Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green/Matcha
Where to Buy: 3 Leaf Tea
Tea Description:
Vegan, Gluten Free
Ingredients: Matcha, natural flavors
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is a fairly new company, and one I actually wanted to order from since they’ve got a pretty diverse selection of flavoured matcha and I was interested in seeing how it differed from what Red Leaf Tea offers. Unfortunately they don’t yet ship to Canada, so it was great that my fellow SororiTea Sister TheLastDodo was able to send some for me to try!
Instead of my usual matcha in milk I prepped this cold shaken in a DAVIDsTEA timolino with plain old water. Since this is a new company to me and I’m not familiar with their base matcha I wanted as much of a “plain” taste as I could get.
Visually the matcha is a really bright green colour – exactly what I want to be seeing! It smells really intense, and maybe a little bit artificial? That’s something I don’t want to be getting from this one. Hmm; I kept my expectations really neutral going into this.
I actually liked it a lot; I thought the raspberry was very sweet and natural tasting with just a tease of natural tang to it. It also didn’t seem to eclipse the flavour of the matcha itself which tasted subtly grassy and very, very floral. It had me thinking loosely of both orchids and peonies. The artificial smell I was picking up didn’t cross over into the flavour – hooray! Plus, the flavour and base together worked very well – the floral components absolutely complimented the natural tasting raspberry.
It definitely makes me wish I could try more flavors from this company – in particular I’m curious about the pineapple matcha and the apple matcha. I love the pairing of pineapple and floral flavours like orchid so I can see that working really, really well. Basically, I’m saying people should give this company a little bit more love because hopefully then they’ll be able to expand their shipping into Canada!
Coconut Cream Banana Black Tea from Murchie’s Tea & Coffee
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Murchie’s Tea & Coffee
Tea Description:
Murchie’s Coconut Cream Banana Tea combines fine black teas with coconut and bananas. This cup of tea is ripe with the flavour of the islands and is as decadent as banana cream pie!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This one comes from a tea friend of mine on Steepster; the store it comes from is located in British Columbia, and not one I’ve had much experience with – just tried different samples in various tea swaps. Their website seems quite nice though, and pretty easy to navigate!
This one definitely has a very banana heavy smell with somewhat of a pudding like quality to it; so I guess that comes from the ‘cream’. I cold brewed this one ‘cause that’s just what I do; it definitely was a lot like I expected it to be but did have a few surprises.
The banana was certainly one of the stronger notes, and very candy like. In addition to having somewhat of a pudding like flavour it reminded me quite a bit of those banana marshmallow candies that you can find in convenience stores for five cents. People tend to have polar opinions on those; you either love or hate them. Personally, I can’t get enough. If you put a big bowl of them in front of me I would lose all self control and eat every last one, and probably get really sick as an added bonus.
The coconut is also very strong, though it tastes a touch off. It has an almost oily or greasy buttery flavour to it, which I find is something I’ve come to associate with shredded coconut that’s just starting to turn bad. Despite not totally meshing, it did sort of work with the tea though; that buttery flavour I dislike tied in a bit with the banana marshmallow vibe to create something that kind felt a little more confectionery instead causing me to feel wary.
I didn’t like the black base a whole lot either; I felt like it was noticeably a lower quality base with a lot of flavourings intended to cover that up – some I kind of observed with another flavoured black from this company, though it wasn’t as noticeable with that blend. And, something about the use of it here reminded me a little bit of ash. Only very lightly; but that’s still not a flavour you necessarily want to be experiencing with a “Banana Cream” tea. As for the all spice, that’s actually one thing about this that I felt pretty neutral about; it was barely present but what I could taste was nice and meshed fairly well with everything else going on. Though, I don’t think an absence of the allspice would have really affected the flavour either.
But I’m honestly probably making this out to seem a lot worse than it was in reality. The truth is I drank the entire 25 oz. cold brew with very little complaint or criticism until after finishing it and it wasn’t all that difficult to just tune into the fun, sweet banana notes. Overall, this probably balances out to be a relatively average tea. Wouldn’t necessarily recommend or serve it, but it’s not like I’d deliberately avoid it either.
Jungle Ju Ju Guayusa from DAVIDsTEA
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Guayusa
Where to Buy: DAVIDsTEA
Tea Description:
Head for the Ju Ju Jungle, made with a guayusa herb and fruit blend that’ll make you feel like swinging from the vines and hanging from the trees. No wonder. Guayusa contains a combo of the natural stimulants also found in green tea and dark chocolate. People claim it protects you against snake bites, gives you courage, and helps you spiritually connect to nature. With its smooth flavour and natural buzz, we’ll just say it makes for a deliciously stimulating cup of tea.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Uh-oh.
So I picked up some of this a couple weeks ago ’cause I had sipped down Main Squeeze (also from DT), which has been a cupboard staple of mine for daily use a little over a year now, and I wanted to switch things up a little bit because drinking too much of the same thing can definitely get boring or begin to feel too routine. Well, I think I may have spent a year missing out because this was really, really good.
Overall I tend to prefer guayusa over mate; I like the wet, mossy, earthy flavour of guayusa a lot because it makes me think of petrichor so this tea already had that edge over Main Squeeze; dry it smells very fresh with a more raw, unrefined peach flavour. It’s not a soft, creamy peach: it’s peach fresh from the orchard with the skin and a bit of dirt. The papaya comes through in the scent as well, but it’s definitely not the focus despite the surplus of very large candied papaya pieces in the leaf.
