I love the discovery of new tea flavors, finding their nuances, comparing and contrasting from a baseline. I started educating myself on tea with subscription boxes, and still have a soft spot for them. Looks like Tea Spot will be my next choice. They offer a monthly subscription box for $16 for about an ounce worth of 5-6 teas and also a quarterly loose leaf club at $45 for 3+ teas of one chosen style, in larger portions obviously. This selection seems to be from the former.
The dry Keemun smells very gentle, a bit like the coriander in my cupboard. There are uniformly tight, straight, leaves, appearing medium on the spectrum of browns. I see some broken bits in wet leaves and a tamarind color brew. It smells subtly sweet, and reminds me of cherries – cheerful but with a slightly tart finish. 1 heaping tsp per 8 oz from the brewing instructions, does not make a strong tea, which some people prefer. I’m not the type to drink this flavor straight, because tannins and I are frenemies. I think it is It may leave a slight orange taste in my mouth but, this tea is still excellent at its job of caffeinating me!
Just like the Beastie Boys, I like my Sugar with [Keemun] and cream, too sweet to be sour, too nice to be mean.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: The Tea Spot
Description:
A splendor of toasty flavor and aroma! The most refined and perhaps the most well-known of Chinese black teas, this Keemun is handpicked in Anhui Province. This tea has an indescribable flavor, with the most delicate hints of smoky pine, orchid, crushed apple and a rich, sweet body.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Easy as Pie: Black Cherries and Sweet Cream from A Quarter to Tea
It’s getting to be summertime and cherries are in season. You can see them in a glorious, burgundy bundle at the grocery store or the farmer’s market. With summertime cherries on my mind, it seemed like the perfect time to try Black Cherries and Sweet Cream tea from A Quarter to Tea.
The dry tea leaves and the first minute of steeping was all about the cream, wafting sweet waves of vanilla out of my mug. As the tea cooled and I got my first taste, the cherries started to shine. This tea is named for black cherries specifically, and you can taste the dark, full, fruit flavor in the tea. This is certainly not the red cherry flavor of chewy candy or medicine, nor the syrupy maraschino cherry that goes on top of your sundae. This blend truly tastes like fresh black cherries and a dollop of cream. Even without milk and sugar, this blend is smooth and decadent, though it never gets too sweet.
There is a distinct tartness in this brew, both from the natural fruit notes and from a tanginess to the cream. This tartness goes well with the astringent black tea base, matching the bright and sharp tone of the tea leaves. This blend reminds me of the taste of fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt, with vanilla yogurt and burst of black cherries. The vanilla is creamy, but has enough complexity to remind me of true frozen yogurt, or even a slice of cherry cheesecake.
This is a great dessert blend to go with a cherry pie at that summer barbecue!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: A Quarter to Tea
Description:
Luscious black cherries with a medium body darjeeling base, paired with heavy notes of cream and vanilla. Decadent enough to make a magister proud.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
White Cherry from Tea and Absinthe
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: Tea and Absinthe
Tea Description:
Ingredients: white tea China Pai Mu Tan, green tea Darjeeling, green tea China -Fog Tea, -Lung Ching, -Jasmine Jade Pearls, cherries, coconut chips (coconut, coconut fat, sugar), flavor, rose buds
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
A couple weekends ago, my hubby and I had an amazing experience at St Louis’s Wizard World. My hubby had bought me a Doctor Who VIP package where I had my picture take with and met David Tennant and Billie Piper. I was crazy excited since they are two of my favorite Doctor Who characters and arguable the most iconic. While wondering around the convention, I stumbled upon a tea shop. I couldn’t believe it. Not going to lie, I think I squealed a little. It was a pretty neat set up and I couldn’t wait to check all of the teas out. I picked up a few and have started to finally dive into them.
Let’s start off with saying this tea is gorgeous to look at. Huge roses, cherries, gorgeous tea leaves. . .everything you would want to see in a tea, this has it. The dry leaf mixture has a lovely sweet floral smell. One that I couldn’t want to steep up.
While steeping this tea, I could definitely still smell the same sweet smell with a hint of an almost kool aid smell as well. Not offensive at all. Almost made this tea a bit more appealing. I was in the mood for a sweeter fruity tea.
I brewed this up per the package instructions, and about 4 minutes later, I was pouring the tea into my Doctor Who mug. The smell of the tea had a lovely almost bakery smell to it with a fruity sweetness. This is one of those smells that actually makes you hungry!
I allowed the tea to cool for a few and took my first sip. In the words of Doctor Who “Hello Sweetie”! This tea is incredible and a taste profile/experience I can’t say I’ve ever had before. And that is pretty crazy to say. I drink a crazy variety of teas each and every day and am always looking for something new. I can’t believe I have never came across a tea like this before.
