea Company
Product Description:
Jasmine Coconut Green Tea combines the warm fragrant smell of jasmine scented green tea and red rooibos with freshly toasted organic coconut flakes for a smooth tropical tea. Deliciously perfect for any time of the day! Best enjoyed hot.
Tasters Review:
Whispering Pines told me the green tea used in this blend is a Light Fujian Pouchong.
The ‘green’ tea leaves look different from leaf to leaf. The coconut shavings are smaller than you might see in a bulk section or in a Bob’s Red Mill’s type bag, for example. I can also see the rooibos. At first glance – it ALMOST looks like there COULD BE both green and regular rooibos in this mix! It’s a bit hard to tell this last assumption about the Rooibos because there is so little of it in there…so…it could just be regular rooibos, I guess.
The green tea is a nice ‘even-steven’ type taste inbetween a slight grassy-green, slight sweet-green, slight vegetal-green. The Jasmine is subtle – thankfully! Just the right amount for my palate. The coconut is pretty amazing. It’s not like a stereotypical-tropical type coconut but a soothing, creamy-type instead. I do like this difference!
With the description and ingredients list I thought I would like this one fine-and-dandy but I actually like it even more than I thought I would! This is incredibly smooth. This is a nice sipping tea OR a nice gulping tea!
Whispering Pines…an Artisan of blended teas! Nice!
Cranberry Pomegranate from Rooibee Red Tea
Product Information:
What It Is: Ready-To-Drink beverage crafted from Red Rooibos
Where to Buy: Goodies Company
Product Description:
Refreshing and delicately flavored with cranberry and pomegranate, Rooibee Red Tea is sure to please. It’s also rich in antioxidants, low in calories, naturally caffeine-free, and certified USDA organic. What’s not to love?
Learn more about this product here.
Taster’s Review:
Recently, I subscribed to a new monthly subscription with Goodies Company, a company that sends out monthly “foodie” tasting boxes. This bottle of Rooibee Red Tea was one of the products in my very first box, which I received a couple of months ago, but am just getting around to trying it now.
I guess you could say that I’m very often reluctant to try Ready-to-Drink teas. I usually find them to be too sweet for my liking, as most of them seem to be crafted with more sugars and sweeteners than actual tea. Add that with the fact that I’m not wild about red rooibos, and you have a product about which I am – at the very least – skeptical.
However, I’m finding this to be quite pleasant to drink. I like that the sweetener used here is Cane Sugar rather than corn syrup, so it doesn’t have that sickeningly, sticky sweet taste that not only sticks to the tongue but to the teeth. The rooibos is naturally sweet, so I think they should have maybe added a little less cane sugar here than they did, because this is still rather sweet.
The flavors of cranberry and pomegranate are not overtly obvious, they meld well into the flavor of the rooibos to create a very unified taste that is part nutty, sweet rooibos, part cranberry and part pomegranate. I notice that the taste of the fruits is most prominent in the aftertaste, where I get a gentle berry tingle on the tongue that tastes very much of both cranberry and pomegranate, but I think that this could be tastier of the two fruits were better represented during the sip and not just after.
Overall, I enjoyed this bottle of RTD rooibos. It is sweet, yes, and a tad too sweet for my liking, but, it was also very refreshing, and nice to drink after a meal. It managed to curb that tendency to hunt down some dessert when I sipped it right after my meal, and I do like that.
Will I buy it again? Probably not. I might try another flavor of the Rooibee Red Tea if I happened to find it while I was out and about, but, I don’t know that I’d go out of my way looking for the product, nor do I think it would be my first choice of beverages if given a wide variety of choices, but if the choices are limited, and the Rooibee Red Tea products happened to be one of those limited choices, I might choose it.
Autumn Leaves from Della Terra Teas
Tisane Information:
Leaf Type: Rooibos & Honeybush
Where to Buy: Della Terra Teas
Tea Description:
It’s that time of year again! Even if it’s not, and you want it to be, just have a cup of this perfectly aromatic rooibos! It has the flavor and aroma of maple and the roasted goodness of honeybush paired with rooibos and green rooibos. It creates the perfect blend of all the flavors to give you all the best of Autumn in your cup!
Learn more about this tisane here.
Taster’s Review:
Warning: This tisane is for true maple lovers ONLY!
If you swipe the lip of the bottle clean with your finger after you’ve poured maple syrup over the pancakes, and then licked your finger, or if you’re tempted to lick your plate clean after you’ve finished the pancakes… read on. This tisane is something you MUST try!
I love maple. I am sure I’ve proclaimed that on this blog before. I’m sure I’ll probably say so again. It’s one of my favorite sweet flavors, probably #3 after chocolate and caramel.
And this tisane from Della Terra Teas is about the closest thing to real maple syrup that any tea or tisane will ever get. It tastes as though I filled the cup up half of the way full with maple syrup, and then stirred in some brewed rooibos to thin it out a bit.
I don’t even taste the rooibos much here… I do taste a slight nuttiness to the cup, but it melds together with the maple notes so well that it’s not really distinguishable as rooibos to me. It just tastes like hints of toasty, nutty flavor that add to the warm taste that I get from this maple-y delicious tisane.