And the taste was awesome; the guayusa was everything I could have asked it to be and the peach I got to experience in the dry smell translated perfectly into the taste. The papaya is stronger in the taste as well, and adds this lovely roundness to the flavour that highlights the peach, petrichor, and plush earthy notes as well as a tropical and exotic kind of vibe. And it tastes so fresh; it’s weird that it tastes both tropical and like it could’ve come fresh from a local orchard.
It’s sweet enough that I can’t ever see why you’d add anything to it but it’s still got a mellowness to it too. The mouthfeel was very full as well. I’m totally picturing myself drinking this on the walk to work and I think that’s an A+ idea. Really, I have zero complaints about this one other than my own idiocy for drinking it at 6PM and now being way too wide awake.
This could easily, and I predict will easily, make its way into my cupboard staples so long as it proves to provide a consistent brew. It’s not one of the fanciest/highest quality teas I own – but for every day drinking and that extra caffeine boost before going to work I think it’s perfect! Plus, it’s a totally fun summer kind of flavour!
Wild Woman Black Tea from Tay Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Tay Tea
Tea Description:
An organic high-grown Ceylon tea with wild blueberries, black currants, hibiscus, elderberries and corn flower petals. One heavenly sip of this organic tea is enough to make you go wild! A perfect tea to wake up to.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is a tea I was looking forward to a fair bit; despite the hibiscus in the blend which I personally think it completely unnecessary to include in most blends but especially in berry ones.
When I first started drinking teas I was actually rather hesitant about trying blueberry teas because I don’t actually like the fruit a whole lot, and I definitely don’t like the taste of anything artificially blueberry flavoured but when I finally did try out a couple blueberry blends I learned that it’s a flavour I surprisingly quite enjoy – especially when paired with a black base like this one is. In fact, my most logged tea on Steepster happens to currently be DT’s Blueberry Jam tea – it makes a great everyday sort of tea and brews up very consistently, so when I tried this one I was kind of internally measuring it against that blend.
Dry, the leaf smells mildly of blueberries and black currants with the faintest scent of something sweet and almost black licorice like – which is odd given that none of the listed ingredients are ones I’d associate with that sort of flavour or scent. Visually, I don’t see much (if any, really) hibiscus in the leaf I’ve measured out. I’m slightly relieved about that, though I wonder if it’s going to make for a skewed sampling.
Taste wise, the blueberry is definitely the first flavour here though it’s quickly followed by a little bit of elderberry and the sweeter side of black currant. I don’t actually know how much black currant is blended in here, but for people who dislike the medicinal taste black currant sometimes has I don’t really see that ever being a problem with this blend; it’s all sweet and jammy, and faint in contrast to the blueberry anyway. I will say that compared to Blueberry Jam, this has the same level of berry flavour with the same accuracy when it comes to how realistic it is.
The downside is the base. This had a recommended steep time of three to five minutes and I steeped on the lower end of the spectrum – three and a half minutes in total. Even with a steep on the low end of Tay Tea’s suggested spectrum it brewed up quite bitter, and sadly that bitterness is the finishing note which lingers well after you’ve finished the sip. It greatly detracts from what would otherwise be a very well done blueberry tea.
For that reason, I don’t think I’d order it for myself though I do think it’d be worthwhile to try it again with a steep time closer to two and a half minutes to see if the bitterness could be lessened without losing out on the robust blueberry notes.
Rooibush Panna Cotta Rhubarb Cream from TeaGschwendner
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Rooibos
Where to Buy: TeaGschwendner
Tea Description:
Dessert in a teacup! The dazzling combination of Italian Panna Cotta, tart rhubarb and sweet cream combine for a flavor as delicious as the aroma.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Rooibush Panna Cotta Rhubarb Cream is probably the longest tea blend name ever…
Well, not really. It is pretty lengthy, though. And tacking on the “TeaGshwendner” certainly doesn’t help.
Ok; starting off with a confession: Not only have I never had Panna Cotta, but prior to trying this tea I didn’t know what it was either. I most certainly had to do an internet search, but now that I do know what it is I’m actually kind of embarrassed I didn’t. What originally caught my attention with this one was absolutely the rhubarb; I’ve been on a bit of a personal rhubarb kick lately: beer, pie, jam, yogurt and of course tea.
Dry, there isn’t a whole lot to this tea. It has a very, very mildly fruity scent but nothing super characteristic of rooibos and apart from one small little piece of cube shaped rhubarb my measured out leaf is all fine pieces of rooibos. As the tea was steeping, it started to smell a little bit stronger but still mostly maintained a predominantly rooibos only sort of scent.
The taste thankfully delivers some flavour although not nearly as much as I’m wanting. The whole front end of the sip is straight rooibos – albeit a pretty good one without any medicinal or woodchip kind of notes present. That said, people who dislike the taste of rooibos, good or bad, will want to steer clear of this one: trust me, you’re going to taste a lot of it. The other flavour kicks in the end of the sip and the aftertaste. And it’s pretty subtle; a bit of sweetness and a little bit of tang similar to the natural tartness of rhubarb. It’s also a little bit apple-y. I’m struggling a little bit to pick up the cream/custard of the ‘Panna Cotta’ but there is something about the tartness of the rhubarb that reminds me a little bit of Greek Yogurt, so perhaps that’s more derived from the panna cotta.
I don’t sweeten my teas, but I could possibly be inclined to add the tiniest pinch of sugar to this one because I just have that gut feeling that it’d make a world of difference. However, without the sugar the flavour of this one is definitely lacking. However, this could be a winner for someone who doesn’t mind rooibos and who is looking for something subtly flavoured.