Each flavor comes thru. You can pick up the flora white notes, the distinct Darjeeling touches, a rich buttery green tea base, with a lovely jasmine hint here and there. Throw in the sweet robust cherry (almost Kool-Aid like) flavor with hints of coconut all surrounding by again another sweet floral touch and you have yourself one amazingly complex tea. The tea isn’t so sweet that it is overpowering. I think the green tea and Darjeeling go a long way to tame the crazy sweet flavors down and bring a bit more vegetal feel to the tea. In just about every other sip you get a nice tart almost wine like flavor.
I am insanely impressed with this tea and can not wait to see how many infusions this tea will provide. I’m also excited to try this as a lovely cold brew tea. Especially for the summertime. I bet this tea will make a marvelous iced tea!
Really well done! If you haven’t checked out this tea company before, I encourage you too. So far I have had two of the 5 blends that I picked up from them and I’m impressed with both.
Cherry Fantasy Tea from TeaLyra
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black, Green, Roiboos, Etc.
Where to Buy: TeaLyra
Tea Description:
Imagine bowls full of juicy plump cherries, a summer breeze and easy living, ahh, a Cherry Fantasy! Top quality black tea provides the perfect base to our favourite cherry black tea! We think our blend has the best combination of both sour cherries, and sweet acerola cherries, offering a truly balanced cherry flavour! This brews a robust black cup, with bright cherry notes and a subtle ginger flavour.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Cherry Fantasy Tea from TeaLyra is the tea of the day filling my cup! Right off the bat I will tell you that I am overjoyed this doesn’t have hibiscus in it! I find that hibiscus is overdone in fruity teas like cherry for example and often power the rest of the flavor. So…thumbs up…already!
Black tea, sour cherries, freeze-dried Acerola cherries, freeze-dried fig pieces, and freeze-dried sour cherry pieces are the ingredients of this tea. I love that they used freeze-dried fruit in this, too!
Cherry Fantasy Tea from TeaLyra is nicely done and can be enjoyed hot or cold as-is. The Cherry Trio is at the prefect flavor intensity. I have to say that this is one of the best (if not THE best) cherry flavored black teas I have had to date! This one really surprised me and I am very happy about that! If you are a fan of natural cherry give this tea a try!
Acerola Cherry Fig Black Tea Blend from Tea & All It’s Splendor
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Tea & All It’s Splendor
Tea Description:
THIS. TEA. IS. RICH! It’s full of flavour, body and mouth feel. It’s like drinking a great red wine. We were blown away by just the smell of this well made blend. It was so amazing we had to check to make sure that it was all natural. Raelene assures us it is (along with all their other teas).
The rich sour cherry flavour, is sweet and fruity. The fig, adds a sweet and mellow brown sugar finish. This paired with a high quality black tea means you’re left with a warm cuppa that is perfect for novice and advanced tea drinkers.
Learn more about subscribing to Postal Teas here.
Taster’s Review:
My eleventh edition box from Postal Teas has finally arrived! Happy day! This eleventh edition focuses on a new-to-me tea purveyor: Tea & All It’s Splendor and this Acerola Cherry Fig Black Tea Blend is the first that I’ve tried from this collection of teas.
I mean, how could I resist? They had me at the word fig! And as I’ve confessed previously, I’ve noticed a trend in my tea drinking. When I’m given a selection of different teas, the type of tea that I’ll reach for more often than the others is black tea. Don’t get me wrong, I love other tea types. I’m crazy about Oolong teas and Yellow tea is my favorite, but there is just something so comforting about black tea. It appeals to an almost instinctual need for me. That need for tea and it’s caffeine.
And this tea is quite lovely! There is a tasty balance here between tart and sweet. The fig is sweet – almost sugary sweet and it’s a pleasing contrast to the jarring tartness of the acerola cherries. Beneath the cherry top note I taste the smooth black tea that’s not bitter nor overly astringent. I’m really glad about the lack of astringency here, I think that astringency would kill this blend for me because the cherry flavor is quite tart and a tangy, dry sensation would be a bit much for my taste, I think.
But even though the tart is very strong here, I’m not finding it off putting the way I tend to find tart flavors. I think this has more to do with the fact that the cherry flavor tastes so authentic. This is not your average cherry flavoring that ends up tasting like cough syrup. NO! This is a really tasty, true-to-the-fruit cherry flavor that tastes as though I’ve just bitten into a tart cherry. Except that thanks to the fig notes, I’m not puckering.
This. This is good tea. And as fantastic as it is served hot, it’s even better iced. Wow! What a great way to get back into the swing of things with Postal Teas!