I love that the base used here is not just oxidized rooibos, but also green rooibos and honeybush which gives the overall cup a more pleasing dimension. I taste notes that are not definitively maple notes in this, but it’s difficult to describe the overall taste, because really, what I taste more than anything is MAPLE! It is warm, luscious and very sweet. Just like real maple syrup.
So, if you do not like sweet drinks … don’t try this. If you do not like maple … don’t try this. But if you have a sweet tooth and you love MAPLE like I do, you MUST try this.
And don’t forget about our Della Terra Teas’ 12 Day of Christmas Tea Sampler Giveaway that is going on right now! Enter for your chance to win!
Zulu Chai from Assam Tea Company
Tisane Information:
Leaf Type: Rooibos
As Sold By: Amoda Tea
Also Available At: Assam Tea Company
Tisane Description:
This is a fantastic chai blend, a bit on the spicy side (black pepper!), but nice and full-flavoured. The spices are well-balanced though. There’s a cinnamon blast on the nose, enhanced by the natural cinnamon qualities of the rooibos. For us here at Amoda, a chai blend is taken to the next level when orange peels are thrown into the mix.
Learn more about the Monthly Tea Tasting Box from Amoda Tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is my third and final from “The Last Days of Autumn” tea tasting box from Amoda Tea. While I was excited to try a tea from this company (I don’t think I’ve tried one from them yet), I wasn’t overly excited about yet another rooibos chai blend (it seems like EVERYBODY’S got one!) But, I have to admit that after trying it, I can see why Amoda Tea decided to include this tea in this Autumn themed box. Chai blends tend to be rather autumnal, but something about this rooibos chai speaks of autumn in a very special way.
Dry, this is a beautifully fragrant chai. That shouldn’t be surprising, as most chai blends tend to be wonderfully aromatic. The spices that stood out to me most when I smelled the dry leaf was the anise and the cardamom, and given my love for anise (and cardamom!) it was a very rewarding scent, indeed!
Once brewed, my olfactory nerves are treated to the aroma of cinnamon and clove, with background notes of orange and ginger, and just a hint of anise in the distance.
This is a warm and tasty chai. It is not what I’d call a “spicy” (as in spicy-hot) chai, instead, I find the spices to be more soothing and mild. The spices are strong enough to be felt in the nasal cavity (this is one of those chai blends that is GREAT for when you’re feeling under the weather and need something to help clear that passage way!) and it gets to work to gently warm and soothe the throat and back of the palate.
The rooibos here can be tasted, but, it isn’t a strong flavor. Instead, I taste a hint of nutty flavor that sort of mingles with the notes of orange in the background. I expected the orange to actually be much stronger than it is here, as there are lots of little chunks of orange peel in the blend. Instead, the orange acts as an accent note, adding a touch of brightness to the cup and highlighting the spices in a very appealing way.
The anise is my favorite part of this chai, it gives an exotic sweetness to the cup and I love the way this spice melds with the others in the blend. They all seem to work together very harmoniously to create a delicious taste that is spicy without being hot, and very comforting. A perfect cup for these last days of autumn.
Red Velvet Cupcake Rooibos from Simpson & Vail
Tisane Information:
Leaf Type: Rooibos
Where To Buy: Simpson & Vail
Tisane Description:
A cup of this brewing “tea” imparts a heavenly aroma of chocolatey goodness. The aroma is truly awesome. And the taste? This “tea” strikes the perfect balance of chocolate, rooibos and cupcake. So brew a cup, sit back and relax, knowing that the goodness in the cup is also good for your waistline!
Learn more about this tisane here.
Taster’s Review:
When served fresh-out-of-the-teapot-hot, I find this to be a little too rooibos-y for my liking. I tasted hints of chocolate and another indistinguishable sort of sweetness, but, really, what I tasted was rooibos – that nutty, woody, sweet taste of rooibos.
As the tea cools in my cup slightly (for just a couple of minutes!), I find that the chocolate-y notes begin to develop and they come together with the rooibos notes nicely, although, I can’t say that this tastes so much like any red velvet cupcake that I’ve tasted. I haven’t tried a lot of red velvet cupcakes, as they don’t tend to be my favorite cupcake (when I want chocolate, I want CHOCOLATE, not a hint of chocolate that’s been swathed in a red velvet-y color, although there are times when I love red velvet, I like the slight tang of the red velvet combined with the creamy, sweet-tangy frosting). But, of the red velvet cupcakes that I have tried, I can’t say that this tisane that is in my cup tastes much like any of those.
That’s not to say that it isn’t a tasty cup of tea. It is. When it’s really hot, I am not a big fan of it, but, after a few minutes of cooling time, the chocolate flavors pick up a bit and it becomes a nice, slightly chocolate, rooibos tisane. I taste a very subtle note of coconut as well as an ever so slight raspberry taste here, but these flavors are pretty inconspicuous and difficult to discern unless you really tune in to the tea.
Pleasant, but I must say that Simpson & Vail does have better dessert teas. Right off the bat, I would recommend their Cinnamon Chocolate Brownie. That one is amazing!